[ve2vfd]

I shoot RAW+ most of the time, but I've found that quite often the K20d's JPG is more than adequate!

Pat

[Raybo]

I shoot RAW+ most of the time, but I've found that quite often the K20d's JPG is more than adequate!

Pat

How about your Jpeg settings Pat?

It's just for practice, I would like to see how the camera meters and such.

Thanks again,
Ray

[ivoire]

Congrats on the K20, its a fine choice. After reading all the K7 posts and looking at images, I'm keeping my K20. I shoot raw 99% of the time with no mods as i use the raw editor in CS4 for any initial PP adjustments. Usually if i shoot jpeg i turn on the D range. Get out and shoot with it and you will quickly determine what you want to achieve. Then try various settings ttil you get what u want and determine your preferences

[GeneV]

...and inactivating AF on the half shutter. You should have warned me, i find i can't go back to the old way.

This really does help. If you are in a difficult light situation, the AF button allows you to focus one time, providing you don't move away from that spot, and take multiple photos from that spot. Eliminates a lot of frustration with any low light focusing problems.

I do occasionally move it back when things are happening quickly, such as a moving subject, but then later always go back to the AF button.

Phil

I went that way a long time ago. I also like knowing that the shutter will fire when I press it. The only problem is that it is easy to forget to hold the shutter down to let the shake reduction work, and, with the shutter AF disabled, if you hand the camera to a friend so that you can be in a photo, you are likely not to be in focus.

[Raybo]

I went that way a long time ago. I also like knowing that the shutter will fire when I press it. The only problem is that it is easy to forget to hold the shutter down to let the shake reduction work, and, with the shutter AF disabled, if you hand the camera to a friend so that you can be in a photo, you are likely not to be in focus.

Okee dokee!

I'll hold the "button" down until I get the green light.

I really would like some Jpeg settings for my own good.

Anyone?

Ray

[starstuff]

Well, since you ask, I would recommend moving AF to the AF button. A warning though, if you try it, you are not likely to switch back, you will probably lke the additional control. Only irritations are there is no AF button on the battery grip, and I have never managed to get catch in focus to work without moving the AF back to the shutter button.

Wow, thank you! Such a simple thing to do, and what a difference it makes. Now the *default* when I half-press the shutter is to leave focus alone. I kept getting tripped up, and missing shots. This is great. I love it when people share suggestions like this.

[pentaxian_tmb]

My K20d should be delivered by the brown santa by Tuesday. Can't wait!

[starstuff]

Is there a quick and easy way to reactive "AF by half-pressing the shutter"? I love using the AF button to focus 99% of the time rather than the half-press, but there's that 1%. I'm pretty sure there's a quick way to get back, but I can't seem to find it.

Thanks.

[jmbower]

Hey, wow, I was remiss in replying to this....thanks for the suggestions all...sadly I have not had a lot of time to play with my camera in the intervening months (new job = not a lot of spare time)

However, I have a few general questions (love it so far, just need to use it more)

1) I've noticed that my pictures tend to always be a bit underexposed, regardless of the lighting conditions. I'm certainly willing to chalk this up to bad lens (mediocre tamron 70-300mm used a lot) bad photographer (hi, that's me) or real life just not being as bright and kodachrome vibrant as the average post-processed picture. However, is this common? DO many people shoot with the settings consistently on a slight bump up in ev compensation?

2) What is d-range? The description in the manual was somewhat vague...what does it do, and how?

3) If one is shooting raw, would one normally leave the noise reduction on? at what setting? (not the shake reduction, the internal menu option for noise reduction)? Again, it may be circumstantial, but I've had a few daylight or overcast light shots at fairly low iso's (200) which demonstrated a pretty visible amount of grain. I'll try to post the raw shot later. It struck me as odd.

4) multiple exposure,,,as I was reading through the manual, I caught a reference to multiple exposure...is this to do a double exposure sort of thing, or is this an HDR type function?

5) also, while I know it gets used more often in reference to lenses, are there any key things I should check out to make sure I got a "good copy"?

Thanks again all, I'm really enjoying it so far, though it has made the limitiations of my current lenses pretty obvious

[libbyh]

JM,

1. Pentax tends to meter more conservatively to prevent highlights from blowing out and therefore tends to underexpose by about 1/3 a stop. There are a number of people that have that set as a default for shooting.

2. D-range is a tone curve optimizer that is used to preserve details in high contrast scenes without blowing them out. It's fairly subtle on the Pentax with Sony being able to set it to ridiculous levels. Tuck yourself into an underpass on a fairly bright day and try and capture both the shaded and lit areas and you'll see it's effect.

3. AFAIK NR in RAW is only for dark frame subtraction (DFS) which you can turn on or off for anything under 29sec, but is defaulted to 'on' for longer exposures. I could be mistaken on this one - i'm sure someone will correct me if I am. In general, I don't use NR since it can smear details in texture you can't recover, whereas you can always apply NR in post.

4. Multi-exposure can be used in both the ways you described. Yvonne Bourque has some articles on how to use the technique to produce very subtle HRD effect, or to fake a long exposure without needing an ND filter.

[unkabin]

I don't have a K20, but reading this thread, I'm anxious for Raybo, since he keeps asking about people's settings, and no one keeps answering. Knowing that there is personal choice involved, can anyone tell him their preferences? On my K10D, for when I shoot jpegs, I have the sharpness bumped up one or two notches, and the saturation one, I think (I'm at my office without my camera). I don't shoot in Bright. But, I'm using a completely different sensor, so there's that . . .

[ozlizard]

Multi-exposure can be used in both the ways you described. Yvonne Bourque has some articles on how to use the technique to produce very subtle HRD effect, or to fake a long exposure without needing an N

I would be interested in reading the articles, tried a search but nothing came up, do you have a link?

[Marc Sabatella]

Is there a quick and easy way to reactive "AF by half-pressing the shutter"? I love using the AF button to focus 99% of the time rather than the half-press, but there's that 1%. I'm pretty sure there's a quick way to get back, but I can't seem to find it.

I don't know a way quicker than using the menu. But note you can set up your camera so that half-press focuses, but the AF button temporarily cancels AF. This might work out better for you - I find more natural, personally.

[Marc Sabatella]

1) I've noticed that my pictures tend to always be a bit underexposed, regardless of the lighting conditions.

Lighting conditions aren't the issue; it's the nature of the scene itself. A scene that is lighter than average - and anything dominated by sky or with a light source in it is lighter than average - will tend to come out underexposed, because the camera doesn't *know* the scene is lighter than average. But conversely, you should be finding sceneas that are darker than average coming out *overexposed*. And as another posters mentioned, the camera will also expose to prevent blown highlights, which might result int he scene coming out darker than you want overall. You want to learn to anticipate which scenes will require compensation in which direction, or get in habit of setting your exposure based on a different scene or different part of the scene (eg, meter off the ground and set exposure based on that, then recompose and shoot when trying to shoot a picture dominated by sky.

3) If one is shooting raw, would one normally leave the noise reduction on?

It has no effect on RAW - same with JPEG settings like saturation, etc.

[libbyh]

I would be interested in reading the articles, tried a search but nothing came up, do you have a link?

Hope Yvon doesn't mind me linking to his blog, but here's the post for the neutral density technique:

PENTAX DSLRs: Using multiple exposures on the K10D instead of neutral density filters