[microlight]

Happy new year, Kiwi chums. It’s still New Year’s Eve here!

[GUB]

Happy new year, Kiwi chums. It’s still New Year’s Eve here!

Definitely 1/1/21 here - a stunning day. Happy new year everyone

[pixelsaurus]

Happy New Year everyone. Hope this one is better than the last one.

[Class A]

Happy 2021, everyone!

[zkarj]

Wishing everyone a better 2021 than 2020, however yours went.

May your sensors be clean, your lenses clear, and your subjects willing.

Today I went for a wonder with my wife in the Wellington Botanic Gardens. With the goal being the walk no Pentax gear was taken but I did use my phone. I know people rave about modern phone cameras and I usually demur, but for some things they do a bang up job...

[NZ_Ross]

Wishing everyone a better 2021 than 2020, however yours went.

May your sensors be clean, your lenses clear, and your subjects willing.

Ditto, Happy New Year everyone

[Kiwizinho]

May your sensors be clean, your lenses clear, and your subjects willing.

Happy new year.
Apparently I'm not off to a good start! I actually did take my K-70 out for a wee bike ride, and found a walking/cycle track I haven't been on before, with access to a huge amount of bird life, but unfortunately I'd only take two lenses, the D-FA 100 macro and D-FA 28-105, so I didn't really have anything long enough for birding as they tend to fly away when you get close, and it turned out I did have dust on my sensor!
I actually had to resort to Photoshop to remove one dust spot in this image that was in a really inconvenient location that Lightroom couldn't handle.
North Island is somewhere out to the right on the horizon beneath the cloud.

[zkarj]

I actually had to resort to Photoshop to remove one dust spot in this image that was in a really inconvenient location that Lightroom couldn't handle.

Worth the effort for a beaut pic. I've had more than a few occasions where I've had to zoom way in and repair dust spots in several goes in PhotoLab. Going back and reprocessing old air show photos gave me a lot of practice unfortunately. The worst place, I discovered, is when one lies across a clear sky and a blurred propellor.

[Kiwizinho]

Worth the effort for a beaut pic. I've had more than a few occasions where I've had to zoom way in and repair dust spots in several goes in PhotoLab. Going back and reprocessing old air show photos gave me a lot of practice unfortunately. The worst place, I discovered, is when one lies across a clear sky and a blurred propellor.

Sounds like I need to learn how to use PhotoLab properly. I actually looked at the image quickly in it before I reverted to Lightroom, as the default colour rendering looked better, and apart from the dust spots, LR allowed me to get the image looking the way I wanted more quickly than PhotoLab, but probably because I've used LR for several years, and I've only had PhotoLab for about a month. Photoshop's healing brush works well on areas that are too complex for LR's dust spot removal tool to handle, so that's what I ended up doing, but if PhotoLab can handle dust removal in detailed areas without having to break out to another tool, that would be another strength over LR.

[zkarj]

I seem to recall a discussion on the thread a while back on a practical approach to using ISO invariance to advantage. I found a couple of threads with GUB involved but I thought I remembered some discussion here which I cannot find.

What I'm looking for is a rundown on "do these things, not those things" with regard to both ISO setting and what the rest of the camera functions need to do. I.e. which modes to shoot, controlling aperture and shutter, whether to set compensation, etc.

[GUB]

I seem to recall a discussion on the thread a while back on a practical approach to using ISO invariance to advantage. I found a couple of threads with GUB involved but I thought I remembered some discussion here which I cannot find.

What I'm looking for is a rundown on "do these things, not those things" with regard to both ISO setting and what the rest of the camera functions need to do. I.e. which modes to shoot, controlling aperture and shutter, whether to set compensation, etc.

