[Jeffa3]

Tips for shooting the stars!

1. Get Stellarium (star tracking program) and figure out where the Milky Way is going to be, and whether or not you can see it at that time of the year where you live
2. Be prepared to paint your foreground subject with light!
3. Get your wide angle lens, set your camera on a long enough exposure, your focus to where the stars are sharp as they can be, and experiment with ISO and aperture until you get a decent picture.
4. Take it in to LR and mess with WB until you get the colors you want, toggle the whites, contrast, sharpness, and other sliders (and maybe even paint with an adjustment brush some extra sharpness/clarity) until you get get nice looking stars against the night-sky!

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[nanhi]

My tip for shooting motion blur Waterfalls is. Have a good tripod. Make sure you shoot on a cloudy day. Use a .9 or 1.2 ND filter. I use aperture value mode set at F11- F18, then the camera will adjust the timing for the correct long exposure.

Great photo, scphotos123 Sir. But my request is to let "flowing water" look like flowing water as you see in natures beauty or real life, and NOT as Gas or Vapor.
And the HDR or something has been overdone - the greens seem to be screaming.

Perhaps you can repost a modified snap shot.

Regards.

---------- Post added 01-26-16 at 02:02 PM ----------

Do something "wrong"
Take pictures with the $10 lens you bought at a flea market that turned out to be full of fungus, just to see what you can get out of it (after removing the Ricoh pin, we don't want it stuck on there forever).
Skew the color/white balance/saturation settings and see how it skews your results; shoot high ISO on a bright, sunny day; or make a pinhole from an old body cap.
A little play is healthy...
Just don't forget how to put everything back again

Please, please, DO NOT attach a lens with Fungus to the camera body. You are telling the bull "come hit my camera".
The Fungus Spores will infect you camera. So when you mount another expensive Lens, it gets infected with the same fungus.

Hope I win the Pentax HD 55-300 WR Zoom with this truly sound tip / advice.

Regards.

[Snowman46]

The time has come for us to offer the final prize from our Holiday Giveaway! Enter in this thread for a shot at winning a brand new HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm lens



How to enter:

As a reply to this thread, post a photography-related tip or suggestion for fellow users. It can focus on cameras, lenses, technique, accessories, post-processing, or other related topics you think would be helpful.

Limit your submission to no more than 5 sentences and no more than 1 image/link.

Winner selection:

The top 15 replies with the most Likes in this thread will be voted upon by forum members in a separate thread, similar to how we pick our monthly contest winners. Submissions will be accepted through January 31st, and voting will be between February 1st and 8th.

Submissions may be compiled into a reference article to serve as a community resource.

Good luck!

Awesome Looking Lens there.

[IndianaBokeh]

Very basic tip here, but when you photograph children, you always get the best and most memorable results when you get right at eye level with them. So many folks take pictures of toothy grins from these apparently bobble-headed, short-legged gremlins because they and their cameras tower above the little ones and end up forcing a strange perception.

Kids will be more comfy when you're at their level, and are more likely to give you something genuine.

Thanks! Do I put my shipping address for the lens right here in the comment box, since I'm going to win? 😜

[Lonny]

I'm a novice about photography.
I want to express my feelings through the lens.
So the views on the world is the first.
If your mind does not exceed the upper limit of the lens,please love the lens in your hands.
At last,if you are a rich man,please ignore the above sentences.

[ctt]

Love what you shoot & shoot what you love!!

[zoolander]

Tips:
1. Buy a Pentax DSLR.
2. Buy some Pentax Lenses.
3. Rest the camera viewfinder to eyebrow, whilst holding the camera with both hands.
4. Now shoot some darn pictures already.
5. Then smile !

[Buckaroo50]

Older K mount manual lenses can function like an auto focus lens and "aperture priority".

Tip for using a MANUAL lens with Pentax K-50 (others models also)

1) Set camera to (Manual) mode.
2) Turn camera on and select the focal length of lens.
3) Custom menu #4 item #22 (Using Aperture Ring) set to Enable (2).
4) Custom menu #3 item #20 (Catch-in Focus) set to On (2).
5) Camera Menu #4 (E-Dial Programming) menu #2 select (M), change the green button function to (TvShift).
6) On the side of the camera set the focusing to (AF.S) - it is green.
7) From the “Status Screen” using the 4-way selector (top button), set the ISO to a manual ISO of your choice.
8) Select the aperture that you want to use from the ring on the lens.

When ready to take a picture just point the camera and press the “green button” it will now act like “aperture priority” and auto set the shutter speed. (pretty cool eh).

Now press the shutter all the way down and rotate the focus ring - when your subject comes in focus the camera will fire. (Almost as good as auto-focus) or you can use the “live view” mode and use focus peaking... (el neat-o)...

A good easy way to use some of the older really good lenses that can be picked up for little bucks and get them to behave in a more functional way without a lot of guess work....

