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01-15-2021, 07:38 PM - 2 Likes   #1
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My K-1 Turned One Bird Into Four!

I purchased a K-1 shortly after they were introduced and have used it almost exclusively for landscape phototgraphy. Since I moved to Colorado about two years ago that has been mostly mountain subjects. I've just had something happen that I've never experienced before with the K-1, although it makes perfect sense. This may be old news but I did not find mention of it in a search on this forum and thought I would share the experience.

I was shooting the Sangre de Cristos range, I think it can be called a subrange of the Rockies, a couple of days ago, K-1 on a tripod as usual, camera set to PSR without motion, and shooting a series of exposures manually for an HDR merge in editing software, when a good sized bird started to fly left to right directly across my field of view with the mountains in the background. I had no time to change any settings and hit the shutter button (cable shutter release). The camera was set to two second shutter delay and that turned out to be perfect as the bird not quite get to the midpoint of the scene.

When I got home and looked at the photo in my computer and monitor I was surprised to see four birds instead of one, perfectly evenly spaced across the scene. I'm assuming this is because of the PSR setting which caused four quick exposures, the bird traveling fast enough for the four to be spaced apart a bit. I can't think of any other explanation. I've attached the jpg version (I have HDR in position one, jpg in posltion two so I have a small file if I want to email one), and this one is SOOC.

One spinoff of this I have not been able to solve is that when I upload the file to my editing software (Affinity Photo) there is only one bird so I don't have a file with four birds to process, as I would like to do. Does anyone have a solution for that?

I wish this had happened somewhat further south in the Sangres as it is considerably more scenic and photogenic there. I was quite amused that I have used the K-1 for 3 - 4 years and never had this happen before (not enough birds I guess). I've found the K-1 to be a superb landscape camera and have been very happy to have it. As I said above, it this is old news I apologize. In any case, I hope some of you find this amusing as I did, quite an unexpected surprise. An 8 X 11.5 print of this shows the bird(s) in considerably better detail and sharper.

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01-15-2021, 08:27 PM   #2
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Can you do the initial processing in DCU-5 (which came with the camera) and then transfer to your usual software?
01-15-2021, 08:38 PM   #3
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Are you using Lightroom or DCU to process Pixelshift images? Lightroom isn't the best for Pixelshift, DCU should be better but I think it still can't deal with this kind of situation. Affinity Photo doesn't support Pixelshift at all, so it's just reading the first image in the four Pixelshift images, that's why it looks fine, but this way you don't get the benefit of Pixelshift. The two solutions I can think of are: 1. Use RawTherapee. Open thew image and then come to Raw tab, change the demosaicing method to "Pixel Shift", now RT will apply automatic motion correction. If you're not satisfied, then set the "Motion correction" setting to "Custom", and adjust the sliders from there. 2. Use DCU or other software and get rid of the birds with layers and masks in AP. This is the worse method as it's more time-consuming and does not work better than method 1.
01-15-2021, 10:21 PM   #4
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Why not just leave it as is? There were 4 birds!

01-16-2021, 12:10 AM   #5
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QuoteOriginally posted by wanderer2 Quote
I'm assuming this is because of the PSR setting which caused four quick exposures,
That is exactly how PS works, which is why it is not recommended for scenes where there is subject movement.
01-16-2021, 12:23 AM   #6
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These are known as the checkerboard bird species, due to their feather looking like a checkerboard.
01-16-2021, 01:58 AM - 16 Likes   #7
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Mine did the same thing once.... a complete mystery to me..... I didn't go back and try to work it out.... as I'm now retired and no longer overthink things..... but... maybe it's the same bird..... spooooky..... or... maybe a prophecy.... Ornithomancy.....

"When 4 Pentaxians.... from 4 corners of the earth..... capture the bird of 4 images.... the world will be freed of the mirrorless camera"....



So... as best I can recall..... the long lost prophecy requires 4 captured sightings.... one over the mountains, one in the mist, one over the ocean and one over the desert....


Last edited by noelpolar; 01-16-2021 at 02:16 AM.
01-16-2021, 06:09 AM   #8
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There are a couple of options. Use a program to process the image that does motion correction (DCU and Raw Therapee are the most common ones). Another option is just to clone out the birds you don't like -- that looks like it would be pretty simple as well.

The last option of course is just to leave them as is.
01-16-2021, 07:12 AM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by wanderer2 Quote
One spinoff of this I have not been able to solve is that when I upload the file to my editing software (Affinity Photo) there is only one bird so I don't have a file with four birds to process, as I would like to do. Does anyone have a solution for that?

I I hope some of you find this amusing as I did, quite an unexpected surprise. An 8 X 11.5 print of this shows the bird(s) in considerably better detail and sharper.
I think quite a few people are misreading what you want. If I’m reading you correctly, you want a version of this with all four birds. My guess is that you have the camera set to raw + with a smaller jpg as the SOOC. If I’m reading this right you want to generate a higher resolution version - without losing the birds.

Am I on the right track?
01-16-2021, 09:53 AM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by UncleVanya Quote
I think quite a few people are misreading what you want. If I’m reading you correctly, you want a version of this with all four birds. My guess is that you have the camera set to raw + with a smaller jpg as the SOOC. If I’m reading this right you want to generate a higher resolution version - without losing the birds.

Am I on the right track?
I also think @wanderer2 is delighted by this SOOC capture merge image showing one bird as four. He guessed correctly that it's the result of the 4 capture PSR file.

But he's surprised that a raw converter doesn't show the same four birds as the camera does. So he maybe not very knowledgeable about how PSR works. Others already said that PSR is not possible using every raw converter for developing PSR images. Those raw converters who are not able to, simply only show the first frame - so only one bird.

