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06-15-2014, 07:54 AM   #31
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QuoteOriginally posted by RKKS08 Quote
The K-m / K2000 has basicly the same firmware as the K10 and the K200D, so it should provide program shift (in the German manual it's called Hyper Program, just as with the film models Z20 / Z1).

The *istD / DS / DL models do not offer it (but the analog *ist does).

But I want to ask the OP once more, if he really has set the camera to sRGB colour space, and not Adobe colour space.
Because this would explain the lack of contrast and saturation.
I stand corrected as looking at the manual it does include Program Shift.

Using Adobe or Srgb would not explain the lack of contrast.. Srgb may appear to have more color contrast only due to it containing less color information than Adobe rgb. One is much better working with the largest bit depth & widest color gamut initially, which is contained within Adobe rgb & raw, for post processing then copy converting to Srgb for web posting or potentially for printing, based on how and what one is using to have an image printed. You can toss bit depth and color information but you can't effectively add more after the fact. If one doesn't care to work with Raw then Adobe provides a wider color gamut in 8 bit than Srgb.

If one is using Jpeg with this camera and wants to adjust for their output then using the custom Image adjustments is one method of adjusting effectively. All in all no matter what color space or using Jpeg vs raw it still boils down to good use of exposure settings for EV lighting to begin with. The better that is achieved the less one has to correct afterwards. IMO the initial photos were lacking initially because the exposure settings were not optimum for the EV light he was in, plain and simple.

06-19-2014, 07:00 AM   #32
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QuoteOriginally posted by Oldbayrunner Quote
I stand corrected as looking at the manual it does include Program Shift.

If one is using Jpeg with this camera and wants to adjust for their output then using the custom Image adjustments is one method of adjusting effectively. All in all no matter what color space or using Jpeg vs raw it still boils down to good use of exposure settings for EV lighting to begin with. The better that is achieved the less one has to correct afterwards. IMO the initial photos were lacking initially because the exposure settings were not optimum for the EV light he was in, plain and simple.
Yep.... couldn't agree more. It's like trying to come up with a good print from a crappy negative. Much, MUCH better to
work at shooting a good shot to begin with than correcting it after the fact. Thanks for all the input, guys & gals. With your help and continuing to experiment with my camera and lenses, it's all becoming easier - and better.
06-24-2014, 01:02 PM   #33
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Didn't think of it

I think what be lacking in your photos that lack pop is your need to use a polarizer. I don't remember seeing that in any of the other posts. Polarizers should "almost" always be used outdoors and many time indoors. See if that doesn't improve your results. Talk to a pro or take a class about using one.
06-24-2014, 05:15 PM   #34
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Theres nothing wrong with the camera,


The histogram is simply unbalanced and the dynamic range too small, the histograms show it all.


I have played with both images for less than 10 seconds each, using levels to spread the histogram more fully, Lifted the digital haze using unsharp mask and lifted the contrast by a tiny amount. Im seeing brilliance and pop in these images.


This was in no way an image optimisation and is much less than I do for most of my images. It was just a quick and dirty test.


Oldbayrunner has it right, the images are simply not optimised for the conditions you were in.


IMO point and shoots are configured to deliver good looking images out of the camera so you can print immediately, perfect for the casual shooter, a dSLR is not so configured, the brightness and contrast are generally lower enabling more post processing latitude and options for a superior image.


I think this is at the root of your dissatisfaction.


Last edited by Imageman; 08-03-2014 at 09:19 PM.
06-25-2014, 02:42 AM   #35
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Hi

I did nothing more then adjusting the white balance, increase brightness and blue channel luminance and finally a light sharpening. All of which you can set up your camera with.

Greetings

Last edited by Schraubstock; 11-01-2014 at 04:24 PM.
06-25-2014, 10:31 AM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by Schraubstock Quote
Hi

I did nothing more then adjusting the white balance, increase brightness and blue channel luminance and finally a light sharpening. All of which you can set up your camera with.