[Narado58]

If you want to photograph the birds start from birds living in the cities. Are less skittish, let you know closer to their behavior. HD the Pentax 55-300 is the ideal tool to start Your adventures with birds.

[ghkuper]

The time has come for us to offer the final prize from our Holiday Giveaway! Enter in this thread for a shot at winning a brand new HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm lens



How to enter:

As a reply to this thread, post a photography-related tip or suggestion for fellow users. It can focus on cameras, lenses, technique, accessories, post-processing, or other related topics you think would be helpful.

Limit your submission to no more than 5 sentences and no more than 1 image/link.

Winner selection:

The top 15 replies with the most Likes in this thread will be voted upon by forum members in a separate thread, similar to how we pick our monthly contest winners. Submissions will be accepted through January 31st, and voting will be between February 1st and 8th.

Submissions may be compiled into a reference article to serve as a community resource.

Good luck!

Top Tip: Allways keep your camera ready! This one is taken from a speeding train in the early morning of January 1, 2016 in one of our vast Dutch polders.

[EricTA]

In making pictures we often feel all kind of emotions; are we intrusive? shall I go there? shit missed the moment! this angle that angle? Is the light OK? Bloody weather


The only emotions you should feel should be: be curious, intrigued and ready to shoot.


Remember there are no bad photo's


My advice


Eric

[gabro822]

Great idea!
And THIS is the reason of my tip: on How to make a Long Exposure in Photoshop.
In this way, you will "freeze" the scene in different pictures, and then combining in photoshop, the final result will be a motion.
---pay attention: this is NOT the same of using Motion blur in Photoshop. Here you have to make a mask fo what you don't want to be affecred, and if it's a river on rocks, or the sea, it will be very difficult.---
1) So, let's start by taking the pictures. Think about the composition, set the camera and take different frames, according to your exposure time (ie. if you shot at 1/250 maybe you will need more pictures than shooted at 1/2. Usually 2 or 3 at 120s is ok).
2) Then import in photoshop. Is great if you shot RAW, so that they will be open by Camera RAW and you can modify one of the pictures and then apply the same result to all the others.
3) Once in Photoshop, put them in different layers, in the same document. Now the wonderful part: we are going to act on the Opacity of each layer, in order to make the first 100% visible and then decreasing the opacity of the other layer.
For this reason, use this:
-First layer: 100% Opacity
-Second: 100%/2= 50% Opacity
-Third layer: 100%/3= 33%
And so on.
4) Now do your adjustments (sharpen, curves,..) and that's it!

Hope this can be helpful to you!
And good luck to everybody for the contest!

[Gaston]

The time has come for us to offer the final prize from our Holiday Giveaway! Enter in this thread for a shot at winning a brand new HD Pentax-DA 55-300mm lens



How to enter:

As a reply to this thread, post a photography-related tip or suggestion for fellow users. It can focus on cameras, lenses, technique, accessories, post-processing, or other related topics you think would be helpful.

Limit your submission to no more than 5 sentences and no more than 1 image/link.

Winner selection:

The top 15 replies with the most Likes in this thread will be voted upon by forum members in a separate thread, similar to how we pick our monthly contest winners. Submissions will be accepted through January 31st, and voting will be between February 1st and 8th.

Submissions may be compiled into a reference article to serve as a community resource.

Good luck!

To take this picture of burning embers, I set the camera on a tripod, I used a focal length that allowed frame at a safe distance from the fire, the diaphragm closed it to to find that the depth of field is not so small and can be all flames in focus, and adjust the exposure time to expose correctly. If you take a moment to light the charcoal is made, prolonged exposure to capture generated an interesting effect of halos generated for the sparks .
In the image data taken are:
Pentax K-5 II s
Lens: smc PENTAX-DA 50mm F1.8
Parameters: 50mm / ƒ / 8 / 1s / ISO 100
I hope you like it and find it useful !!!

---------- Post added 01-26-16 at 10:12 AM ----------

To take this picture of burning embers, I set the camera on a tripod, I used a focal length that allowed frame at a safe distance from the fire, the diaphragm closed it to to find that the depth of field is not so small and can be all flames in focus, and adjust the exposure time to expose correctly. If you take a moment to light the charcoal is made, prolonged exposure to capture generated an interesting effect of halos generated for the sparks .
In the image data taken are:
Pentax K-5 II s
Lens: smc PENTAX-DA 50mm F1.8
Parameters: 50mm / ƒ / 8 / 1s / ISO 100
I hope you like it and find it useful !!!

[DawnHoweth]

Don't' be afraid to "TRY" a new technique or a new piece of equipment. After you've tried, don't compare yourself to anyone else. The only photographer you should ever compare yourself to, is the one you used to be.

[ANNIEL747]

Use your Pentax! Keep it with you and use it! Stop using your iPhone to take pictures.