[Stratman]

Eagle, did you notice any better exposure when using the "Green Button" to meter? I would love to get something to fix that on my K10D, cause I love using old manual lenses. My K110D is pretty accurate using the AE-L button for metering, but the K10D is a different story, unfortunately..

[Eaglerapids]

I THINK I have Stratman, at least at wider apertures but I really haven't taken enough pictures over a wide range of aperture settings to say for sure. Yesterday's pictures were shot in cloudy gloomy light and it seemed to me they were not as underexposed as before. Last weekend I went out in better light.... and didn't realize I was shooting at iso 1600 till later in the shoot (I'd been shooting at 1600 in the house and forgot to switch it back, an all to common mistake I make, age?) On top of that I was around a still frozen lake, a very high contrast situation and then up in the mountains, another high contrast situation with all the snow still up there. I have to say at this point the K10D is still trying to protect the highlights but it seems the histogram has moved to the right using the green button. I like this part very much but to me the manual focusing issue is the biggest gain of using the Katz Eye. I remember people saying that this screen may cause overexposure at smaller apertures but this I haven't checked for the above reasons. On top of that they may or may not have been using a screen with Optic Bright treatments.
Wait a minute, if I was shooting at 1600....
Ok, here's a pic straight out of the camera (i did wipe my license plate no. in photoshop) with the 31mm at f14/1/500sec/iso1600. I do believe this is a much better exp out of the camera in this situation than I would have previously gotten. Before I'm sure the histogram would have been much further to the left side, I like this very much. But I only shot the 31mm that day, no manual lenses.


Ahhh, I see in the exif I added .7 exp value, Lightroom didn't show me this or I missed it, old habit I guess and this may be a big problem when guys start talking about this stuff....all the little things done that make a difference and to tell the truth I want to spend my time making pictures, not setting up and running some exhaustive scientific test, the results of which I'm not going to remember on my next shoot, I can't even remember to turn the iso back, for God's sake.

Now I'm getting confused Stratman, maybe all I've said to this point is pointless:-).
Here's the straight out of the camera K200/4 pic I shot yesterday that I posted in the Potw#1 thread after a lot of photoshop stuff. This was converted with Lightroom's default ACR 4.4 converter and resized for the web (Lightroom 1.4)


Still showing significant underexposure with the Katz Eye screen.

BUT, did I remember to push the green button before this exposure, we've already established that I CAN and DO make mistakes!
I guess the point of this whole reply is that we don't have a bit of useful information in this said reply:-(, unfortunately.
Still, regardless of the fact that I just proved my reply wrong, I have the feeling the exposures are better, I don't know what happened to this pic but I'm posting it for full disclosure. It's not worse, though. And the manual focusing part is real, really.

Here's a photo that supports my claim, imho this is a perfect exposure right out of the camera. The highlights on the drops reach right up to but not over the right side. The body of the histogram is slanted to the left but if the camera had moved this to the right the drops would have blown and there is plenty of wiggle room to adjust this capture in PP. I don't know how the camera could have done a better job in this instance. To tell the truth I think I forgot to push the green button in the previous photo before taking it.



Another example, normally I wouldn't show this without cropping the extraneous stuff but I will here. The bird looks a bit dark here but there is detail at 1:1. I'm kicking myself for not trying the flash I got for exactly this instance to get some light into his eyes.

[Stratman]

Thanks ER, hopefully you can test a few "oldies but goodies" sometime

[Canada_Rockies]

Now I'm getting confused Stratman, maybe all I've said to this point is pointless:-).
Here's the straight out of the camera K200/4 pic I shot yesterday that I posted in the Potw#1 thread after a lot of photoshop stuff. This was converted with Lightroom's default ACR 4.4 converter and resized for the web (Lightroom 1.4)

Still showing significant underexposure with the Katz Eye screen.

You problem might be Lightroom 1.4 - it's buggy. Reinstall 1.3.1 and try the image again.

[Eaglerapids]

Ok guys, you may need to refresh your browser, I've made a lot of edits to my post.
Oh Rocky, don't tell me that...............

