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09-04-2007, 10:07 AM   #1
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Picture Modes K100D

The manual for the K100D (p50, English language) says this:

Portrait: optimal for capturing portraits
Landscape: deepens the focal range, emphasizes contour and saturation of trees and the sky, and produces bright image
Macro: lets you take vibrant pictures of flowers and other small subjects at small distances

I wondered what this means in practice. From what I have read in various places I see that recommendations are basically:

Portrait: telephoto, small depth of field (wide aperture)
Landscape: wide angle, large depth of field (small aperture)

Clearly the K100D cannot set the focal length, but it can set the aperture. So for the Portrait and Landscape mode is it just doing what I could do myself in Av mode?

I am curious about the comments about "emphasizes contour and saturation of trees and the sky, and produces bright image" and "vibrant pictures". These would suggest that the camera performs some image processing. Surely for RAW images the camera should do no processing at all, and so if the camera is set to RAW these descriptions are meaningless?

If the camera does image processing, is it documented anywhere what it does?

09-04-2007, 10:32 AM   #2
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Richard,

You nailed it!!

10 pts

Chuck
09-04-2007, 02:09 PM   #3
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I haven't used the settings you speak of but I have used the "Sunset" SCN mode. It makes the colours much more vibrant where as using "Av" mode looks washed out and bland, requiring some time in Photoshop. Aperture values are the "normal" values of the P&S "AUTO" mode. That's about all the help I can be.
09-04-2007, 06:47 PM   #4
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It would be nice if Pentax and other camera companies gave us a list of exactly what each "mode" does. Some day I'll experiment with my K100D modes but when the manual states, "Portrait - Optimal for capturing portraits" (page 50) it does not tell me much.

Another example is my Fuji S5200 which has "Shake Reduction Mode" and "Macro Mode" but lacks any hardware to do either. I >think< the SR is faster shutter, higher ISO and Macro changes the autofocus and aperture to favor close objects.

09-04-2007, 07:49 PM   #5
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All picture modes set the color to "Bright" which in some cases make certain colors glow. Although there are minor conveniences (I guess) of picture modes (such as simultaneously changing the AF to continuous and bumping the shutter speed a little), I haven't used them since the first week I had the camera.
09-05-2007, 02:36 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by SpecialK Quote
All picture modes set the color to "Bright" which in some cases make certain colors glow. Although there are minor conveniences (I guess) of picture modes (such as simultaneously changing the AF to continuous and bumping the shutter speed a little), I haven't used them since the first week I had the camera.
Thanks. What prompted me was that I have been reading through some magazines I bought years ago for my Canon EOS1000FN and there was a lot of difference between the modes. I have done some simple tests with my K100D, comparing the EXIF and didn't find too many differences:

Sports (Kids and Pets) uses AF.C, Macro, Landscape, Portrait, No Flash, Night Portrait use AF.S; the more 'manual' modes (P, M, Tv, Av, B) can be set to either. Sports sets a high shutter speed, Landscape sets a high f-number. I would have expected Sports, and perhaps Portrait, to be set to continuous shooting (my old Canon does this) but none of the modes affect this value. Similarly the auto focus setting and the meter settin: none of the picture modes change these (I would have expected the Landscape to be multi-segment metering - to evaluate over all of the scene, Sports and Portrait to be centre weighted and Macro to be spot metered).

I would expect Portrait to set a low f-number, but it doesn't; I would also expect it to set the flash to one of the red-eye settings, but all of the modes leave the flash alone. I am not sure what Portrait or Macro do.

It seems to me that you have to change more settings on the camera to make the 'green' modes useful, in which case you may as well use one of the other modes anyway.

FYI, this is what the Canon EOS1000FN uses (auto focus is one-shot, equivalent to AF.S and AI servo, equivalent to AF.C):

Mode: exposure, auto focusing, film advance, metering, flash
Portrait: wide aperture, one-shot, continuous, evaluative, auto flash
Landscape: small aperture, one-shot, single shot, evaluative, no flash
Sports: fast shutter, AI Servo, continuous, evaluative, off
Macro: small aperture, one-shot, single shot, partial metering, auto flash

(Other than auto flash on the Macro, which seems to make no sense with the camera flash, these settings seem reasonable to me.)
09-05-2007, 03:59 AM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by LeoTaylor Quote
It would be nice if Pentax and other camera companies gave us a list of exactly what each "mode" does.
Yep, that's pretty much why I never use them. I just leave it on Av and adjust the settings myself as I see fit. Maybe it's the control freak in me.

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