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Forum: Post-Processing Articles
01-30-2020, 03:54 AM
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Wondering if anyone can help with Digital Camera Utility 5x on Mac and Control Panel layout?
Every time I choose a new set of images to work with via the Browser, then switch to 'Laboratory' all of the Control Panels are reset to a pointlessly unusable tabbed window along the bottom of my monitor. In the past this didn't happen. I could layout the various windows/tabs as I wanted, e.g. curves, histogram, custom image... and they would remain that way permanently through quit/launch until I chose 'Default Layout' from the Window menu.
Is there any way of turning off this automatic 'return to default' setting, or of saving my 'user layout' positions??
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-07-2018, 04:01 AM
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Rear tilt is of no use for the architectural use you suggest. You need front rise (or rear fall).
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-30-2017, 01:03 AM
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Ha! You think that's hard. 20 years of daily 10x8 and 5x4, followed by 17 years of daily MF on 6x9 and for a little over a year, the K1, because I'm mostly doing pixel-shift and focus bracketing.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-29-2017, 12:10 AM
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When you have two moving parts, it's extremely difficult to get them perfectly aligned. The closer the lens-plane and film-plane, the more significant any movement is, but beyond that, in order to be able to usefully tilt or shift any lens, that lens needs to have a large enough image circle to cover any movement. Lenses for 35mm style cameras (of any size) are not made with a large image circle.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-28-2017, 01:20 PM
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Rear tilt isn't exactly the same as front tilt.
Yes you will get Scheimpflug (converging planes) but it also alters the 'geometry' of the image. Think of shining a torch against a piece of card that you are holding vertically. The card represents the film-plane (image plane). The torch is like the light (image) coming through the lens and is parallel to the card, so you get a perfect circle.
If you tilt the card, then the circle becomes distorted. So this will alter the focus plane, but in order to get back to having a 'round' circle of light, you would need to tilt the entire camera, on its tripod, so that it would again be parallel. Once you've done that, then you're no longer looking at (pointing the camera at) the same thing. So you need a shift on the front to compensate. So you're pretty much back to square one.
So, yes rear tilt gives you scheimpflug, but it's not as simple, nor the same as, front tilt.
Phew!
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
09-09-2017, 02:36 PM
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OK. Thanks for the help beholder3.
Fairly straightforward to set up a watched folder on the Mac, so that the downloaded jpeg opens up in a full sized window in Aperture, just 3 or 4 seconds later. A workable workaround. :)
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
09-04-2017, 01:11 AM
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Maybe I'm missing something?
On a Mac, can I re-size (make larger) the Image Transmitter 2 Live view window?
Thanks for any help/pointers.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
05-31-2017, 01:54 AM
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Well ... if that was really the case, every camera company would only offer 3 or 4 lenses.
A camera like the K-1, with its excellent image quality, requires lenses of the highest resolving power to give its best. As I have established for myself with Nikon glass and the D800E, yesterdays top of the line lenses, just don't cut it with todays top of the line sensors. You are simply missing out on a mass of resolved detail. I'm sure that the recent Pentax zooms are up to the job, but again, they aren't as up to it as primes and they're bulky and heavy. Bulky and heavy are not just an inconvenience. They actually matter when working. IMHO.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
05-30-2017, 09:56 AM
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I bought the K-1 a year ago for a specific use and it's been really great. However, lenses are definitely an issue. I'd like 24 and 28 prime and modern. I don't particularly need fast, just high quality with good AF. There's nothing.
Software is also an issue.
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Forum: Pentax Full Frame
11-19-2016, 03:12 AM
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Thank you chaps. :)
Regarding the MacBook Pro late 2015:
I have searched, as you did lithedreamer and I found some discrepancy and uncertainty about the read speed of the 2015 MacBook Pro's SD card slot, so I downloaded a speed test from the iTunes store (Blackmagic) and guess what ... it's clearly faster than the USB 2 bus would allow, so it must be using the USB 3 bus.
I have Lexar Pro SDXC class-1, U1, 10 and rated on the card at 600x (90MBs). My test = 45MBs write and 85MBs read!
I also have SanDisk Extreme PLUS SDHC class-1, U3, 10 and rated on the card at 90MBs. My test = 57MBs write and 89MBs read!
So if anyone has the same Mac and a Class-11 card and cares to run the test, I'd be really interested to know if this Mac can read at Class-11 speeds.
However ... in the context of the K-1, this begs another question:
___________________________________________
K-1:
The K-1 tells us it supports SDXC 1. What does that really mean? Ironically, the best explanation I have found is right here on these forums (handy!).
Comprehensive SD Card Guide for Photographers - Articles and Tips | PentaxForums.com
However, the article is a little surprising, to me at least. In the "Pentax DSLR Compatibility" chart it suggests that the K-1 has a *slower* write speed than many of its predecessors, specifically - K-3, K-3 II, 645Z, K-S1, K-S2. Can this really be true? Anyway ... it says that the minimum write speed for the K-1 is 32MBs and suggests using UHS-I U3 cards, which have a maximum write speed of 90MBs and read speed of 95MBs.
It previously says: "Similarly, UHS-II cards will work in a UHS-I slot at reduced speed, possibly slower than high-end UHS-I cards".
So what is the actual hit on write speed for the K-1when using Class 11 cards and can my Mac benefit from the hugely increased read speed (3x) of the Class 11 cards?
My main concern here, is that I'm using my K-1 almost exclusively in pixel-shift mode. This raises another question ... Would card write speed actually be slowing it down, or is the card already waiting for the processor to do it's thing??
Questions questions questions ...
