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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories 07-01-2019, 08:35 PM  
Can I use a remote to activate video?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 4
Views: 797
You can definitely use a cable to start and stop video on the K50 - I had to set up to do that a couple of years ago using a 5m long home made cable. You can also use an intervalometer to start and stop video.

I would assume that you could also use a wireless remote if it plugs into the 2.5mm socket - beyond that I'm not sure.
Forum: General Photography 06-25-2019, 03:13 PM  
Print saturation.
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 20
Views: 1,506
I'd say it's the structure of the substance rather than just the composition.

Paint is 3d, you can layer it up until the canvas is completely obscured, you can use transparent mediums, you can build matrices which reflect light in different ways, and you can manually create different textures at will. That's before you get to underpainting, including extra pigments, glazing, or other techniques, you also have a far wider range of pigments available.

A big part of the pop is often colour theory, a thin streak of bright green will make an area of red pop as the eye is drawn to the difference as well as the colour. The orange-teal color grade that many video editors use is an example of this - if overdone it can look unnatural. Warm & cool colours can also create contrast.

A photo print by comparison tends to be flat and generally only a couple of layers deep, it doesn't hide the reflectivity of the paper or canvas (in fact relies on it), you can't dynamically fiddle with pigments, texture, transparency or similar traits.

I've known a few people using inkjet or UV set printing who get their prints to really pop, but they've generally spent a lot of time learning how to do it in photoshop, and calibrating rip software. The people I'm thinking of also tended to non-figurative abstract sort of work - they didn't get to the same place as painters though as they are stuck with a fixed pallet.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 06-25-2019, 02:49 PM  
What B&W Developer to Choose
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 7
Views: 2,226
D76 & ID11 are pretty much the same thing, they are fairly conservative standard developers. That would be my choice if someone else was developing my film, they're pretty hard to screw up.
Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories 06-23-2019, 09:44 PM  
Audio Recorder?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 10
Views: 913
The sony is a very good piece of kit, and it's built in microphones are probably better than it's competitors (under $1000 or so), but I don't really feel it's the best option for podcast type situations.

In a podcast situation you really want to individually mic up each person who is speaking rather than to just mic up the room, given that the Sony doesn't have XLR inputs this would limit you in the gear you could use. You could use it as a receiver for a good quality mixer with good quality microphones, but that'd be getting pretty expensive by the time you buy all the extra gubbins. Also in field recording it would be useful to have other microphone options, the stereo mics that are built in on the sony need to be up close to get a good result.

I personally went with the Tascam DR40 for similar stuff to what you are describing, to that I've added several xlr microphones for different purposes, it works well enough that the gear isn't really a limitation (the DR40 has since been replaced by the DR44). The zoom H4n is another option at that price point - When I can justify the cost I'll go for the Zoom H6 which has interchangeable microphone modules and more lines in, but for now I'm happy with the DR40.

Each of these options will allow you to send a headphone line out to the microphone in on your camera. I personally keep them seperate and just clap for the camera and then I'll replace the camera audio with that from the recorder in post.
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 06-20-2019, 03:32 PM  
What's the draw for other cameras?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 72
Views: 7,537
For me the reason I use Pentax is because i bought a k10 fairly cheap whilst travelling around Australia, by the time I came to upgrade I'd picked up a few decent lenses which I liked. Now I shoot with Pentax and with M4/3 (they do different things).

Having worked at a photo school I can see why Canon & Nikon are so popular - Both historically have made deals with educational institutions, thus the institutions tend to have collections of those brands lenses (which sorta locks them in through finance and inertia), therefore most people who go through those institutions are trained on them - thus when they leave school and go into the industry they buy what they have become used to, therefore that gear becomes industry standard by default. This is a lot like how most design schools use mac computers due to mac making deals with them, thus they have become the computers 'that designers use'.

Both also provide decent pro services for repairs and suchlike, have good marketing, and because they are larger can sink more money into lens development.

In practice I could pick up nearly any recent camera from any major manufacturer and within a few minutes get it to do 90% (within reason) of anything I might realistically be asked to make it do, that was kinda my job for a few years, showing people how to use their cameras, usually with no time for research. The camera itself usually isn't so much of a stumbling block as a persons familiarity with it is.

Most cameras will do all of the regular expected things a typical user might want, and each brand or tier has a focus on some more specialised areas besides that core set of functions, most people don't really have a desperate need for the specialised things that each brand focuses on, and most non-professionals (and many professionals) also frankly lack the practice and patience to get the full functionality out of the gear they own.
Forum: Pentax K-70 & KF 06-17-2019, 02:27 PM  
New K70 sensor problem
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 12
Views: 1,851
I see a couple of 1 pixel high horizontal lines in the purple flare of the first shot, but it just looks like a momentarily maxed out sensor, I'd take a shot of something neutral to check, but it's probably just a momentary glitch caused by part of the flare as the sensor was being scanned.

