[theodoros1978]

Thank you, needed someone to clarify that!

My Pentax is all good then

[UnknownVT]

No, on the K-x the shutter button is 'click-free' all the way until you release the shutter.
After a soft initial press the power comes on and the AE and AF starts to work, then at full travel the shutter is released. There is no midway 'indent' or '2 clicks'.

At the risk of seeming pedantic -
but since this is such an important feature (for me) I thought I'd try to make it clearer.

rawr is correct there is no separate click for focus -
But there is a distinct "feel" - common to most AF digital cameras -
the initial press is "soft" -
then it meets a stronger resistance -
this is the point when the K-x (and most other cameras) focus, and measure exposure -
holding at the first resistance point "locks" that focus - so that one can recompose.

For example I use exclusively the center focus spot only -
so I have to focus, hold, and recompose all the time -
eg: focus on the eye, hold, then recompose so that the full shot is a more pleasing composition.

If for some reason the feel for the first resistance point does not seem obvious -
then the focus confirmation Beep may help the recognition
(the beep is On by default - if not then turn it back On temporarily).
There is also a green hexagonal focus confirm symbol that appears on the bottom status panel when focus is achieved.
When focus is locked - the green hex will remain lit.

Anyway here are the relevant pages from the K-x manual:





Hope that helps.

[UnknownVT]

Thursday night.....
















fav of night -

[UnknownVT]

A friend liked the shot in Post #210 enough to use as their desktop -
but being portrait orientation it had to be rotated to fit - which upsets the balance of the composition a little.

So I had been looking for an opportunity to take a landscape orientation version - but I find it strange that despite knowing when and even how to take the photo it took me several (unsuccessful) attempts to get a shot that was as pleasing to me - until today, when things just looked right....


EXIF attached - it's a straight shot -
merely emphasized the colors by increasing brightness and contrast - no other special pp.

[UnknownVT]

Saturday - difficult lighting (too much overwhelming color washes and strobing of lights):

[UnknownVT]

Thursday..... darkness....

Can you see the pianist, to the extreme left of frame?
The K-x can....

EXIF attached...... (look at original thumbnail)


handmade drum kit.....








yes, tabla player.....

[rawr]

Awesome work Vincent.

A little while ago I went shooting two jazz and blues acts, and I was reminded how difficult it is to get good results under minimal stage and ambient lighting. I had my K-x with a FA 50 f1.4 and also a recently acquired SMC M 75-150 f4 to play with, but the experience brought it home to me how talented you are in producing the work that you do under such challenging lighting.

[UnknownVT]

A little while ago I went shooting two jazz and blues acts, and I was reminded how difficult it is to get good results under minimal stage and ambient lighting.

Thank you rawr - you are very kind.

This is kind of funny, I took a friend to this venue last Thursday - who recognized the scenes like the corner Russell Gunn plays off stage, and didn't realize how dark that was.

As mentioned some of the places are actually below the metering limit of the K-x (with my humble lenses - bottom line flashes in viewfinder) - and below the focusing limit - so I have pick other spots to focus on like the bell of the trumpet for that corner - or this week's off stage shot - bell of the sax to the right.






On this last shot I focused on the lit phone on the center trumpeter's lap!

My (former) Kryptonite nemesis the pianist cause me no end of difficulties -
not only is it dark - he moves his head all the time when playing -
so it is almost impossible to focus on his face/eyes/glasses -
and there is nothing more embarrassing/distracting than to hear focus hunting during a quiet piano solo......
Mostly I have to pick something else with more defined contrast and more stationary to focus.

When he used to wear a baseball cap, that put his face in shadow
(he stopped doing that for the heat of Summer, that's why he's only a "former"-
but could be also because I brought in a clip-on book-light for his cap peak..... )
I used the corner between the cap, face and hair to focus,
or his arm and T-shirt junction, or any T-shirt pattern
and even the higher contrast junction between his hand/arm and the edge of the piano keyboard.

With this week's shot I had none of those options -
so the focus was actually (correctly) on his glasses -
when his head was stationary -
hold focus and wait for the shot.

Even with stage center I have to develop different technique for example -

cap peak puts face is shadow - I used to select face area and up brightness in pp -
nowadays I focus on face or at mouthpiece and face - and set exposure compensation at +1/3 or +2/3 (my norm is -1/3)
and in pp I use enhance lighting/fill-flash to bring out the face without over exposing the rest of scene
then final fine adjustment of contrast......

Strangely enough I find it much, much (emphasized) easier to take shots at this venue
than many venues with full stage lights.
It's not the lack of light that causes me problems -
but lights that change too quickly (or even strobe),
or overwhelming color washes.

None of that occurs here -
so it may be a challenge -
but it's actually a pleasure to shoot.

[UnknownVT]

Busy weekend - had to face the dreaded LED lighting with strong color washes and lights that change very quickly (even strobing) -
I am now resigned to this now being the norm - and just suck it up and treat it as a challenge -
it may sound whinging/resentful - but I now try to take pleasing (to me) pictures in spite of the lights.....

Even one of my favorite venues is now doing this -

Toubab Krewe -

Kora


love the reflected light on faces -
had to clone out gallon water bottle from floor......





Just in case anyone thinks I am complaining about nothing since the shots above lighting look just fine -
those were grabbed during moments of sanity......
the majority of scenes were more like:

I call this making the most of the challenge.....

so is this:


But I much prefer this kind of lighting without having to be concerned about mono-color washes and strobing lights, thank you -

KamelNgoni

When I thought that was difficult..... my very next gig almost next door had this:

cyan lighting at center of stage - using blue and green LEDs only
There is no way to mitigate that in PP (even RAW - as the light is only blue and green wavelengths)

I had to resort to slow-sync flash with -1 stop flash compensation to balance with ambient light:

I won't dwell on this, as the set was OK, but not so great ...

