[jva59]

Had a very pleasant chat with a Pentax shooter I ran into in a cafe off Roncesvalles. He had a K 20D, I think . I had my LX. Turns out the K 20D was just the tip of the iceberg.

[Nicolas06]

Typically Pentax gear is in many big general stores in France like Boulanger or Fnac or Darty. This is very common.

But there not much choice for the brand. Most often I'd seen K500, K30, K50, K5... There no many lenses. But I have seen a K3 or 2 also in shops.

[Pepe Le Pew]

Typically Pentax gear is in many big general stores in France like Boulanger or Fnac or Darty. This is very common.

But there not much choice for the brand. Most often I'd seen K500, K30, K50, K5... There no many lenses. But I have seen a K3 or 2 also in shops.

Well we don't see those choices at Bestbuy or Walmart here in Canada

[wizofoz]

i was at yet another workshop yesterday, around 30 people. I counted 2 nikons, 1 olympus, 1 pentax (me), and the balance canons.

yep, 30 people is way too many for a studio flash workshop, and so we had ample time to chat while many of the canonistas took the same shot over and over again, ad infinitum. (Boooooring people! get the effen shot and move on ! /end rant)

anyway, as is often he case somehow i get asked by other people how their camera works, or how to do certain things. Is it because I'm the guy with the Pentax? In this case I was chatting with the lady seated beside me and she was proudly telling me that her D610 didn't need a fancy shmancy flash trigger, because the Nikon has one built in. "would it work with these studio strobes' she asked. Well, not being the full bottle on Nikon gear i didn't want to dissuade her from her notion that she has a built in wireless flash controller in her camera (her canon shooting buddy had to buy some sort of additional doodaad that mounts in the hot shoe apparently - she was feeling smug) so i gently suggested that if she indeed had a built in radio frequency controller it would need to be able to 'talk' to the strobes on the same frequency. it may or may not work. She then told me she had to pop up the on board flash to get the wireless controller to work. 'oh,' says I, 'you mean controller mode of your flash.' I got a quizzical look. 'No its wireless' says she. We finally got to the point where i had her look through the labyrinthine Nikon menu system and discover the "Master' and 'controller' settings of her pop up flash. I had to explain that essentially the difference is one contributes to the exposure, the other mode does not. Queue sound of penny dropping.

Later on we were looking at our comparative shots (here i admit an unfair advantage, as I was shooting with the FA77, she was 'merely' using a Nikon 105mm macro) She couldn't believe that i could get a shot where every eyelash was tack sharp, where as hers were slightly blurry/oof. (same shot settings- plenty of DOF) I asked if she had calibrated the lens to the body recently. Same quizzical look. I couldn't find it in her menu system, but I'd be staggered if the Nikon ff didn't have a lens calibration function.
While i was fidddling with her camera, she was holding mine. 'gee your camera feels really solid and dense'

So once again, someone who buys too much camera for what they are doing, (in this case taking happy snaps of kids at school) and then never learns to use it. I have found this to be mostly true of Canon folk, but maybe that is just a function of market share.

Do other pentaxians have simmilar experiences, or is it just me?

(re-reading what i have just said, it may come across as camera snobbery. It isn't. It's just wonderment)

---

Last edited by wizofoz; 05-18-2015 at 05:20 PM.

[normhead]

A few years ago, I went to a location with a Snowy Owl, got out of my car to join one Canon and one Nikon shooter. After about 20 minutes I said, "I've got some images, time to go." They both looked at me, one said "Can I see." So I showed them the images. One said "Lucky you. " and they went back to shooting. A lot of people don't seem to understand that unless you buy the most appropriate Nikon or Canon gear for the task, they provide no real advantage. And they just expect that anything they shoot with their entry level Canon or Nikon is going to be better than anything shot with a competitors. Unfortunately, it's just not so.

[rmalbers]

I'm sure they do sell more Pentax in Japan than in the rest of the world, but I hardly ever see them. I go to a lot of car shows, movie festivals, shoot lots of stuff around Tokyo, but almost never see Pentax.

Yes, it's true, a Pentax exec said during an interview a month or two ago that over 1/2 the worldwide Pentax sales are in Japan. I often wondered what their market was like and that's the first time I've ever heard it stated. It might have been around the time of one of the K3 announcements.