Greetings
Thanks for the reply. As I stated at the beginning of this thread, I'm not new to photography, but I AM new to the digital world and there's a lot of new tricks for this old 68-year-old dog to learn. I appreciate all the sincere comments and advice and I'm taking it all to heart. Now.... if I could just kick this lens collection virus I've acquired! Whew! No one warned me about this... and there's no vaccine that I know of to cure it! Oh, by the way, I WAS using a CPL filter.
07-14-2014, 07:54 PM   #37
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After spending a lot of time behind this camera, I've discovered that the lenses themselves have a lot more to do with contrast that I would have thought. My Tamrons seem to be the contrastiest of the bunch, overall. Also, I bought a second K2000 (the price made it a no-brainer) and with identical settings, the second K2000 is more contrasty with the same lens than the first. Strange. It's becoming apparent very quickly that a guy needs to keep records or make mental notes of which lens performs best at what aperture.... and now, which CAMERA performs best at WHAT internal setting. This is akin to trying to tune in a new long-range varmint rifle! So much to take into consideration.

07-14-2014, 09:20 PM   #38
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It is nice to see that you are happier with what you can get with your digital cameras. That said, you will be MUCH happier if you spend a little time learning basic image adjustment, using the software that came with the camera or something more powerful like Lightroom or Photoshop Elements ( or even the full PS.) Once you have those basics down you will not need to keep notes on which lenses do what. You can make them all perform well.

It has been said that almost every digital image needs some adjustment. Some folks may disagree with that but many of us shoot in Raw format and must post-process EVERY image because we can make them far better than what the software inside the camera can do. Even with Jpegs, a little tweaking, such as what the above posters have done on your samples, will improve your image quality significantly.
07-14-2014, 09:43 PM   #39
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QuoteOriginally posted by abmj Quote
It is nice to see that you are happier with what you can get with your digital cameras. That said, you will be MUCH happier if you spend a little time learning basic image adjustment, using the software that came with the camera or something more powerful like Lightroom or Photoshop Elements ( or even the full PS.) Once you have those basics down you will not need to keep notes on which lenses do what. You can make them all perform well.

It has been said that almost every digital image needs some adjustment. Some folks may disagree with that but many of us shoot in Raw format and must post-process EVERY image because we can make them far better than what the software inside the camera can do. Even with Jpegs, a little tweaking, such as what the above posters have done on your samples, will improve your image quality significantly.
I have the full Photoshop program as well as Elements and Paintshop, and I'm fairly proficient with them, but still learning Photoshop. Good grief, that's a very comprehensive program! I tend to like more contrast and saturation that most, so I always make some tweaks to my photos, some more than others. Still, being an old film photographer, I always try for the best contrast I can get IN CAMERA. Same with composition.

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07-15-2014, 04:57 AM   #40
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What version of Photoshop? If you want more color control over your Jpegs I suggest setting your camera to Adobe rgb 1998 that way you will have a wider color gamut to work with. Since you are shooting jpeg still I presume, if you utilize Bridge then you can open your jpegs in ACR and have more initial latitude in adjusting your photos. Also if you do that I suggest setting your ACR to 16 bit Pro Photo or Adobe RGB 1998 which will maintain a wide color gamut to work with. Set your photoshop color settings to match and utilize for any additional adjustments, then convert the photos to Srgb and proof them for web posting or printing in srgb. If your monitor is color calibrated correctly you shouldn't notice much difference when you convert the color space.

Last edited by Oldbayrunner; 07-15-2014 at 05:03 AM.
07-15-2014, 10:02 AM   #41
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Photoshop is the digital equivalent of a darkroom and its a great deal easier to use than a darkroom ever was.


Your stuck in film mentality, where you had so few available options to rework contrast colour saturation and colour balance not to mention a hundred other changes that we would have liked to do to film images but it was just too difficult so we didn't bother.


In film days you had to know your equipment and how it worked together because you had to get it substantially right in camera.


No such requirement exists now. If the image is a little flat, slide the contrast slider a little and hey presto, magically the image is contrasty.


Thousands of lenses in film days were written off as very poor due to the lack of coatings, flat and lifeless images were produced by these lenses and the options to recover a contrasty image by using push pull processing and choosing contrasty papers to print on, were awkward and required guesswork.


These days 10 seconds spent sliding the contrast the brightness and the saturation sliders transform these images.


Don't avoid photoshop because its powerful, you might own a 5 series BMW but that doesn't mean you cant drive to the shops in it.


As for your approach, getting it right in camera, is getting it wrong with digital photography. Digital cameras need a new approach.


This is what you do.


Compose an image and expose it, then look at the histogram.


A digital camera will usually be capable of greater dynamic range than the scene your photographing, with unused areas to left and right.


If the histogram shows the image intensities fall to the right and hit the end of the graph, the image is overexposed, some of the image will be blown out to pure white and details lost, retake the image with slightly less exposure.