On to third venue of night where I normally shoot with my compact and flash
due to strong colored lights - but it's broken - so had to use K-x -

I think I am learning to balance the flash a bit better -
but still have not got it down like I had with my compact.....

Saturday - big multimedia event with Alex & Allyson Grey (artists)



these were mixed LED stage lights and daylight through doorway....
but I'll take it.







Mostly the stage lighting was like the background of this shot....

I know, what stage lighting?




happy now?

about that stage lighting:


who needs stage lights?








Finally back to the same last venue from the night before -

no flash, but tungsten balance

[rawr]

Wow. You have been busy. What great venues you have access to. And so many great shots, despite a myriad of technical difficulties.

some of the places are actually below the metering limit of the K-x - and below the focusing limit

Just as an aside, have you looked at some of those dark shots with PhotoMe? From the image EXIF, PhotoMe 0.79 (under the 'Manufacturers Notes' section in the EXIF) can generate an interesting graphic representing the light values in the different AE metering segments that form a scene, like so:



It has helped me sometimes in balancing out image exposure in PP. It also shows very well those areas of a scene where the AF and AE would have struggled. I've found the K-x does well even down to ~1LV for AF, with the right lens.

[UnknownVT]

Just as an aside, have you looked at some of those dark shots with PhotoMe? From the image EXIF, PhotoMe 0.79 (under the 'Manufacturers Notes' section in the EXIF) can generate an interesting graphic representing the light values in the different AE metering segments that form a scene, like so:

It has helped me sometimes in balancing out image exposure in PP. It also shows very well those areas of a scene where the AF and AE would have struggled. I've found the K-x does well even down to ~1LV for AF, with the right lens.

Once again many thanks rawr -
what great info - thank you very much - didn't realize that PhotoMe was that powerful -
I just spent the last 45mins looking at some of my shots.

At first looking at the low light ones

I thought may the the LV (Light Values) were only relative to the actual taking exposure -
so I checked a bright light shot -

and confirmed for myself that these were the actual LV of the scene......

So one can see the light levels were pretty low -
Russell's corner

no wonder I have difficulties focusing here......

and here:

Impressed as I am - I am just a little suspicious of this last one -
the display seems to think the lower segments of the picture (which I think is darker) is actually brighter?
But in possible mitigation - the bottom line in the viewfinder was flashing - meaning out of metering range - so perhaps "all bets are off" in such cases?

Just in case anyone is wondering I have enhanced the segment display in pp to bring out the photo a bit more (as they looked a bit feint to me) - in my olde photo editor (Ulead PhotoImpact 8) I used Auto Enhance then Auto Contrast.

[rawr]

So one can see the light levels were pretty low -

Indeed. There are lots of negative LV's in some of your scenes. It's a bit amazing that any result emerges on-camera at all from such dim corners. K-x strong!

the display seems to think the lower segments of the picture (which I think is darker) is actually brighter?

The AE metering segment overlay displayed by PhotoMe is probably averaging out the metering result across that area of the scene.

However in terms of exposure I think the overlay is only displaying the light meter readings in each segment of the scene. How the camera actually sets the AE for the shot would depend on what AE scheme you had chosen - eg using you were using centre-weighted metering it would probably mean the edge readings would play little role in the camera's calculations.

[UnknownVT]

The AE metering segment overlay displayed by PhotoMe is probably averaging out the metering result across that area of the scene.
However in terms of exposure I think the overlay is only displaying the light meter readings in each segment of the scene. How the camera actually sets the AE for the shot would depend on what AE scheme you had chosen - eg using you were using centre-weighted metering it would probably mean the edge readings would play little role in the camera's calculations.

I use multi-segment metering -
I wasn't talking about the taking exposure and how the K-x may have calculated it -
but the individual segment read-outs -
the lower part of the picture looks darker -
yet the segment read-outs seem to say the LV (light values) were brighter.


The readings in the segments correspond to the actual detail of the reading in the EXIF -


Like I said the read-outs seem to say the lower part of that pic was brighter - when I see it as much darker.

That's why I questioned it.

The main difference between that shot in question was that I was using the 50-200 zoom
whereas all the others were on the 18-55 zoom.

Just to show this was not an isolated incident -here's another on the 50-200 zoom,
I have deliberately turned it on its side so it would correspond with the multi-segment readings layout -

unretouched except for resizing.

The multi-segment readings:


This would seem to show that segment 14 - lower left (which looks almost black to me) = +1.3LV?!
whereas segment 5 - upper right is "darker" than that at -0.6LV?

Then Bottom segment 16 = +2.3LV
is supposed to be brighter than
Top segment 15 = -0.1LV?
by 2.4 stops......

Does that look right?

However like I said before, in mitigation the status line in the viewfinder definitely was flashing, so this was below the metering limit of the K-x - so perhaps "all bets are off"?

[UnknownVT]

On to third venue of night where I normally shoot with my compact and flash
due to strong colored lights - but it's broken - so had to use K-x

Same venue - last night - but they had the stage lights very low......

no pp other than resize.

AE segments from PhotoMe


After pp -

EXIF re-attached. Very simple pp on JPG - enhance lighting, (fine) adjust brightness/contrast, sharpen.

I was not very happy with reviewing the shots last night, and because of the lack of light and color balance I ended up having to use flash - as I mentioned I have not got that down on the K-x, like I had on my broken compact - so I was still learning as I was shooting.....

But surprisingly, when I looked at the shots on my PC - I was actually quite impressed with the results.....
so perhaps I have gained just adequate proficiency on K-x flash -

[rawr]

Good results with the flash - what settings did you mainly use?

But ugh, the stage floor in your last photo sure needs a clean. One of the disadvantages of flash is that it reveals too much sometimes.