Edit;
Yeah, I couldn't see the images in chrome - I used stevebrot's links.
Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 06-14-2019, 02:32 PM  
Photo Editing Software
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 83
Views: 9,528
I'm also running photoshop 7 :) It still works well for most things.

besides that I also use Krita and Lightzone, both of which are free.

Lightzone is my replacement for lightroom, it's a decent raw converter for *.dng files, has file management, and has a batch converter. It works with a zone based system which is quite different from the photoshop way of doing things (no layers or compositing, or such, it's not really a graphic design software so much as a straight photo editing software).

Krita I just use for noodling about doing photoshop painty & vectory type stuff (I'm still just playing with it still, but it's quite powerful).

I did have the full suite for Adobe and Microsoft products for work for a few years, but after I left I didn't renew the subscription as I simply don't use most of the functionality they offer (I used to use lightzone for large batch conversions even when I had lightroom as I found it crashed less).
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 06-14-2019, 02:07 PM  
backlighting
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 31
Views: 2,940
Maybe I'm a bit simple, but personally I use the same technique as I would with a spotmatic, only with the green button.

Put the camera into manual with spot metering.
Adjust aperture to where I want it.
Point the camera (spot meter area) at grass or mid grey concrete.
Press the green button to set shutter speed for correct exposure.

Then like, take photos n' stuff.

It might take a few tries before you get the hang of it, but once you do, it's generally faster and more accurate then old film cameras or light meters.
Forum: Pentax News and Rumors 06-13-2019, 02:51 AM  
Pentax KP J Limited edition released
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 138
Views: 17,535
I'm sorta the opposite, I can see how they could have managed to get a greater divergence between the flash and the optical axis (longer flash arm sticking up further), which could be useful (not saying that's what they've done, but they 'could' have).

As for the grip, that is exactly what I was hoping they wouldn't do - It looks nice and all, but I personally find the large grip awkward due to the way it tapers sharply in towards the top - for me personally it places all of the grip at the bottom of my hand and not the top where my fingers are stronger (most other cameras which have a flare in the grip, have it at the top against the middle finger, not under the little and ring fingers like this).

From the perspective of owning one of these, having used it a lot since it came out, and really liking it, I genuinely don't understand what this adds to the original design.
Forum: Pentax KP 06-01-2019, 07:58 PM  
Pentax KP manual shutter speed?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 4
Views: 1,026
Mechanical shutter 30 sec - 1/6,000
Electronic shutter 30 sec - 1/24,000
Flash sync 1/180

specs;
Pentax KP Review - Specifications | PentaxForums.com Reviews
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 05-25-2019, 04:26 PM  
Will a different focusing screen help?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 40
Views: 3,712
Ultra high prices usually mean that they don't have the item in stock.

As for cutting down a screen, you can fo it, but they are pretty easy to damage as the plastic they are made from is optical quality and is easy to scratch - you don't have to stick to pentax if you want to cut down a screen, I cut an old nikon screen down to fit one of my canon film cameras, the thing there is I'm kinda handy with tools, and I got the nikon screen for about $5.

Looking on Ebay I'm seeing k10d focus screens pretty cheap with free postage from asia, I'd probably look at those.
Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands 05-07-2019, 05:42 PM  
Currently Watching my Managers Failing at Flash Photography
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 30
Views: 2,462
Yeah, I stopped working in corporate environments funnily enough.
Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands 05-07-2019, 03:58 PM  
Currently Watching my Managers Failing at Flash Photography
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 30
Views: 2,462
Don't offer help to people who are not asking for help, and especially if they are a manager and/or showing of their skills - the exception being if they are a friend and you have a chance to have a quiet word.

At best they won't appreciate it, at worst they will actively resent it and you will get a reputation as 'that guy' amongst the management.

The one exception to this is if you are a photography teacher, even then don't expect anybody to thank you.
Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 05-03-2019, 01:06 PM  
Another newer Windows 7 "Warning" - Will officially become unsupported January 2020.
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 58
Views: 4,909
Ah, in that case you're stuffed. All you can do is go cap in hand to the IT guys at your work and hope they have some spare time somewhere down the track (having worked in IT it's probably up there with flying pigs).
Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 05-02-2019, 02:04 PM  
Another newer Windows 7 "Warning" - Will officially become unsupported January 2020.
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 58
Views: 4,909
I'm not an expert but that sounds like windows defender security settings checking things before loading them, you can switch it off or use other providers. It's also worth going through the startup settings to switch off a lot of the junk which they've decided people need running. 8gb should be fine, I can run it on a netbook with 2gb (albeit with lots of stuff switched off). It's not ideal to have to manually fiddle with stuff, but that's what I find I have to do with linux too.