[Nicolas06]

i was at yet another workshop yesterday, around 30 people. I counted 2 nikons, 1 olympus, 1 pentax (me), and the balance canons.

yep, 30 people is way too many for a studio flash workshop, and so we had ample time to chat while many of the canonistas took the same shot over and over again, ad ininitum. (Boooooring people! get the effen shot and move on ! /end rant)

anyway, as is often he case somehow i get asked by other people how their camera works, or how to do certain things. Is it because I'm the guy with the Pentax? In this case I was chatting with the lady seated beside me and she was proudly telling me that her D610 didnt need a fancy shmancy flash trigger, because the nikon has one built in. "would it work with these studio strobes' she asked. Well, not being the full bottle on nikon gear i didnt want to dissuade her from her notion that she has a built in wireless flash controller in her camera (her canon shooting buddy had to buy some sort of additional doodaad that mounts in the hot shoe apparently - she was feeling smug) so i gently suggested that if she indeeed had a built in radio frequency controller it would need to be able to 'talk' to the strobes on the same frequency. it may or may not work. she then told me she had to pop up the on board flash to get the wireless controller to work. 'oh says I, you mean controller mode of your flash.' I got a quizzical look. 'No its wireless' says she. We finally got to the point where i had her look through the labarynthine nikon menu system and discover the "Master' and 'controller' settngs of her pop up flash. I had to explain that essentially the difference is one contributes to the exposuure, the other mode does not. Queue sound of penny dropping.

Later on we were looking at our comparative shots (here i admit an unfair advantage, as I was shooting with the FA77, she was 'merely' using a Nikon 105mm macro) She couldnt believe that i could get a shot where every eyelash was tack sharp, where as hers were slightly blurry/oof. (same shot settings- plenty of DOF) I asked if she had calibrated the lens to the body recently. Same quizzical look. I couldnt find it in her menu system, but I'd be staggered if the nikon ff didnt have a lens calibration function.
While i was fidddling with her camera, she was holding mine. 'gee your camera feels really solid and dense'

So once again, someone who buys too much camera for what they are doing, (in this case taking happy snaps of kids at school) and then never learns to use it. I have found this to be mostly true of Canon folk, but maybe that is just a function of market share.

Do other pentaxians have simmilar experiences, or is it just me?

(re-reading what i have just said, it may come across as camera snobbery. it isnt. it's just wonderment)

Honestly if the girl is taking a course, she is likely serious about it. She has less knowdege than you in photography maybe, but this doesn't mean she don't want to try. In fact all her questions and her being present show a good willingness to learn.

[wizofoz]

Honestly if the girl is taking a course, she is likely serious about it. She has less knowdege than you in photography maybe, but this doesn't mean she don't want to try. In fact all her questions and her being present show a good willingness to learn.

Yes Nicolas, what you say is true, the girl (middle aged woman actually) was at a studio flash course to learn - Kudos to her. But somehow she had the notion that her 'built in flash controller' is all she needs. She was being smug because her Canon wielding girlfriend was forced to buy an external controller to control the strobes.

Everything she needs to know about camera can be solved by RTFM.

---------- Post added 19th May 2015 at 11:24 ----------

they just expect that anything they shoot with their entry level Canon or Nikon is going to be better than anything shot with a competitors. Unfortunately, it's just not so.

This seems to be part of the problem Norm. The magic of Canikon must mean that every shot is easy and cheap to get, and not just at the entry level. This lady had paid out some serious $$$ for a D610 and a nice 105mm macro as a portrait lens. What she had neglected to do was learn to drive her Ferrari.

[tim60]

But it is hard to learn. And unlike the old days, the books that come with the cameras now do not give much practical advice about how to get it to work nicely - they are written just like a reference book - OK if you already know, and do not need the book, except strictly as a reference. I remember my old MX manual, not unlike other manuals of the period, gave good advice about how to get reasonable pictures.

[Nicolas06]

But it is hard to learn. And unlike the old days, the books that come with the cameras now do not give much practical advice about how to get it to work nicely - they are written just like a reference book - OK if you already know, and do not need the book, except strictly as a reference. I remember my old MX manual, not unlike other manuals of the period, gave good advice about how to get reasonable pictures.

+1. If it was easy to learn alone with manuals and book, nobody would pay for photo course. You pay the courses and childs go to school because there more to learning than just RTFM and vlam you are an expert in the field.

We should not be considending to others because they prefer have chat and practical course to understand things than to read. After all there only a small portion of the population that learn better from reading than from experiencing things or earing it. Also the manual would not explain at all how to do portraiture shoots with you camera and a flash... While the course was doing it.

In the end, I don't think we can fault the girl again that took the course and ask others and got information this way. This is not like she didn't want to learn.

As if this is more Canikon than Pentax I think that a bold statement. Canikon market share is bigger and actually for a fact is used by more pro. So you are going to have far more photographers that know perfectly well how to take photo in Canikon world than in Pentax world. As well as there more newbie in Canikon world too. This is just because there more people in Canikon world, no more.

To conclude that you'd never encounter somebody with a Pentax that didn't read the manual is simply not true. Suffice to read the DSLR section of this forum to see not everybody did RTFM.

[Nicolas06]

This seems to be part of the problem Norm. The magic of Canikon must mean that every shot is easy and cheap to get, and not just at the entry level. This lady had paid out some serious $$$ for a D610 and a nice 105mm macro as a portrait lens. What she had neglected to do was learn to drive her Ferrari.

