The Manual setting produced the most accurate color balance, though just a touch cool. (There is also a 'Subtle Correction' Auto WB correction setting, however we did not test that option.) Results with the Incandescent setting are actually pretty good, though, just slightly on the warm side. The Pentax K-S2's Auto white balance had a difficult time with the warm color of the household incandescent bulbs used in this shot, producing a very warm image with a strong orange tint, even with 'Strong Correction' enabled by default. Very warm results with Auto white balance, but good color with Incandescent and Manual white balance settings. See thumbnails of all test and gallery images (The cyan to blue shift is very common among the digital cameras we test we think it's a deliberate choice by camera engineers to produce better-looking sky colors.) Hue accuracy does degrade slightly at higher ISOs, but not as much as some cameras. Most noticeable were moderate shifts in orange toward yellow and cyan toward blue, with minor shifts and some reds, yellows, and greens. The Pentax K-S2's mean 'delta-C' color error of 5.51 after correction for saturation at ISO 100 is about average for a DSLR these days.

Oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's veryĮasy for these 'memory colors' to be seen as too bright, too pink, Caucasian skin tones from the Pentax K-S2 were a touch yellow using Manual white balance in our test shots, however Auto white balance produced a slightly more pinkish, 'healthier' appearance. Like their color a bit brighter than life. Most consumerĭigital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) You can of course always select a different image tone preset and/or turn down settings such as saturation and contrast to suit your own tastes. Overall, colors are very bright and punchy, a trait we've come to expect from Pentax, and mean saturation remains higher than average throughout the ISO range. That's about 10% higher than most other brands at default settings. Mean saturation at ISO 100 is 119.8% or 19.8% oversaturated. The Pentax K-S2's default image tone setting of 'Bright' pushes most colors by quite a bit at base ISO, especially blues, greens, dark reds and purples. Mouse over the links to compare ISOs, and click the links for larger versions. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center. Hue changes as you travel around the center. More saturated colors are located toward the periphery of the graph. In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured.

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