My personal pet peeve is them upgrading my drivers to 'safe and modern' windows drivers for game controllers, control surfaces, human interface devices, video & audio devices, midi stuff, etc each update (their driver design seems to be - make the yellow triangle go away, but don't actually use the device beyond the most very basic level if at all) - I've had to reinstall hardware drivers so often that I have a folder on an external drive for it now.
Forum: Film Processing, Scanning, and Darkroom 04-21-2019, 01:11 PM  
Input for a new enlarger bulb ... for a Krokus 3
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 24
Views: 3,217
I'd really be looking for an enlarger bulb, my krokus 66 had a regular base (I think shape excepted they're the same thing), so it shouldn't be too hard to find a bulb with that base. You can go for a lower wattage bulb with the results that it will take longer to expose a photo. The 150w maximum is related to heat buildup, more light equals faster printing, which isn't always a good thing.

CFL is probably your worst choice as the colour spectrum isn't great, and it takes time to get to full brightness as it warms up, which means your repeatability in a series of long exposures will go all to hell. LED has the same problems with colour spectra, but at least it's instant on at full power unlike the CFL.

The best for your purposes is tungsten, and you really want an enlarger bulbs they are opaque white (which avoids hot spots) and don't have the label printed on the end of the bulb (most commercial bulbs do this).
Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories 04-19-2019, 11:58 PM  
Certain SD Cards Clear Buffer Faster?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 19
Views: 2,200
Yeah, I have a gaming machine too - If your graphics card is a business desktop job which only outputs 30hz or 60hz then what will the 144hz monitor get you? - That's the analogy I'm giving you. You're assuming that the graphics card must be top flight - it's not.

Pentax did not sneak in a top flight next generation graphics processing chip and just absent-mindedly fail to tell anybody. They might be bad at advertising, but they're not plain stupid. The graphics chip will be running at a clock speed which can't be overclocked without some real high end technical pokery jiggery, a new sd card just isn't going to do much to speed the camera up past the factory specs.

Honest question - I've shot a bunch of gig's with a a whole bunch of cameras including my Kp, which has the same graphics chip as your K1 with a smaller file size, thus it can take more photos before it hits the buffer - I've only ever hit the buffer a couple of times as I tend to time my shots and i consciously avoid hitting the buffer as it means i might miss shots at critical moments - though admittedly i only tend to take 5-700 frames in a day where some people I know take thousands.

My question - if you want to use the camera machine gun style at the highest frame rate - why on earth would you buy a Pentax? If you don't want to do that then why would you care how fast the buffer clears?

I like my Pentax cameras, and there's some things the brand is renowned for, high capacity high frame rate shooting ain't one of them.
Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories 04-19-2019, 09:18 PM  
Certain SD Cards Clear Buffer Faster?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 19
Views: 2,200
I don't see how it could possibly clear the buffer faster than an appropriately fast card. I'm not a physicist, but it doesn't make sense for the sd card to magically speed up the image processor so that the buffer which is before it in the chain will speed up. It's like upgrading your graphics on a computer by getting a better monitor - a good monitor is better than a crappy one, but if you already have a decent monitor then you need to upgrade your graphics card, not the monitor.

If it had an effect it would also very definitely affect the buffer in the lower speed settings as the buffer is dynamic - it doesn't wait till the buffer fills up before the image processor starts, as soon as there is data in the buffer the image processor kicks in and starts running - it's called 'first in - first out' or FIFO. If the buffer were somehow clearing faster because of the new memory card then the number of shots you can take before the buffer is hit would increase.

Those cards would make a difference with the latest cameras like the Sony A9 and the EOS R series cameras where they have both very large buffers and extremely fast image processing - and they work faster with faster SD cards because the image processor is faster than the write speed of the SD card - this is not true of Pentax cameras which have a much slower image processor.

As for lower capacity cards, possibly useful, but not for obvious reasons. You'll fill them up faster, so you'll empty them (and hopefully format them) more often, you'll lose less if they fail, they're cheaper to replace if they develop faults or slow down. None of these are inherent advantages, but when I was doing commercial shoots I tended to carry multiple 8gb cards rather than a single 64 or 128gb card - for stills they were plenty large, and it made it easier to back stuff up on the fly and if you make a point of swapping and backing up cards during a day long commercial shoot you will have the shots backed up and viewable before the end of the shoot.