@wanderer2: unclear for me is your further goal. I can imagine the main two:

1. You want to achieve better image quality by using the raw file (pef or dng) and apply some advanced corrections etc.

If so, you can use RawTherapee (Open Source) and save each of the four frames as 16 bit tiff, and merge these tiff files using Affinity Photo or Photoshop or GIMP ... layer techniques using masks etc. Finally export the high quality image showing your four birds - of course in whatever dimensions you wish.

2. As also already said your SOCC jpg image may have reduced size and you like to have it in sensor pixel dimensions (full size). Quality is ok for you. Maybe you only want to apply minor adjustments.

Then you could try the following. Your camera creates a jpg thumbnail, a preview sized image and a full size jpg image and also puts these into tho raw file container. This image you can extract. By example using Exiftool (open source at least available for Windows, Mac and Linux). When correctly installed you can use the following command within the image folder depending on your raw file type ...

PEF: > exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w fullsize/%d%f_.jpg capture.PEF
DNG: > exiftool -b -Copy1:PreviewImage -w fullsize/%d%f_.jpg capture.DNG

Each command extracts the full-sized jpg image that should show the "four" birds. The image is put into a subfolder "full-size".

Good luck - whatever you're editing goal is!


Some additional notes: if PSR is enabled on your camera, HDR is disabled and vice versa. Your raw file contains four frames, so it really is a PSR image. If It would be a HDR capture, the raw file would contain only three frames. PSR captures four frames directly each after the other without predefined shutter delay - at least as far as I know. Another way to get such an image would be a four image interval composite image. It results in one frame within the raw file.

Last edited by acoufap; 01-16-2021 at 10:11 AM.
01-16-2021, 01:07 PM   #11
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I've had similar things happen with cars that moved through a frame while shooting multiple shots in a sequence (pixel shift, HDR, or bracketed for enfusing later). I think others have had similar experiences shooting various interval composites as well.
01-17-2021, 12:00 PM   #12
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Thanks to all for the input, information, and advice. Somewhere buried in a computer I have RawTherapee and DCU. Haven't used them for quite some time but I will start for PSR files. Are there any other photo editing apps that will process PSR files? What about Luminar 4 - I have that one also. Thanks again.
01-17-2021, 12:02 PM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by acoufap Quote
I also think @wanderer2 is delighted by this SOOC capture merge image showing one bird as four. He guessed correctly that it's the result of the 4 capture PSR file.

But he's surprised that a raw converter doesn't show the same four birds as the camera does. So he maybe not very knowledgeable about how PSR works. Others already said that PSR is not possible using every raw converter for developing PSR images. Those raw converters who are not able to, simply only show the first frame - so only one bird.

@wanderer2: unclear for me is your further goal. I can imagine the main two:

1. You want to achieve better image quality by using the raw file (pef or dng) and apply some advanced corrections etc.

If so, you can use RawTherapee (Open Source) and save each of the four frames as 16 bit tiff, and merge these tiff files using Affinity Photo or Photoshop or GIMP ... layer techniques using masks etc. Finally export the high quality image showing your four birds - of course in whatever dimensions you wish.

2. As also already said your SOCC jpg image may have reduced size and you like to have it in sensor pixel dimensions (full size). Quality is ok for you. Maybe you only want to apply minor adjustments.

Then you could try the following. Your camera creates a jpg thumbnail, a preview sized image and a full size jpg image and also puts these into tho raw file container. This image you can extract. By example using Exiftool (open source at least available for Windows, Mac and Linux). When correctly installed you can use the following command within the image folder depending on your raw file type ...

PEF: > exiftool -b -JpgFromRaw -w fullsize/%d%f_.jpg capture.PEF
DNG: > exiftool -b -Copy1:PreviewImage -w fullsize/%d%f_.jpg capture.DNG

Each command extracts the full-sized jpg image that should show the "four" birds. The image is put into a subfolder "full-size".

Good luck - whatever you're editing goal is!


Some additional notes: if PSR is enabled on your camera, HDR is disabled and vice versa. Your raw file contains four frames, so it really is a PSR image. If It would be a HDR capture, the raw file would contain only three frames. PSR captures four frames directly each after the other without predefined shutter delay - at least as far as I know. Another way to get such an image would be a four image interval composite image. It results in one frame within the raw file.
I would think Lightroom would leave all four birds there. It doesn't do any motion correction, but will process the files with artifacts every place where there is movement.
01-17-2021, 01:00 PM   #14
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QuoteOriginally posted by Rondec Quote
I would think Lightroom would leave all four birds there. It doesn't do any motion correction, but will process the files with artifacts every place where there is movement.
I know that Lightroom does basic PSR but don't own and use it. So I can't tell anything about LR from own experience. Of course you may be right. But the result could also depend on other internal masking in some way even if LR doesn't support motion PSR.

Someone who uses it could tell. A simulation of the scenery should be easy. Put a nail into a white wall and take a PSR image while the camera is installed on a tripod and the camera is rotated by example vertically. Then four captures with the nail at different positions should be captured. Then the PSR file could be developed in LR. If four nails are visible in the final image, LR does the job without masking any of the nails.
01-17-2021, 02:04 PM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by acoufap Quote
I know that Lightroom does basic PSR but don't own and use it. So I can't tell anything about LR from own experience. Of course you may be right. But the result could also depend on other internal masking in some way even if LR doesn't support motion PSR.

Someone who uses it could tell. A simulation of the scenery should be easy. Put a nail into a white wall and take a PSR image while the camera is installed on a tripod and the camera is rotated by example vertically. Then four captures with the nail at different positions should be captured. Then the PSR file could be developed in LR. If four nails are visible in the final image, LR does the job without masking any of the nails.
What if you use DCU but process the image without motion correction?
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