[dougieazar]

Hello. Nothing radically critical her just a couple of thoughts. I have several lenses for my K-3 and K-5 such as 288mm-90mm, 18mm-270mm and some others but I have found that in actuality my kit lenses do perform quite well. My Pentax 18mm-55mm takes very nice sharp photos and my Pentax 50mm-200mm does the same. Oh I suppose a person can buy super-duper expensive lenses that cost through the roof and perform magnificently and far surpass my kit lenses but I think my do an Ok job. another thing and I don't know how many of you do this but I like to use exposure compensation with three shots, above-correct- and over exposed. It gives me a choice of light and dark. When I used to shoot my 35mm Nikon I always shot by stopping down one f-stop to darken my shots as I found that right on or correct exposure was to bright and seemingly over exposed for me. Just some thoughts..............Dougie

[GUB]

Hello. Nothing radically critical her just a couple of thoughts. I have several lenses for my K-3 and K-5 such as 288mm-90mm, 18mm-270mm and some others but I have found that in actuality my kit lenses do perform quite well. My Pentax 18mm-55mm takes very nice sharp photos and my Pentax 50mm-200mm does the same. Oh I suppose a person can buy super-duper expensive lenses that cost through the roof and perform magnificently and far surpass my kit lenses but I think my do an Ok job. another thing and I don't know how many of you do this but I like to use exposure compensation with three shots, above-correct- and over exposed. It gives me a choice of light and dark. When I used to shoot my 35mm Nikon I always shot by stopping down one f-stop to darken my shots as I found that right on or correct exposure was to bright and seemingly over exposed for me. Just some thoughts..............Dougie

If you do this underexposing by bringing the iso back and not shutter or aperture then you can brighten up in post processing and control your highlights. So long as you are doing this to a raw then the result ends up with no more noise than the original higher iso shot with the bonus of controlling your highlights. This may work in a small amount in a jpg saved image but it is far better to use raw if you intend to underexpose.

[kypfer]

Hello. Nothing radically critical her just a couple of thoughts. I have several lenses for my K-3 and K-5 such as 288mm-90mm, 18mm-270mm and some others but I have found that in actuality my kit lenses do perform quite well. My Pentax 18mm-55mm takes very nice sharp photos and my Pentax 50mm-200mm does the same. Oh I suppose a person can buy super-duper expensive lenses that cost through the roof and perform magnificently and far surpass my kit lenses but I think my do an Ok job. another thing and I don't know how many of you do this but I like to use exposure compensation with three shots, above-correct- and over exposed. It gives me a choice of light and dark. When I used to shoot my 35mm Nikon I always shot by stopping down one f-stop to darken my shots as I found that right on or correct exposure was to bright and seemingly over exposed for me. Just some thoughts..............Dougie

You're lens selections seem a lot like mine … going for total versality at the possible expense of extreme quality
I've never been disappointed with Pentax "kit" lenses, I have several 18-55mm that been acquired over the years, they all perform well, as does my 50-200mm.
I've just added a Sigma 18-250mm to the brood simply 'cos it was cheap (<£15!)
The exposure compensation adjustment trick is a quick workaround, I've used it in the past, but more and more I'll revert to RAW in difficult circumstances, the ability for fine-tuning a difficult image using the supplied Digital Camera Utility software is a superior option … if a little "quirky" to get to grips with initially

[mikesbike]

With the K-5 and the K-3, you have two excellent cameras. If your "kit" lenses meet your needs, there is no need to acquire other lenses. They can indeed provide very fine imaging, when used well within their limitations, which apparently you are doing. You can do your thing for bracketing your exposure by using exposure comp or you can use the camera's bracketing feature that will take the 3 shots making one over, one right on, and one under, all by a given degree of departure from each other.

One important key to learning better photography is learning what kind of lighting conditions are tricky so the camera's meter is likely to be fooled, and what to expect the result would be, so you can compensate in advance. Just one example would be a very snowy scene on a bright day. The camera's meter "seeing" all that light, if you are operating in any auto-exposure mode (and I don't mean or certainly do not recommend the green "auto" setting on the moe dial), it will tend to reduce exposure accordingly to obtain what would normally be a "correct" exposure. But in this case, people within the frame of a lot of bright snow would then turn out too dark, while the snow would also be underexposed and look dim or gray. When confronting such conditions, the typical thing to do ahead of shooting would be to increase exposure setting + 1 to 2 stops higher, depending how much of your frame contains bright snow. You can do this by the exposure comp control, or you can switch to Manual mode. But there are other conditions which would require the opposite exposure adjustment.

Shooting in Manual mode is very good for learning how to set exposure for various lighting conditions. You can then also learn how to use the spot meter to take meter readings of parts of your scene, usually where there is mid-tone lighting, ignoring the extreme bright or dark areas. With Pentax, you can get an instant meter centered reading with a touch of the green button. If that exposure works for your main subject, then you can move the camera for various framing of the subject, which can change the background so the meter is warning that the exposure is now "wrong", but you can ignore the meter in Manual mode because your exposure setting will stay unless you change it. With Pentax, once you get that desired exposure, and you'd rather have a different shutter speed or aperture, first hit the AE-L button to lock that exposure, then go ahead and select your choice and the other will follow long to preserve that exposure value. This exclusive system of operation with the green button, etc. is called the Pentax Hyper Manual mode.

---

Last edited by mikesbike; 03-16-2022 at 08:01 PM.

[kypfer]

With Pentax, once you get that desired exposure, and you'd rather have a different shutter speed or aperture, first hit the AE-L button to lock that exposure, then go ahead and select your choice and the other will follow long to preserve that exposure value. This exclusive system of operation with the green button, etc. is called the Pentax Hyper Manual mode.

Excellent advice … and a feature I'd managed to "overlook" despite my enthusiasm for the Green Button … thanks for the heads-up!