[Marc Sabatella]

Btw, unless I missed an announcement, there is no new 18-200, just one from several years back. And the difference between f/3.5 and f/2.8 is insignificant, but the 18-200 is not constant f/3.5. If it were, it would be the greatest walkaround lens in the history of photography. Instead, it's your basic variable max aperture zoom - f/3.5 on at 18mm, but f/5.6 for much of its range.

[Edgar_in_Indy]

Yes, I tried a superzoom for a while, but never took to it. The focal range is tempting, but I didn't like the small aperture at typical portrait lengths and I found the image quality to be sub-par compared to my 28-75mm. A superzoom might be nice for a day at the zoo, or a nature hike, but it just wasn't for me. A less demanding user would probably be happy with a superzoom as their primary lens though.

[Edgar_in_Indy]

Hi Edgar, wanted to let you know that after a year of thinking about it, I finally bought the 28-75! .... Your children shots helped inspire me, and watching my kids grow so quick I finally realized that I cant wait for ever and I went for it!

Glad to hear that I inspired someone! I hope you love your lens as much as I love mine.

I just can't get over how much I like this lens. This past weekend, I went with my wife and my in-laws to a Brazilian festival (they're from Brazil) here in Indianapolis. The festival (festa de São João) has a country/folk theme and the kids dress up like little hillbillies, so I was planning to get some cute portraits of my daughters and their cousins.

I didn't want to carry too much, so I just took my K-x with the 28-75mm. The focal length was perfect since I was able to get portraits or group shots. I didn't take a lot of shots, but I ended up with a high percentage of keepers. Even though there was plenty of sun, I mostly stayed between f/2.8 and f/4.0 for shallow depth of field. Here are some of my favorites from the day:

[akanarya]

Hi Edgar, thanks for sharing again

I noticed that you had been used spot metering generally,
is there a trick for portrait about it?

What do you do for indoor? bump iso, use flash, widen the aperture etc?
I am not so happy for the output of my tammy when take in indoor?

[Genshu]

Sweet! Those are amazing shots.

[Edgar_in_Indy]

Hi Edgar, thanks for sharing again

I noticed that you had been used spot metering generally,
is there a trick for portrait about it?

I usually shoot in full manual mode. I've been doing it that way so long, that I'm usually able to get pretty close to the correct exposure setting just by estimating what the aperture, shutter, and ISO should be for the conditions. I'll take a couple test shots and then adjust exposure if necessary. If lighting conditions are changing quickly (such as on a partly-cloudy day when the sun keeps hiding and then coming out), then I might go ahead and use Av mode, usually with "spot" metering or "center-weighted" since I tend to focus on my subject and then recompose when necessary. But if the lighting changes are not too dramatic and too fast, then I usually stay in Manual and make minor corrections as necessary.

The k-x makes shooting in Manual easy because it has such great dynamic range and low ISO noise, making exposure mistakes very forgiving. So even if I end up with some pictures that are underexposed, I can compensate when developing the RAW files and still have clean images. In fact, if I'm shooting a high contrast scene I usually under-expose a little bit on purpose, knowing that the k-x will have no trouble bringing details out of the shadows.

What do you do for indoor? bump iso, use flash, widen the aperture etc?
I am not so happy for the output of my tammy when take in indoor?

As far as shooting indoors, if I'm shooting handheld and/or shooting a live subject then I'll pretty much always be at f/2.8 and adjust shutter speed and ISO as necessary. During the day indoors, I can usually shoot at ISO 400 or ISO 800. At night ISO 1600 would usually be required. Anytime I have to go above ISO 1600, then I don't plan on getting anything more than 4"x6"snapshots. Although you can still get some great black and white photos above ISO 1600 since the grain can actually be desirable for B&W.

I used a speedlight with my old Olympus e-510 quite a bit when shooting indoors, and got some amazing photos with it. But the Olympus was very noisy above ISO 800 so the flash was often a necessity. The k-x does much better indoors. And while it's true that good high-ISO isn't really a replacement for a flash (for great photos, the QUALITY of the light is more important than the QUANTITY), I usually just don't like to complicate things with a flash, since I'm usually able to get more than enough good photos without it. Especially when I'm trying to keep up with fast moving children, I don't like the additional variable of the speedlight. And using a flash can result in mixed lighting temperatures, which can sometimes ruin what would otherwise be a great photo.