If the histogram shows the image intensities fall to the left and hit the end, the image is underexposed, some of the detail may be irrecoverable from the deep shadows, retake the image with more exposure.


Digital images unlike film introduce nasty noise in shadow areas, so while it may seem a good idea to centralise the histogram, it really isn't. You will generate noise in the shadows that will be hard to eradicate. Film can be correctly exposed, because it handles deep shadows well and bright highlights well, digital just doesn't. The worst is deep shadows, full of chroma noise and horrible splodges.


Always therefore expose to the right, making sure that the histogram goes nowhere near the extreme limit, so blown out white spots are avoided. But avoid at all costs the left hand side of the histogram. This means you overexpose as a routine.


But how can this general overexposure lead to good images? The reason is that although the image is overexposed, the details are brightly coloured well textured, well rendered and noise is absent. Digital sensors perform better the more exposure they get, this is why Nikon and Canon set up their cameras to routinely overexpose, it makes better looking images. Pentax refuses to play this game all credit to them.


And this overexposure is trifling to correct in photoshop. You do however need to know the best way to adjust this well rendered image so it looks the way it did when you shot it. (centralising the histogram in post processing)


The answer is in expanding the histogram in Levels. Open Levels, and you will see three sliders, one on the left hand side, one in the middle and one on the right hand side. These are the Levels extremity sliders.


Remember that this is digital, full dynamic range runs from intensities 0 to 255, whereas your image may only run from 75 to 210, the areas 0 to 74 and 211 to 255 are unused in the image, but to have good darks and bright lights you need to expand the image to cover that intensity range. levels will do this very easily.


Grab the left hand slider and slide it to the right towards the histogram. notice the image becomes darker, this is because your making the darkest shadows become blacker, just as they were in real life.


Now grab the right hand slider and slide it to the left toward the histogram, the image becomes lighter, thats because you have made the bright parts brighter.


What you have in fact done, is a quick and approximate digital version of adjusting the image intensities to achieve full dynamic range. This is in effect what Ansell Adams was doing with his zone system, making sure that the darks were rendered dark and the brights were rendered bright.


In essence a digital camera cannot render a scene correctly in camera, unless you are willing to accept several faults inherent in a digital image, If you play to its strengths, and capture the best image the sensor can provide, you can manipulate it so it looks right later in post processing, and achieve better more realistic images than simply relying on the camera to cope on its own.
07-15-2014, 11:46 AM   #42
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I agree with Imageman but you do have to be careful widening your histogram with Jpeg photos otherwise you may wind up with posterization if they are 8 bit. There is a lot more latitude with raw photos or working jpegs in 16 bit. You may want to keep your photos with a narrower color space along with using 16 bit if you are widening your histogram considerably. Working with raw you do not have to be concerned in this regard.

Last edited by Oldbayrunner; 07-15-2014 at 11:59 AM.
07-15-2014, 12:07 PM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by Imageman Quote
Photoshop is the digital equivalent of a darkroom and its a great deal easier to use than a darkroom ever was.


Your stuck in film mentality, where you had so few available options to rework contrast colour saturation and colour balance not to mention a hundred other changes that we would have liked to do to film images but it was just too difficult so we didn't bother.


In film days you had to know your equipment and how it worked together because you had to get it substantially right in camera.


No such requirement exists now. If the image is a little flat, slide the contrast slider a little and hey presto, magically the image is contrasty.


Thousands of lenses in film days were written off as very poor due to the lack of coatings, flat and lifeless images were produced by these lenses and the options to recover a contrasty image by using push pull processing and choosing contrasty papers to print on, were awkward and required guesswork.


These days 10 seconds spent sliding the contrast the brightness and the saturation sliders transform these images.


Don't avoid photoshop because its powerful, you might own a 5 series BMW but that doesn't mean you cant drive to the shops in it.


As for your approach, getting it right in camera, is getting it wrong with digital photography. Digital cameras need a new approach.


This is what you do.


Compose an image and expose it, then look at the histogram.


A digital camera will usually be capable of greater dynamic range than the scene your photographing, with unused areas to left and right.


If the histogram shows the image intensities fall to the right and hit the end of the graph, the image is overexposed, some of the image will be blown out to pure white and details lost, retake the image with slightly less exposure.


