[Buddha Jones]

So I got home last night and was kinda feeling restless so I decided to install the Pentax Software suite onto my laptop and get everything up to date so I can play with the Pentax Remote Assistant. Now shame on me for assuming, you know what they say about assuming, but I did, and now I am disappointed.

I was thinking that this was going to show me a live, through the viewfinder, image of what I was about to shoot, which, from what I can gather, is not the case. It will show you what you just shot. This was sort of a drag because I was hoping to setup my product shots using this tool. But I think that I could of gotten over that drawback if I was able to stretch the screen of the image that I just shot to something larget than the screen of my PSP for crying out loud!! I am taking 10MP pictures but I can't even view them at 50%!!!

Am I missing something? Please tell me that I am....

[junyo]

No, you won't get a live view, the sensor's busy hiding behind the mirror.

Just wait until you try to run it for 5 minutes w/o crashing. There's a Lightroom trick for live monitoring a folder, and therefore displaying your new snaps full screen. Locks up my machine every time. Of course, just taking more than a couple of frames locks up the software, so it's not suprising. It really is an astoundlingly bad piece of software.

[Indianadinos]

Totally agree ... After three pics in the camera buffer, it simply lock up my laptop (Vaio FS215B, Wintendo XP-SP1, 1Gb RAM) unless i delete the buffers ...
There is a Linux-based project called PK-Remote which seems to be promising, but it's still beta ...

[Vylen]

hmmm... i must install this software so i can see how bad it is.... heh....

i thought it sounded cool when i read the manual - havent gotten around to trying it yet though...

[ftpaddict]

Let's hope the K30D will come with an improved software bundle; maybe with something like what Canon provides with their cameras.

[NicholasN]

Let's hope the K30D will come with an improved software bundle; maybe with something like what Canon provides with their cameras.

You should know better than to get your hopes up with pentax!

[Buddha Jones]

Let's hope the K30D will come with an improved software bundle; maybe with something like what Canon provides with their cameras.

That is exactly what I was looking for. I saw an article on the Canon one and was like, "Oh, we have that" boy was I wrong.

[kenyee]

At the very least, the Canon wireless feature probably only works in liveview mode which means you'd need at least a K20D to do what you want (I don't think it does this though).

"Shooting tethered" w/ dslrs usually means when you take a shot, it shows up on the laptop...

[Aaron1971]

I agree, I was VERY disappointed in this software.

[jbinpg]

You can get remote Liveview but you must use the AV cable, probably with an extender to get a useful distance from the subject. I have been meaning to try this using the PK-Remote linux software but haven't got around to it yet. I can't really see using this without the AC adapter since you would likely eat through battery power quickly with all the bells and whistles turned on. So the scenario would be Liveview with the AV cable feeding to a TV or a separate smaller screen, and PK-Remote for the actual shot reviews.

Jack

[asdf]

Let's hope the K30D will come with an improved software bundle; maybe with something like what Canon provides with their cameras.

Nobody noticed that you were joking.

[axl]

So I got home last night and was kinda feeling restless so I decided to install the Pentax Software suite onto my laptop and get everything up to date so I can play with the Pentax Remote Assistant. Now shame on me for assuming, you know what they say about assuming, but I did, and now I am disappointed.

I was thinking that this was going to show me a live, through the viewfinder, image of what I was about to shoot, which, from what I can gather, is not the case. It will show you what you just shot. This was sort of a drag because I was hoping to setup my product shots using this tool. But I think that I could of gotten over that drawback if I was able to stretch the screen of the image that I just shot to something larget than the screen of my PSP for crying out loud!! I am taking 10MP pictures but I can't even view them at 50%!!!

Am I missing something? Please tell me that I am....

You at least got the camera working with it. I insalled Pentax Remote assistant 3, plugged in K10D v1.3 and... nothing.
No matter what I do, I can't do anything, just gave up, wouldn't use it much anyway...
BR

[ftpaddict]

You should know better than to get your hopes up with pentax!

I would have no need for that feature, but it's always nice to see nice software bundled with the already very good cameras. It might even compel me to use it once in a while.

[stewart_photo]

(snip) Am I missing something? Please tell me that I am....

Software like this (Pentax Remote Assistant) isn't very useful outside a very limited range of situations and is actually quite ackward and combersome compared to just using the viewfinder. Pentax threw it in as an afterthought because some portrait kiosk owners like to use software like this to allow their unskilled employees to control a fixed pre-positioned camera and show customers their images immediately after taken - more conventional portrait photogs are obviously not so rigid regarding camera pre-positioning and are also more likely to just use a television hooked to the camera to show images directly off the memory card. There is also some demand amongst scientists who take images remotely, in hazardous environments or in situations where the camera itself is not so easy to access. But, beyond that, most in other shooting situations would probably just prefer the viewfinder alone over the added burden of dealing with a computer in addition to the camera, with repeated trips back & forth between that camera and computer.

stewart

[Buddha Jones]

I understand that the need it limited, but that doesnt mean that you have to make the software limited as well!