Probably this is the thread you have seen.
Iso invariance - PentaxForums.com
post 18 shows what I still think are relevant prerequisites.
Remember I was learning as I went with that thread.
I don't think there are many other threads out there - I seem to be a vocal proponent but there are a lot of other people working that way.
And even more if you take into account the Pentax tendancy to underexpose by a stop or so for best effect. (only by exposing iso)
It is not so much a jump forward in results but an enhancement especially if you don't like burned out bits in your shot.
And above all it is a large shift in the way you approach photography and simplifies it.
On the presumption you are going to need some gain applied in your shot (iso or pp) you simply set the slowest shutter speed you are comfortable with and the widest aperture you are prepared to use.
Use digital preview with histogram and visualise the histogram as a a noise - ometer. (you currently use your iso setting as a noise-o-meter.)
Sounds odd but extremely simple and still can be called best practise.
Interestlingly the latest Darktable build has some features intended for viewing such underexposed images - as such obviously I am not the only one using it out there.

[zkarj]

Probably this is the thread you have seen.

Thanks. I had, but I hadn't read far enough into it. That is indeed what I remember because I remember the BP service station image.

[Class A]

post 18 shows what I still think are relevant prerequisites.

Post #18 is a great summary.

However,

"Exposure tolerance in constantly changing lighting conditions.
Major gains in controlling highlights.
Improvement in Dynamic Range"

are three ways to describe the same (single) advantage: One is reducing the chances of blowing out highlights.

There is no real "improvement in dynamic range", if the scene-referred DR fits into the camera DR that is left by raising the ISO setting. In such cases (and I don't think one should look at cases where the ISO setting has been raised so much that highlights are lost), there is more DR potential, but it isn't really used.

[GUB]

Thanks. I had, but I hadn't read far enough into it. That is indeed what I remember because I remember the BP service station image.

I suspect one of the key points of difference that may make it work for me and not others is my workflow.
I use almost exclusively manual focus lenses and to facilitate that I use a lcd viewfinder on live view. And I have a 1 second review set with histogram. This means I get a glimpse of each shot's histo without removing my eye from the eyepiece. Which means on the go changes are easy. Also with the eyepiece it is easy to evaluate an image up to 3 stops under exposed which is not so easy with an exposed lcd.
My current workflow
Raw - Manual mode.
Guess the exposure and check and adjust from digital preview. (It is fun to guess and surprising how the guesses are getting closer with experience)
As a baseline I use EV 15 - (the sunny sixteen rule) modified to base iso f4 1/1600 (more relevant).
Given that daylight shots range from about 10 (after sunset) to 15 it is not a big guess to be within a stop.
If I know I am going to need gain applied (iso)
I set my lens to the widest aperture I am happy with for the situation
and the slowest shutter speed I am happy with.
And go for it.
Glimpse each histo as I go to check I am not clipping.
If the gain needed looks to be more that 4 or 5 stops and there are no highlights to fry I will start upping the iso for ease of reviewing and editing
It is an awfully simple workflow but I suspect that the lcd viewfinder helps a lot.
And one other thing when using liveview - I have-A series lenses set to aperture on the ring and the lcd stays bright even in dark environments. A big help.

[GUB]

Post #18 is a great summary.

However,

"Exposure tolerance in constantly changing lighting conditions.
Major gains in controlling highlights.
Improvement in Dynamic Range"

are three ways to describe the same (single) advantage: One is reducing the chances of blowing out highlights.

There is no real "improvement in dynamic range", if the scene-referred DR fits into the camera DR that is left by raising the ISO setting. In such cases (and I don't think one should look at cases where the ISO setting has been raised so much that highlights are lost), there is more DR potential, but it isn't really used.

Yes I had thought at that time that each stop increase in your iso decreased your DR by a stop. I just recently got corrected on that. From memory it is a case of misreading a graph.
Controlling highlights is the technical driver of utilising Iso invariance.
But what attracts me to it is how simple your approach can become from the mindset that iso = post processing and is not a variable but a symptom in your workflow. ( A symptom of a half full pixel)
There becomes just 2 variables - shutter and aperture.
With symptoms :
DoF issues (too shallow - too deep-- diffraction - low IQ when open)
Shutter speed issues ( camera shake and motion freeze/blur)
And noise issues from a starved sensor.