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03-12-2012, 07:03 PM   #1
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Stupid Mistakes

Hi All. I've had my K5 for almost 2 weeks and I don't have a single regret. I just wanted to know what other stupid mistakes (if any) have been made by others (to make myself feel better).

I just went out for a 6 hr shoot hiking along the Maitland River near Goderich. I had about 250 shots that I thought were pretty good. Some snow geese taking flight, a red tailed hawk, white tailed deer (that I tracked for 1 1/2hrs), canada geese, ducks, some landscapes and some shots of the damage to the river valley from the tornado. Unfortunately, I had somehow de-selected auto ISO a few shots in. I was shooting in aperture and shutter priority and the images on the LCD display looked good. However, when I got home, almost everything was blurry. I was too concentrated on aperture and shutter that I didn't notice the ISO until I was done. Am I the only idiot?

Jim - K5 newbie.

03-12-2012, 07:19 PM   #2
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You are not the only idiot and neither am I. Sometimes pain is the best teacher. Ouch.
03-12-2012, 07:22 PM   #3
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If shutter was ok, why everything blurry?
03-12-2012, 07:28 PM   #4
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Hi Jim,

If you are not sure how to set the speed and aperture (and ISO) you can just put the setting dial on the green (the green box between movie and P). The camera will be fully automatic and you don't need to care about the setting.

Blurry picture usually caused by your hand movement when you took the picture. I also have these problem when I got excited taking the pictures. My remedy is to stay at high shutter speed of around 1/125 - 1/350 of a second. To make the camera on shutter speed priority, set the dial on Sv. If you use zoom lens, at 18mm go with 1/125, at 50mm go with 1/180 and at 200mm go with 1/250 and at 300mm go with 1/350. (I assume you have either DAL 18-55mm or DAL 55-300mm).

If the blurry caused by focusing problem, then make sure you stay at a higher aperture level of 5.6 to 8, to make the photos more sharp.

ISO level don't make blurry photos, they just make the photos looks "grainier" the K5 have very excellent sensor that can make good photos up to ISO 12800.

If you can show the sample blurry photos in this thread, then I can tell you whether it is the speed or the focus problem. But definitely not an ISO problem.

Indria.

03-12-2012, 07:44 PM   #5
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Hi Jim,

Idiot here. I have done it before and I will more than likely do it again, and again, and again - to my regret. Maybe, I will learn from these hard lessons - hopefully I will experience fewer of these lessons. At least I am just being an idiot and not progressing to moron stage.... Let me post this before my wife reads over my shoulder and start making various remarks.

03-12-2012, 07:58 PM   #6
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If I haven't used a long manual lens in a while I'll tend to completely forget to set the ISO sufficiently high for the apertures I'm using (no auto-ISO in M mode) to allow the green button to set an appropriate shutter speed, causing my first 5-10 minutes of shooting with it each day to require deletion. Oops.

Also, I skip the "tell me your focal length" screen without looking at it, then my SR settings are screwed and my EXIF info is wrong. Doh.

Everyone's an idiot, best not to worry too much about it!

Last edited by timh; 03-12-2012 at 07:59 PM. Reason: Everyone's an idiot
03-12-2012, 10:49 PM   #7
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Learn from it

At least you can learn from it.

I was shooting a car show a few months back. I always have my camera set for RAW+ and b & w. I just feel that b & w gives me a better chance to get the lighting right. So I go shooting away thinking that the shots were going to be great to mess with in photoshop or silky pics because of the colors, chrome, reflections, etc. Get home and all I have are b & w jpgs. Probably did a test a few days back and forget to set it back to RAW+. Didn't even notice it on the info screen while I was shooting. Took over 200 shots, too. Now it is one of the first things I check before clicking away.