[Eaglerapids]

Here's a 1:1 crop of the last photo with some tweaks to the darks and stuff in Lightroom. K200/4 and this is pushing the resolution of the lens. This was handheld at 1/250 with SR on, of course, but I was propped pretty solid in the car. The thing is I believe I nailed the focus and I did it on most all the shots I took, a way higher percentage with the Katz Eye than I've ever been able to obtain with other screens, this is what I'm most pleased with, really pleased, this is huge. I did take one photo, a portrait, available light, wide open, indoors, of a friend with the 31 Limited where I missed focus, so I'm not 100% by any means but still so far the percentages are much much better and I'm gonna stick to my guns and say that I think I'm seeing a bit better exposure with the green button as well and so far, the auto exposure hasn't seemed to be affected negatively.
Oh yeah, the pic at 1:1:



ISO 400

[Eaglerapids]

Canada Rockies, thanks for the heads up last night. It was getting late and I was to tired to deal with the problem with the 1.4 update then but I just reverted back to 1.3.1 this morning. I was wondering what was going on when I tried to convert Saturday morning's pictures to dng why I was getting an error and thought it was me and wound up importing as pef's and then while doing these posts last night Lightroom crashed on me which it never does, so hopefully it's all fixed now.
Thanks again......

[Stratman]

Thanks for the info !!!

[daacon]

Wow this sounds like what Dave "odd-out-of-fous-and-a-lot-of-titled-horizions" needs ! What is Rachel's email I went to the web site Katz Eye and asked some questions is that the right one ?

Ummm lba will have to wait me thinks !

[rmtagg]

I don't think I can get one right now but an very interested in finding out as much as possible about this for the hopefully near future!

[daacon]

Pulled the Trigger myself today - advice was correct Rachael is very patient answering all my questions. Opted for the OptiBrite / Rules of Third line. I hope for it to be here in a couple of weeks. What I am looking for is helping me with my manual focus (my eyes are just not as sharp as they once were, they have over 10,000,000 acuations!) and my wicked habit of seeing the horizon like I have had a bottle of tequila!

[Pentaxke]

Well, I'm going to update this page once it arrives...

Txs Eagle for the extra bit of information!

[Mechan1k]

Thanks for the awesome information everyone ... I like the sound of this. It's amazing what it is possible of doing. Might hold of on LBA inf the meantime and see what this is like.

[daacon]

I received the Katz Eye last week. I have not had a lot of opportunities to shoot much but here is my feedback to date:

I opted for rules of third and optibrite:

Packaging was great. Installation was very simple on the K10D.

The rules of third has significantly helped my 'cockeyed' approach (most photo's lean to the right) which is what I wanted. I did not want that grid for composition but I find the lines really help me keep the horizon straight in both landscape and portrait mode.

I find the view finder is clearer to me - my eyes are as old as I am haha and they do not do close focus work very well anymore (I do not wear permanent glasses but do have reading glasses)

I have not noticed any big difference with the optibrite to date (other than clearer) - however the few times I have gone out I did use a fast lens (Tamron 28-75) - from what Rachel told me optibrite helps more with slower glass. I will try and test it out on my Tamron 18-250 and Bigma.

I do not find any significant difference in AF although some have mentioned it helped. I do very little MF to date starting to with my Macro Lens. No comments to date.

I will update as I play more. For me straightening out my pictures and the brighter view finder alone was worth the price. Over the long haul it will save me hours of PP.

[Eaglerapids]

I have the same problem as you Dave, without the rule of third lines I can't keep anything straight, it's unbelievable. I can sight down a 10' board and tell exactly if it's twisted, bowed, if it's straight or if not, how much it's out. But put that viewfinder to my eye and I can't instinctively tell, it's weird. I wonder if I'm racking the camera when I press the shutter, if I am I'm doing it in landscape and portrait modes. Then again I'll do it on a tripod also, if I don't make a point of consciously checking. Maybe one of my legs is longer than the other and nobody has ever bothered to tell me, lol.