Pentax Sample Photo Search Engine

A new feature letting you seach by camera or lens

By PF Staff in Site News on Oct 16, 2012

Today we are very happy to announce the addition of a new section to our web site: the Pentax Sample Photo Search Engine.  In a nutshell, this system allows you to search all of the photos found on our forum and in our photo gallery based on their EXIF information.  You can initiate a search using the dropdowns at the top of the page.  When you first open the page, you will also see a list of the most popular photos and recent searches.

Searches are primarily based on a camera and/or lens selection, but once those results are displayed, you can choose to filter them based on EXIF fields such as:

• ISO
• Shutter Speed
• Aperture
• Focal Length
• Flash
• Lens Name (if searching by camera only)
• Camera Name (if searching by lens only)

You can also sort your results based on criteria such as popularity, date uploaded, number of likes, and more.  Click on the "thumbs up" icon if you like a photo, or click on the "thumbs down" icon if you think the photo isn't a worthwhile sample!  To view the photo where the author original posted, click on the link as highlighted below.

Whenever you make a lens or a camera selection using one of the dropdowns, the other dropdown will automatically be filtered to show only lenses that match your camera selection, or vice-versa.  You can reset the contents of the dropdown by clicking on the "reset dropdowns / filters" button, or simply by selecting the "All" option in the dropdown.  Note that the dropdowns are searchable, and if you start typing, the contents of the dropdown will be filtered!

As can be partially seen above, a sharing link is shown on every search page.  You can bookmark it if you wish to save a search, or even e-mail it to a friend!

To view the full-size version of photo, click on its thumbnail.  A lightbox will then open which allows you to cycle between photos using your arrow keys or mouse:

The photos in this system are synchronized with our forum and gallery uploads on a nightly basis, so new uploads will not appear right away.  We've currently limited the sample photo search engine to only list Pentax cameras (and their Samsung clones) and Ricoh cameras (though no samples exist yet).  New lenses and cameras will automatically be added as new photos get uploaded, but only if there are at least three corresponding sample photos first. 

Please note that photos taken with non-Pentax cameras are in fact indexed by this system, but we found that most are simply photos of items listed on the Marketplace, so we decided to exclude them entirely.  In the future, we plan on adding several new features to the sample photo search system, including the ability to add detailed manual lens information, displaying inline camera and lens information, and possibly even a search system for off-site photos shared on our forum.

One last thing to keep in mind for those who have uploaded photos: we value your privacy and understand if you don't wish to have your photos indexed in this system.  Should you wish to remove any photo from the system, simply find it by searching for it, and then click on the green icon next to the label that reads "public".  Once it turns red, your photo will no longer be visible to the public.  You can also request that a moderator do this for you.

We hope you enjoy this system and we welcome your suggestions and comments! The system is accessible from the forum and the homepage navbars as shown below:

Click here to start searching for sample photos!