If the histogram shows the image intensities fall to the left and hit the end, the image is underexposed, some of the detail may be irrecoverable from the deep shadows, retake the image with more exposure.


Digital images unlike film introduce nasty noise in shadow areas, so while it may seem a good idea to centralise the histogram, it really isn't. You will generate noise in the shadows that will be hard to eradicate. Film can be correctly exposed, because it handles deep shadows well and bright highlights well, digital just doesn't. The worst is deep shadows, full of chroma noise and horrible splodges.


Always therefore expose to the right, making sure that the histogram goes nowhere near the extreme limit, so blown out white spots are avoided. But avoid at all costs the left hand side of the histogram. This means you overexpose as a routine.


But how can this general overexposure lead to good images? The reason is that although the image is overexposed, the details are brightly coloured well textured, well rendered and noise is absent. Digital sensors perform better the more exposure they get, this is why Nikon and Canon set up their cameras to routinely overexpose, it makes better looking images. Pentax refuses to play this game all credit to them.


And this overexposure is trifling to correct in photoshop. You do however need to know the best way to adjust this well rendered image so it looks the way it did when you shot it. (centralising the histogram in post processing)


The answer is in expanding the histogram in Levels. Open Levels, and you will see three sliders, one on the left hand side, one in the middle and one on the right hand side. These are the Levels extremity sliders.


Remember that this is digital, full dynamic range runs from intensities 0 to 255, whereas your image may only run from 75 to 210, the areas 0 to 74 and 211 to 255 are unused in the image, but to have good darks and bright lights you need to expand the image to cover that intensity range. levels will do this very easily.


Grab the left hand slider and slide it to the right towards the histogram. notice the image becomes darker, this is because your making the darkest shadows become blacker, just as they were in real life.


Now grab the right hand slider and slide it to the left toward the histogram, the image becomes lighter, thats because you have made the bright parts brighter.


What you have in fact done, is a quick and approximate digital version of adjusting the image intensities to achieve full dynamic range. This is in effect what Ansell Adams was doing with his zone system, making sure that the darks were rendered dark and the brights were rendered bright.


In essence a digital camera cannot render a scene correctly in camera, unless you are willing to accept several faults inherent in a digital image, If you play to its strengths, and capture the best image the sensor can provide, you can manipulate it so it looks right later in post processing, and achieve better more realistic images than simply relying on the camera to cope on its own.
Superb, Imageman! I'm very appreciative of your tutorial. I needed that in the worst way. You are right in the fact that I'm stuck in the film world, to some extent, but I'm slowly but surely coming "out of the closet." I've been working with the PP quite a bit, having to learn by the "hunt and peck" method, not having anyone with whom I can consult. But, sometimes that's the best, but always the fastest way to learn things.

Again, thanks ever so much for your time and tutelege. I've copied and pasted your instructions in my photo files for future reference.

Dewman
SW Idaho
07-17-2014, 12:45 PM   #44
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Hiho!

In fact they are not outstanding but they look okay on my iPad and my iMac. Anyway they look very flat on my HP ProBook. With that said, it makes a huge difference which display you are using to look/show your photos.

So long, Finster.
07-30-2014, 01:43 AM   #45
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QuoteOriginally posted by Dewman Quote
I'm a newbie to digital photography and my K2000 is my first DSLR. I have several lenses for it, for the most part, all Pentax. My problem is, all photos taken with the camera seem to lack contrast and saturation. I can correct this to my satisfaction in PP, but I'm wondering.... is this a common trait with the K2000? I have adjusted the internal setting to increase both aspects of the pictures, but it hasn't seemed to correct this perceived problem. I still have room to increase both internally and suppose I could do so, but, just wondering.... is this normal? Or.... maybe I just like more contrast than most others. Hmmm......... ?
Hello,

So do mine. I read an online article (not here) about shooting in RAW being better than saving in JPG. Thought okay, she's the professional, if that's what she advises then that's what I'll do. So I read my K-r manual and followed the instructions. Ended up with what seemed like underexposed shots. Thought what the heck is going on? Couldn't find out in the manual how to get back to JPG's only and ended up losing the lot. Even all the prevoius shots that I'd taken as JPG's using the camera's default setup in AUTO PICT. (100+). Card just emptied itself! Seriously piss.. off. Put in a new card and I'm still getting underdone photo's even in bright midday light. If I get this sorted I'm sticking to Auto Pict in future. Let the camera do the work. RAW is definitely not for beginners like me.
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