[TER-OR]

I guess the decision is around the security of the zipper and latch on the Manfrotto vs. the style of the Cullmann - which with the big velcro patches should be OK for light use. They both look like good bags in the same class.

[Ezio49]

Terry, probabile i shall buy the Manfrotto Bella IV.
I have the same doubt you have about the Cullman and an additional one,: the upper closure without zip allows 2 lateral slots where the rain could enter.
The Cullman may be more stylish but we are talking about something that must be functional. Sorry, but I am an engineer.
Thanks
Ezio

[Ezio49]

Terry, I bought the Manfrotto Bella IV by Amazon. It shall arrive in 3-5 days.
I shall post my comments.
Thank for the assistance. Ciao
Ezio

[TER-OR]

My pleasure - that's what the forum is for.

While you're at it, look for a little cleaning kit - the lens pen and blower is something you should have. A couple lens/glasses cleaning cloths are useful, too.

[Ezio49]

Terry,
is here, inside this forum, a topic dedicated to the monitor cleaning? In this case I shall move this post. Anyway I ask you.
Considering that I look in the mirror using the LH eye (the best one) and I have a long nose (not like Cirano de Bergerac ) my monitor is full of nose+finger marks.
Now I recived the protection film to place on, but I need to clean it before the installation. Do you think that the fabric used to clean the glasses is OK?
Thanks.
Ezio

[TER-OR]

THat's pretty resistant glass, like a smartphone. You can use pretty much any soft cloth and be safe - water or a little glass cleaner. If you're installing a protector, I'd use glass cleaner to prepare it.
Yeah, cameras can get pretty filthy. A damp cotton swab cleans up the viewfinder pretty well.

[Ezio49]

Thanks. I followed your suggestion and installed the protector.
I discovered that it is difficult to install correctly (dust, air bubble). Finally I installed it.
One side of the protector has a very feeble glue. Is it possible that this glue shall damage(dirt glue particle stick to the glass when the protector is removed)?
I am starting to use K-5. Is there any part of this forum where I can post my pictures to have your comments and suggestions?
Thank you.
Ezio

[Ezio49]

Terry,
with TAv the selection was 4938x3264 pixel, 18mm, f/11,1/100 sec, ISO 100. I use the 18-55 mm kit.
I am not so impressed by the result. It seems underexposed. There was sun with some light clouds. What mistake I made? Did I used the TAv in wrong way?
Please, let me know.
Ezio

[TER-OR]

Thanks. I followed your suggestion and installed the protector.
I discovered that it is difficult to install correctly (dust, air bubble). Finally I installed it.
One side of the protector has a very feeble glue. Is it possible that this glue shall damage(dirt glue particle stick to the glass when the protector is removed)?
I am starting to use K-5. Is there any part of this forum where I can post my pictures to have your comments and suggestions?
Thank you.
Ezio

I don't think the grime will damage the glass - but it might look bad. I have a hard protector on mine, and it's broken - so it looks like the LCD glass is broken. That happened when the camera took a fall, so I kind of see it like a "battle scar."

There are a couple good places on the forum. One is photo critique. You'll get a lot of feedback about composition there, and technique. Also just in the K5 forum you could post a shot and ask for suggestions.

With your photo here, I suspect it's a bit underexposed (but not by much) because the camera is trying to meter the sky and the darker trees. The shadows will be underexposed - but they're shadows after all. With this image, using some post-processing, you can increase the exposure. The modern sensors are more forgiving with underexposure than overexposure - there's lots of data there, it's just dark. Programs like Lightroom can recover details in the underexposed areas, this is called shadow recovery. It works really well.

As for settings, I'd back your aperture down to f8, increase shutter speed to 1/250 or so, and let the ISO float up toward 400 if necessary. I find it's better to increase shutter speed than bump the aperture too high in most cases. This is afternoon in the image (I think) which makes those shadows a bit tricky. You could do some bracketing with apertures keeping your shutter speed constant.