03-12-2012, 11:58 PM   #8
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Well, mistakes are learning tools. One of the nice things we have now that we did not in the films days is the ability to see what we are getting. "Chimping" with the LCD is not a bad thing. Use the zoom function and check focus once in awhile. I've done the same thing as you but checking occasionally saved me from getting a couple hundred fuzzy shots - only a dozen or so.
03-13-2012, 05:09 AM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by abmj Quote
Well, mistakes are learning tools. One of the nice things we have now that we did not in the films days is the ability to see what we are getting. "Chimping" with the LCD is not a bad thing. Use the zoom function and check focus once in awhile.
Awhile back we had a thread on something like WHAT WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS IN PHOTOGRAPHY? and I put CHIMPING at or near the top of my list. The ability to immediately review+adjust is just transformative. Instead of waiting minutes (for studio toggers using Polaroid previews) to hours to days or longer (for the rest of us), we can find and correct our f*ckups in real-time. That's really big. We learn faster. Maybe we learn better. Feedback loops helps us run smoother, like anti-knock gas.
03-13-2012, 06:21 AM   #10
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For me.....most bad photos are caused by shutter speeds being too low for objects that have even slight movement....like what you were shooting. This is where Tav is fantastic......set the ISO to roam to 12,800 and then use your dials to set speed/aperture. You will always get a shot if you controlled the speed properly. Even if it took a high ISO setting the K5 will normally handle it, and if not, you wouldn't have got the shot without the speed anyhow. I rarely use any other setting for general shooting.
Of course, for "real" photographers, they prefer to do all the calculations in their fine well honed photographic brains.......if I ever get one of those, I will too!
Regards!
03-13-2012, 08:47 AM   #11
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I'm new to digital (and auto exposure as well, coming from an all manual film camera) So, for example, if I'm stalking wildlife with my 55-300 and I want to lock my shutter at 1/400 (I like how this speed gives a little movement to flapping bird's wings), then I should use Tav mode instead of Tv? (Tv is shutter priority, not Sv, sensitive or ISO priority as stated above). I understand all the modes from the manual (I think), and am making test shots with my new K-5, it's just putting it to use is a little confusing. I guess it is an advantage to be able to have a range of ISO when shooting with a dslr, so you could "lock" your ideal apeture & shutter for those quick wildlife shots.
03-13-2012, 11:28 AM   #12
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my favorite dumb mistake

I was shooting with the Zenitar 16mm fisheye, a lens that is very prone to flare. Was trying to shade the lens a bit (obviously a decent lens hood isn't much use on a fisheye) this is the result.


NaCl(made me laugh)H2O
03-13-2012, 11:35 AM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by NaClH2O Quote
I was shooting with the Zenitar 16mm fisheye, a lens that is very prone to flare. Was trying to shade the lens a bit (obviously a decent lens hood isn't much use on a fisheye) this is the result.


NaCl(made me laugh)H2O
Oh that takes me back to childhood... I'll have to ask my mum for my collection of Kodak Pocket Instamatic thumb pictures
03-13-2012, 01:08 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by ElKay23 Quote
I'm new to digital (and auto exposure as well, coming from an all manual film camera) So, for example, if I'm stalking wildlife with my 55-300 and I want to lock my shutter at 1/400 (I like how this speed gives a little movement to flapping bird's wings), then I should use Tav mode instead of Tv? (Tv is shutter priority, not Sv, sensitive or ISO priority as stated above). I understand all the modes from the manual (I think), and am making test shots with my new K-5, it's just putting it to use is a little confusing. I guess it is an advantage to be able to have a range of ISO when shooting with a dslr, so you could "lock" your ideal apeture & shutter for those quick wildlife shots.
The difference between Tv and TAv modes are:

Tv mode lets you set shutter speed, and will let the camera choose aperture and ISO (unless you lock ISO)
TAv mode lets you set shutter speed and aperture, and will let the camera choose ISO value (ISO cannot be locked when in TAv mode, obviously)

I mostly use Av mode (and let the camera handle shutter speed and ISO) in daylight. In poor light I prefer TAv mode in order to avoid too slow shutter speeds - I find it is better to let the ISO level fly with this camera!

Hope this helps!
03-13-2012, 01:37 PM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by Jimkol Quote
Unfortunately, I had somehow de-selected auto ISO a few shots in. I was shooting in aperture and shutter priority and the images on the LCD display looked good. However, when I got home, almost everything was blurry. I was too concentrated on aperture and shutter that I didn't notice the ISO until I was done. Am I the only idiot?
No, you most certainly are not. You're in good company actually. The K-5 is my 4th Pentax DSLR over the last few years and I have some 75K shots under my belt. Only last week I left my camera on TAv with the shutterspeed at 1/1000 and aperture F11 on a perfectly bright spring day, resulting in ridiculous ISO's of 1600 and more where ISO200-400 with 1/250 and F5.6 would have been perfectly sufficient. I managed to "bring back" my shots with Neat Image but they could have been so much better.

I have learned to shrug these momentary lapses of reason off and go on shooting. You name it, I've done it: no battery, no memory card, no lens (yes, actually NO lens!!!), wrong ISO, wrong timezone messing up my GPS data in the EXIF....everything, literally everything. You'd think I would have learned by now...nope.
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