All that said, if you feel that it will help, go buy a bunch of the latest fastest cards and check the speed difference, I'd be very surprised if you get anything at all back for your money.
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 04-19-2019, 03:51 AM  
Will a different focusing screen help?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 40
Views: 3,712
That's what some of us have, and what we have been discussing messing up the spot auto exposure - mine is diagonal rather than horizontal though.
Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 04-18-2019, 10:30 PM  
Another newer Windows 7 "Warning" - Will officially become unsupported January 2020.
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 58
Views: 4,909
As you say that you have a windows 10 machine, it's worth trying to install the windows 7 drivers manually to the win 10 machine to check if it works - I've found that in most cases it works due to Microsoft's obsession with backwards compatibility.

Can't really help with anything else, but I'm sure that someone will have come up with a solution.

My cruddiest computer is a WinCE 5 thin client (64mb ram) which I use for typing documents, it runs Wordpad and nothing else, not even a calculator. Which is just fine for my usage.
Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories 04-18-2019, 06:57 PM  
Certain SD Cards Clear Buffer Faster?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 19
Views: 2,200
Yes, my metaphorical bucket doesn't have intelligent memory allocation.
Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras 04-18-2019, 05:56 PM  
Blue haze on landscape shots - help?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 22
Views: 4,386
That looks pretty normal to me, possibly a fraz over exposed, and the scanning looks indifferent at best, have the shots scanned by someone else and check the difference.

A polariser will help with haze and saturation, I've never bothered with UV filters, a skylight does the same task basically, and the colour cast should be able to be removed by any competent scanner.
Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories 04-18-2019, 05:38 PM  
Certain SD Cards Clear Buffer Faster?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 19
Views: 2,200
Bruce - The buffer is very fast memory which is used to capture raw data from the cameras sensor for processing, it's like a bucket for photographs which then goes through a hose which is the image processing which takes the raw sensor data and converts it into a file which is the raw file or the JPG. It is then saved to the removable user memory, which in this case is the SD card.

In that metaphor
The bucket starts emptying through the image processing hose whenever there is water in it, and it keeps emptying till it is empty - if the bucket is full then you cannot add more - the memory card in this metaphor is like joining on another tube onto the image processing hose - if it's too narrow it causes back pressure to back up the image processing hose - however adding a wider tube which could pass more water than the image processing hose won't speed it up - the sd card tube is passive, it can't suck.

If the fast memory in the buffer and the user memory in the sd card can both run faster than the image processor can process the raw sensor data into image files then the image processor will be the bottleneck in the process.

The burst before buffer in slow frame rates vs fast is a useful measure as the image processor starts working when the first image is taken, it doesn't wait till the buffer is full - you are able to work out from that how much data (the size of the image) can be processed in how long (the time it takes to process an image) and from that you can work out the throughput of the image processor.

If you look at a phantom high speed camera they don't actually do the image processing in real time, instead they burn the raw sensor data directly to ultra high speed memory in the cartridge, processing those into files takes far far longer than actual capture does, and it's a separate process which the user instigates after the fact - that's how they can get so fast, they skip the image processing step and use a massive buffer which is just dumped to super high speed magazines.
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 04-18-2019, 05:14 PM  
Will a different focusing screen help?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 40
Views: 3,712
Steve - Turns out you're right, it's not seemingly documented in the manual or the menu as far as I know, and it only works with specific lenses in afs, but it does work - I just learned something useful - my K10 is now wearing my 100mm f4 macro.
Info here.
K10D catch in focus - PentaxForums.com

I just spent a good 30 minutes on that :P

BigMacCam - yep, from memory I believe that it threw spot metering out but the others still worked fine, but I can't test this really as my K10 suffered an accidental impact a few years back which seemingly damaged the meter so it consistently overexposes by 4-5 stops in every mode with every lens - that happened well after I installed the split screen, I've used it in manual exposure since about 2015.
Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories 04-18-2019, 04:44 PM  
Certain SD Cards Clear Buffer Faster?
Posted By sqrrl
Replies: 19
Views: 2,200
There is a possibility, but I do suspect that Pentax would use the fastest card available in order to get shot to shot speeds up as far as possible - I haven't noticed a difference between different fast cards at the lower frame rates (ie raw slow) where a faster speed clearing the buffer would make a difference to the number of shots you can take. That's why I am saying that as far as i know the manufacturer quoted specs are likely as fast as they can go.
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