In France when your learn to drive somebody give you a car to pratice with. Usually the company you paid to get your driving courses. It is only when you practiced for quite some time that you understand what a good or bad car is really. When you did progress, to know if it is better to get this ferrari or porshe on this race is not easy neither, you need thinking of it quite a bit and try too.

Now we were speaking of expensive car.

A camera, even a D610 + a 105 macro is maybe 2500$. If the girl has a well paid work, a familly with childrens she may have more money than time. That's very common for "middle aged" persons in our modern world. They don't have much free time. So they did ask for advice of what would be a good camera + lense for doing portraiture. The choice of macro is maybe a bit strange (a 85mm f/1.4 or 135mm f/2 would have been better) but overall a D610 is a very capable camera that is good for the job and having an FF will help having shallow deph of field while still keeping sharp and contrasty pictures.

You said ferrari but she didn't buy an MF with a digital back neither. At worse the brought an equivalent of a 30,000$ car, not a $1000,000 car. Maybre she could have done with a 15,000 car, true, but how many people don't just get the most basic car that could do the job?

Don't see to far in my remarks against you but I think this thead is really like we are a minority and so from time to time we complain of us being a minority. And we take the opportunity of being together etc to go a bit too far like Canikon users of course are less willing to RTFM, they tend to spend their money stupidly on gear while Pentax users that think of buying an FA ltd or the next 70-200 from Pentax altogether with the new FF are ALL with dozen thousand of hours of photography practice to justify it. That a nice fairytale we speak ourselve.

[TER-OR]

I try to help - there's a lot of poor information out there. Marketing by these companies certainly doesn't help. "Wireless control" for flash is flagrant. It's not what people think it is - as mentioned above. It does work very well for what it is, and if you're shooting static subjects in a softbox for example it works really well. It's not radio triggering.

I usually try to engage people, encourage them to get out of automatic "green" mode and learn how their camera works. It can be used as a big P&S, and for half of what anyone does that probably works fine. But for anything demanding or specialized it simply won't. I'll often ask if they've had some experience with manual SLR cameras in school or in their long forgotten past. That's a good place to jump off from, and if they haven't it's a good place to introduce some concepts.

[clackers]

I think most of the clueless are Canikon owners, but then again, so are most of the pros.

[wizofoz]

Nicholas, you seem to have missed a couple of important points.

1, this was not workshop about how to use a camera, it was about studio lighting. Positioning of strobes and the various uses of modifiers. Not a beginners course. More like an advanced defensive driving course i've done in the past (to extend the motor vehicle analogy)

2, she started the conversation by telling me she didnt need a 'fancy shmancy' (her words) flash trigger as her camera had one built in (it doesn't) and telling me her friend was stiffed because she had to buy a trigger to control off camera studio strobes her Canon. She was being smug. She was also incorrect. I was very gentle in correcting her misapprehension. She wasnt asking for help, she was bragging about how advanced her shiney new nikon was.

I understand I may have stretched the analogy by using the word 'Ferarri', (maybe i should have said mercedes? - and then only entry level). I was not being condescending to her, I tried hard to help her. I understand that not everyone is a camera nerd and doesnt know all the intricacies of these highly technical implements. I just think that if one is spending that sort of money on a camera body, one would study how to use it. One thing that is not lacking is instructional material about how a Nikon d610 works. Youtube and other media are easy to use.

I didnt say in my original post that her only other lens was some sort of mid range zoom. (18-200ish maybe) Max aperture 3.5. She couldnt work out why my pics with either the 77 or DA55 were sharper, seeing as they were taken with a brand she had never heard of. She couldnt work out why when she zoomed to around 85mm+ she could not acheive an aperture of f4.

My observation is that many people get sold a camera that is far in excess of their skill level, or understanding level, by salespeople who can use the magic words Canon or Nikon. It is lazy but presumably profitable for the salesperson. Many of these people never understand the capabilities and restrictions of their equipment. That is neither good nor bad, it just is, and i guess it is the mainstay of the retail camera businesss these days.

[northcoastgreg]

So once again, someone who buys too much camera for what they are doing, (in this case taking happy snaps of kids at school) and then never learns to use it. I have found this to be mostly true of Canon folk, but maybe that is just a function of market share.

I'm not sure it's an issue of buying too much camera for what they are doing. The real problem is that DSLR cameras nowadays are too complex for (1) people just starting out, and (2) for people who are just not tech savvy and struggle with any complex device. What makes all this worse is that many of these people don't comprehend the extent of their ignorance and how it can impact what they are trying to accomplish with their cameras. The biggest problem I run into is photographers who don't understand how their camera's AF system work. Most DSLRs seem to have, as their default, auto-selection of focus points. Many photographers starting out struggle to get sharp shots because they are unwittingly using the default AF system of the camera, which is not reliable.