Usually I'm in center-point focus and center-weighted or spot metering, which means the shadows will be good if I'm shooting into the shade but the highlights are more likely to be blown - but I'm often trying to get images of birds or wildlife and I'm more concerned with those subjects than the surrounding picture.

[Ezio49]

Terry,
me too had the impression of an underexposition. It seems really that the camera tends to overevaluate the sky.
Same impression I hade when I toke my very first picture from my flat window toward the hauses I have in front. The houses were quite correctly exposed and the sky was very dark. Even if it was ready to rain there was not a so terrific sky.
About the screen protection I applied yesterday evening. I discovered that this film is not easy to apply, but at the end it was made.
Few things.
- the picture was taken at 10 AM and the day was sunny with some light clouds.
- My attempt to select low ISO comes from the old reflex using film, in order to avoid grain. Even if I really do not find any difference between 100 and 400 in K-5 it is my mental defect. I shall correct it.
- about the focus it was in auto position and AF.S (both them are green)
- My main experience with the old film reflex was with the slides and I have the opinion (another of my many mental defects) that the pictur must remain as originally taken. It is wrong and I shall start to use postprocessors. My reluctance to the postprocessing is mainly due to several illogical pictures saw in internet (pink grass and so on). Several years ago also I used PhotoShop (release 1 I suppose) to elaborate the digital photo taken with a low cost digital camera.
For instance the Lightroom program is free in internet? Is it a Adobe program?
Sorry if I am boring you, but I have no experience in this category of photo cameras. The only one I used is the Canon 500D of my son, but I placed it on landscape program and forget it.
Thanks a lot. Ciao.
Ezio

[Ezio49]

Terry,
bad news. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 here in Italy costs 104€ (135USD). It is not very cheap.
Could be a Christmas gift from by wife.
Ciao.
Ezio

[TER-OR]

Have a look in the post-processing section;
Digital Processing, Software, and Printing - PentaxForums.com

There is info there on free programs. I converted to Lightroom 4 a while ago and like it a lot. LR5 is a subscription service, which I'm not fond of. You will be amazed at what you can recover using RAW files. I shoot RAW+, just for convenience. Sometimes I can just use the camera's jpg and crop for posting to facebook etc. I have recovered images which looked black to jpg but there was enough info in the RAW for recovery of a very nice image...

And yes, retraining the old brain is the toughest part of converting to modern DSLRs. The capability of the camera is so much more than anything we've used in the past it's hard to grasp. Don't worry about ISO up to about 2200, but of course the lower you can keep it the better. There's a compromise as you know - sometimes shutter speed is more important, sometimes ISO. That's why I like TAv - you can quickly change the two most important parameters and see the effects on ISO, which is a crude measurement of exposure.

[TER-OR]

For very simple modifications I like paint.net - a freeware program. It has some nice tools, but nothing heavyweight. GIMP is good, but I couldn't really warm up to it.

Visit the processing section, do some reading. You'll find something good.

[crewl1]

Same impression I hade when I toke my very first picture from my flat window toward the hauses I have in front. The houses were quite correctly exposed and the sky was very dark. Even if it was ready to rain there was not a so terrific sky.

On the left dial you have a three position switch that changes the way the camera evaluates to exposes a scene: Entire scene (matrix), center weighted, or spot.
In any of the these cases the camera will make an attempt to arrive at what it considers the optimum exposure as compared to a 18% grey.

See this article for an explanation Camera metering modes explained

If the resulting exposure is consistently darker than what you expect based on your taste, you can change it using the exposure compensation function which is the +/- button to make the camera meter lighter + or darker -.

Enjoy your K-5 it is a wonderful camera.

[Ezio49]

Terry,
thanks for the information. I shall look to the forums.
Till now I never used RAW format. Being the possibility to save in both JPG and RAW at the same time, I shall try immediately.
Another impression I have is that the photo seen on the camera display has more light that on PC. May be my 6 years old PC needs to be changed too.
Thanks
Ciao