[6BQ5]

And how do you accomplish this? What software do you use? What are your basic settings for both the camera as well as the software. What if any are your recommendations. This is the sort of information that I am attempting to get shared. What are you doing that produces the results you like? Obviously you have used the Q series to produce some images that meet your standards. What did you do to meet your expectations?

In any book store you can find books devoted to any Canon or Nikon camera and associated software but none to the Pentax line. I believe one service, boards and forums such as these are meant to provide, is to share information about our successes that may help others improve or enhance their use of the Pentax line of cameras. In this case specifically the Q series as it currently exists.

A universal approach or recipe to processing images is hard for most to define ... or at least it should be. Every image ought to present its own technical and artistic challenges. What I do in one image may be very different than what I do in the next. That is why I don't have presets even though I believe they can be helpful for others. Entering the 3 to 5 settings for contrast, saturation, clarity, and structure in Capture One takes all of 12 seconds for me and even then I will tweak the numbers up and down depending on the image. I think all of us have a distinct style and we come up with different recipes for each image to achieve that style.

The cookbooks and recipe books that you mentioned for Nikon and Canon don't really jive with me because I feel like they are trying to tell me how to achieve a certain look or perception of an image. When I look at my dull raw image in Capture One I can identify 80% of what needs to be done to it right away. This is because in my head I already know what things ought to look like. How green is green grass? How blue should the blue sky be? How should I bring out the shadows in the background to give the background some depth. It's just basic photography and color manipulation. The basic tools from the darkroom never changed in principle. They just happen to be sliders on a screen vs. hand held instruments hovering over a print as it is being exposed or a filter that slips in front of the enlarger lens.

I think what you may be referring to is a tutorial or manual on how to operate the software. That ought to be a 50 page pamphlet. There really shouldn't be a lot of hidden features or menus to click through. If there are then the software is overshadowing the image and I would switch software.

Rather than look at cookbooks and tutorials I love looking at a photographers collection of work. Let me thumb through the pages of a book of H.C.B.'s prints and try reverse engineering his thought process. Or, how about an art book on Cezanne or Matisse where I can try to understand what they saw in their heads after they were done looking with their eyes? I'll figure out afterwards what sliders I need to push or what adjustments I need to brush in through experimentation and exploration. Control-Z (undo) and non-destructive editing is your friend here.

The closest I can get to a general recipe for the Q is to boost contrast and saturation, apply liberal sharpening or micro-contrast, and then brush in localized adjustments where the image demands it. This is slightly different than the K-3 in that I would minimally boost contrast and saturation and apply minimal sharpening or micro-contrast. I still go nuts brushing in local adjustments if that is what it takes to extract detail from an image. Since I shoot everything in raw I don't manipulate my camera settings at all. They are all set to zero or whatever the default settings are. I would go insane tweaking those sliders in-camera to get a JPG that would still be off.

A camera has one purpose in my mind : to record the light truthfully and accurately. My job as the photographer is to first frame that light and then extract as much detail as I can from it.

[Piotrek K]

I develop my (original) Q RAW files in Raw Therapee. The main settings I think should be altered according to my trial and error are:

- edges (on - standard settings),
- microcontrast adjustment,
- vibrance (pastel tones more adjusted),

I usually also refine color with Film simulation tool (using Velvia preset with 60 - 100 % strength). This leads to pleasing results but also makes shadows black, so I usually adjust shadows using Shadows/Highligts tool (all settings for highligts are off).

If no Velvia preset is used I adjust blacks sometimes.


Please note I only use the adapted lenses (Pentax - 110 lenses and some legacy K- mount lenses).

[sapporodan]

Interesting to read different peoples ideas how to process the images.

Here's mine.

Set camera to JPG.

Done

Would be nice to see some before and after shot's so idiots like me can see what they are missing not shooting RAW, I just never got around to shooting RAW from my Q!

[crewl1]

The only setting change i keep on the Q and Q7 is to always slightly under exposed vs what the meter says around -0.3.
I do this either by shooting in M to underexpose, or in TV or AV using the exposure comp button.
The Q sensors tend to blow out highlights otherwise.
I shoot in highest JPG and natural setting, and the resulting images are easy to adjust in post with this as a starting point.

Some samples:

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Last edited by crewl1; 04-23-2015 at 01:25 PM.

[reh321]

The only setting change i keep on the Q and Q7 is to always slightly under exposed vs what the meter says around -0.3.
I do this either by shooting in M to underexpose, or in TV or AV using the exposure comp button.
The Q sensors tend to blow out highlights otherwise.
I shoot in highest JPG and natural setting, and the resulting images are easy to adjust in post with this as a starting point.

Some samples:

What lens did you use to get these example pictures, and at what actual focal length and aperture / shutter speed?
Your pictures are a tad sharper than anything I've been able to get.

[crewl1]

These were all shot with the DA*300 via the Pentax adapter K-Q.
Resulting focal length is 1380 on Q7, aperture is f5.6, shutter speed varied.
All are using a tripod for stability.

Parakeet - Q7, 1/500
Owlet - Q7, 1/500
Hummingbird -Q7, 1/100
Heron -just realized this was not taken with Q so I deleted and replaced with Osprey
Osprey - Q7, 1/800

---------- Post added 04-23-15 at 01:40 PM ----------

Here are a couple with the Q

Q - 1/250


Q - 1/1250

[rfaucher]

Hello Crewl1, you have done some amazing work with the Q and the DA* 300. Bravo!

[crewl1]

Thank you!

[cmar]

I've found the Q to be wonderful little camera, I baulked at the original price, but when I found one last remaining one as new old stock a couple of years ago for $199.00 in a camera store, how could I resist. I liked it so much I went on to invest in all the lenses except the toy telephoto and wide zoom, still a little expensive but I'll get it eventually. I've found it to be not as easy to get good shots out of as my DSLR, you have to work at it. However when you do, the results can be quite startling. It may look like a P&S but a P&S it is not, and if you try to use it that way you will be disappointed at least some of the time. You can see some of my shots in the cruising thread and the Q share shots thread. I've found that like others it's easy to blow out the highlights, I use a CP filter quite a lot. I also prefer the slide film setting to the default bright and prefer to underexpose slightly or use the in camera HDR which actually works really well. I live in the subtropics and for outside shots the display is pretty much useless, but I've gotten good at pointing and shooting. It heats up fairly quickly if you use it to shoot video, a shame as it shoots quite nice HD video, and I seldom bother to take out my video camera anymore.