But again, a speedlight will allow for some amazing photos that would simply not be possible with just available lighting, so the extra effort can be very rewarding, and I wouldn't want to steer somebody away from that direction. I got especially good results using the Gary Fong Lightsphere and/or bounce-flashing.

[akanarya]

thanks Edgar for extensive information,

infact I follow exactly same path
but what pushes me is to take my child indoor.
she is fast moving therefore at least 1/60 or so shutter needed, 1/100+ is highly desirable
of course. she is generally not allowing me take her, so I have to catch it up.

when using such shutter values, you need more more more ISO, which results some
unwanted results for portraiture.

a faster lens of course beneficial like 1.4, but this values have very norrow dof, and
widest aperture generally results outputs not so sharper.

therefore I am thinking of an external flash like 360fgz, I believe that it can rescue some shots.
drawback is the cycle time, on/off, that is setup requirement etc etc.
I can miss the subject when waiting it to fire. so generally flash usage doesnt seem to me practical.
builtin flash has many known unwanted effects.

[tacticdesigns]

Amazing, amazing captures! Congrats on the lens!

[haassaasin]

This is a noob question but how would I convert an image to sRGB? I do use lightroom, Can I do it in there?

[Marc Sabatella]

You would only need to convert to sRGB if you had made the mistake of causing to be anything else in the first place. Do you have reason to think you have done so?

[haassaasin]

You would only need to convert to sRGB if you had made the mistake of causing to be anything else in the first place. Do you have reason to think you have done so?

I am just asking because OP said that his pictures were not clear on the web until he converted them. So I assumed you had to convert them before posting.

[Genshu]

The guy at the store where I bought the lens wants me to buy a UV/IR blocking filter for $120. I never heard of blocking ultraviolet before, then on line I read somewhere that digital is very sensitive to IR so they put IR blocking in the actual lense these days. Does anyone know about this and have any recommendations? Do I really need to shell out another $120? Having come this far I will if I need too, but of course would rather not if it doesn't really make a difference!

[paddy567]

Goodness no, totally unnecessary.

[akanarya]

not recomended generally,
beacuse evertyhing you put on the lens, sacrifies performance of the lens
todat lens' and sensorsr reduce a degree of uv effects
it generally use by beginners who want to protect the front element from scratch or
some experienced ones who take shoots on high-mountains.

and hey 120$ is very high price, if it is not so special (diameter, brand, etc)

[Edgar_in_Indy]

You would only need to convert to sRGB if you had made the mistake of causing to be anything else in the first place. Do you have reason to think you have done so?

My understanding is that if you're shooting RAW, it doesn't make a difference whether you have the camera set to sRGB or Adobe RGB. I think that setting only effects JPEGs.

I always shoot RAW, and would view the RAW files in Adobe Bridge and then open them in Photoshop CS4 (and now CS5) using Adobe Camera RAW. Once I was done with the image, I would save it as a JPEG and call it done.

When I was posting some sample images from my Tamron 28-75mm in this thread:

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-slr-lens-discussion/145015-da-15-6...17-50-a-3.html

I noticed that the images were washed out and the colors were off. With the help of forum members, I discovered that I needed to covert to sRGB before saving to JPEG for proper viewing on the web. I do this in Photoshop CS4/CS5 by clicking "Edit"-->"Convert to Profile".

People say that Adobe RGB has a wider color gamut and is technically superior to sRGB, so it may be better for printing. I don't know how true that is, but now my normal workflow is still to save my full-size images without converting to sRGB. But when I'm preparing something to view on the web, I convert it to sRGB.

If you want to see the difference between sRGB and Adobe RGB in your browser, you can pull up the above thread in one window and look at the pictures I posted, and then pull up the first page of this thread with the same pictures converted to sRGB, and flip back and forth.