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Forum: Pentax Full Frame
11-18-2016, 12:29 AM
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Can anyone tell me if the K-1 can benefit from this card's speed?
LexarŽ Professional 1000x SDHC?/SDXC? UHS-II
At the other end I'm using a late 2015 MacBook Pro for transfers ... I can't find a definitive answer about the speed of the built-in sd card reader. System Report doesn't list it under USB and there is no bus speed listed under Card Reader. (Sigh).
Any help much appreciated. 🙂
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
10-08-2016, 02:24 AM
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I think these are existing stock. It's not available on their EU sites. I would guess they're either about to introduce a new version or perhaps have realised tons of people don't have a CD drive any more, though why they don't already offer a download is perplexing and why they wouldn't make it immediately available for download doesn't make much sense either. So my guess is it's gone.
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
10-07-2016, 05:04 AM
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Image Transmitter 2 is no longer available.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
09-28-2016, 01:12 AM
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No I haven't contacted support. To be honest, I can't be bothered. I've spent too much time in the past working with various software companies fixing their bugs ... it's a time drain. So it's just a heads-up for users here. I'm on El-Cap on the Macs I've tried.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
09-27-2016, 01:21 PM
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An important heads up for those of you unfortunate enough to be using Pixel-Shift and therefore condemned to using this appalling piece of software :
There is a serious bug in 5.6.2 (and possibly earlier) on the Mac. It would seem that the UI is crashing/hanging constantly and thereby slowing raw development to tiff (and doubtless anything else) to an absolute crawl. I've wasted half the day today, trying various Macs and installing/re-installing and I'm not going to try and understand anything further.
I have several hundred pixel-shift images to dev out to tiff and it turned out that they had been running at around 15mins per image, sometimes less, on a dedicated Mac that I left to do the job. When I came back and saw how few had been done ... panic and bug hunting began.
So the workaround?
'Hide' DCU5. That's it.
(On a Mac you can do this simply by 'control-clicking' its icon in the Dock and choosing 'Hide'. Ensuring it's not the frontmost app achieves the same thing).
After Hiding, CPU ramps to around 100% per cpu and my PEFs are currently taking around 3mins per image on my old MacBook Pro, as I sit watching David Attenborough and some wonderful little marsupials by the name of quolls, who are getting sick of cane toads.
Seems like an extremely careless bug.
Could be related to another ... which is that sometimes when launching DCU5, the splash-screen remains visible even after the app has loaded. Not only that, it hovers above all other apps. Many delete/re-installs seemed to get rid of it ... but then it came back.
Anyone who has direct contact with the developers might like to pass these bugs on to them (I can provide app crash/hang logs if they want them).
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
09-23-2016, 02:18 AM
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Thanks for that.
What's very confusing, is that the image preview is not updated for the Browser mode ... so you make changes, but the image looks the same when you switch back to Browser. The dialog asking to save changes is also very confusing, but happily, it can be turned off.
The question really, is whether or not Japanese camera software is written by some of the worlds great sadists?
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
09-22-2016, 11:13 AM
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I'm using the version that Pentax recommend.
Having just looked at the 'Pro' version, which I'd never heard of and Pentax didn't suggest to me, I see that it DOES NOT fully cater to pixel-shift mode. So it's no good.
From their website:
"For RAW images shot with “Pixel Shift Resolution”, several features such as a demosaicing sharpness are unavailable."
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
09-22-2016, 09:35 AM
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Pentax should be making it as easy as possible to use their cameras, not building hurdles. Poor software = time = money lost. Pros don't have that time or money to loose. Sure it's okay for amateurs, but Pros need serious tools.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
09-22-2016, 08:35 AM
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Thanks for the replies.
I'm using SilkyPix Digital Camera Utility 5.5.1.
It's the UI and functionality that are a misery to me (what else is left?). Something simple like setting a white balance, then applying it to all the images in the gallery, or saving it as a parameter that can be *added* to images I select ... I can't figure out how to do this most basic of operations. In fact, the most frustrating thing is that when I'm looking through images and making some adjustments, I have to save a tiff ... huh? Why can't it just remember what I've just set?
The UI is not just ugly, but is a scattered mess. Honestly, it's pretty shameful for Pentax that this is the best they can offer.
However ... I understood that Lr recently gained support for the K-1 (as did Apple's Camera Raw) but neither of them support pixel-shift. Seems to me that Pentax should be doing their utmost to persuade Adobe (and everyone else) to offer the same quality conversion as their SilkyPix software ... otherwise what's the point? The only people using pixel-shift are those interested in the absolute best quality. They're not about to settle for something inferior, just for convenience. Pentax should be giving Adobe all the help they need to get the pixel-shift raws developed correctly. Ho hum.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
09-22-2016, 06:32 AM
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The SilkyPix software is truly awful. I'm using the K-1 almost exclusively in pixel-shift mode. Are there any alternatives to SilkyPix?
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
07-23-2016, 04:56 PM
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
07-23-2016, 09:12 AM
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Hi,
Is anyone using the K-1 with mains attachment via DC-in?
I'm wondering about power adapters ... Pentax seem to have a very expensive one, but this is fairly basic stuff (although dangerous if poor quality). Any recommendations?
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
07-13-2016, 12:03 PM
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Excellent. Thanks Medex.
I've been fiddling around for almost an hour. It's hard to move from Nikon and like all of these cameras, the manual is written by a sadist.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
07-13-2016, 10:47 AM
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Probably being dumb here, but I have turned on bracketing whilst simply experimenting with the dials and now I am completely unable to turn it off.
Can someone walk me through how I should do this?
Many thanks for any help ... (hoping to use the K-1 on a shoot tomorrow :( )
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