|
Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-26-2020, 06:56 PM
|
| |
I think with a new 21mm Ltd, this would be a hell of a street photo/video combination
---------- Post added 10-26-20 at 06:58 PM ----------
True, would've been nice but 'n' still supports 300Mbps. That should be roughly 2 photos per second if it operates at this maximum speed
|
|
Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-26-2020, 06:32 PM
|
| |
101 AF points with 25 cross!!!! WHAT?! amazing stuff. Hopefully the next FF will have even more :P
It also does 4k apparently and does 1080p in 60p
|
|
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
04-16-2020, 02:30 PM
|
| |
Thanks Jack and to everybody else who’s out their experience forward. Funny thing is I actually started this thread to defend the Mark 2 haha. It was simply to highlight the fact that RAW processing software behaves differently with files which have been slightly modified in-camera, and you run into problems if the program does not apply the correct profile. In all honesty, having both the K1 and the Mark 2, I am perfectly satisfied with both but have actually concluded that the K1 suits my needs better. There really is no difference in AF speed in my experience but that’s because I don’t shoot Hockey games or horse-racing etc. For BIF, the K1 is brilliant with my DFA 150-450 ( though I’ve had to send it off to Japan to repair the loose ribbon cable :( )
I’m going to be selling my Mark 2 because I use Affinity and Lightroom for my workflow and prefer the K1’s retention of fine details and that there will never be any surprises when pulling up shadows with local adjustments (as I have already experienced this with some photos).
Stay safe everybody :)
|
|
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
04-04-2020, 05:20 PM
|
| |
Let's sort out this "dynamic range of K1 Mark II being crappy and giving purple" issue once and for all  (or do our best at least). This is inspired by Cameraville's multiple Lightroom-edited reviews of the underexposed Mark II images, where he was very disappointed with its purple blacks :lol:
We need to get away from this idea of RAW files being baked because, in my eyes, sometimes it seems they're cooked to near-enough perfectio in the Mark II. I'm shooting at ISO 6400 without an ounce of worry - with my K1 I really wouldn't have done this past ISO 3200, and even that would be a bit of a hesitation.
Cameraville is an awesome channel but he does not do enough to scrutinise the things he is doing. First of all, Lightroom is a pile of poo when it comes to Pentax support. I love everything about it, except camera support. Capture One and Affinity Photo do a much better job (though it took Capture One a good few years to even entertain the Pentax brand  )
He also needs to address the simpler but crucial things such as why is it really that the purple artefacts switch from the K! to Mark II as he zooms out? He says in the comments it's due to his PC loading these huge files but this is, I'm afraid, plain wrong. It's actually down to the compressed preview of what you're working on and how this is then processed into a JPEG. If you zoom right in to a test shot of a Mark II after bringing up the exposure by 4 or 5 stops (whatever you underexposed by) then you'll see that upon very close inspection the artefacts disappear in Lightroom, but zoom out a little (say 1:2) and they come back. This is especially apparent once colour noise reduction has been applied above a value of 1. Even with smoothness pushed to 100 it's still there, yet once again disappears on zooming in. When you go to develop a 100% quality large JPEG, the artefacts are there. When you go to develop a TIF, sometimes they're actually gone. Even freakier, when you adjust the tint the artefacts shift very randomly and, at times, either take over the whole photo or completely disappear.
In short, Lightroom needs to sort themselves out! Also, please let's not discuss the dynamic range "test" on DPReview of the K1 Mark II. The K1 photos use a 77mm FA Ltd and the K1 Mark II a DFA 24-70mm. But it's not so much about the lenses as it is about the lighting and that the scene is ever so slightly different. Just look at the champagne bottle reflections and the missing peacock feather on the top-right
Anyways, to prove to you guys how incredible the Mark II truly is I have made a +4EV adjustments profile for Capture One. Just use this as a "style" within the software. If you need help with this just let me know and I'll walk you through it. Honestly I have never seen such incredible image recovery at a 4-stop push. Well, maybe from a D810 but then the noise is equal to that of K1 whereas the Mark II does incredibly with noise.
Another thing I've wanted to mention is this idea of sacrificing fine details for ISO in the Mark II. We have to remember that any attempt to match the noise level in the K1 to that of a comparable K1 Mark II shot would mean a loss in fine details also - in some cases more severely than what Mark II achieves in-camera. Remember that RAW files are just numbers for the software to interpret. Factory-set processing carried out in camera is one of the most accurate ways of messing with those RAW files rather than relying on a bit of software that tries to cater for an entire industry.
So the Capture One "Style" (this is similar to what would be called a "preset" in Lightroom) is there to give you those deep blacks and eliminate any purple and magenta, without sacrificing those hues in any other non-shadow or non-black part of your image. I've not included any white balance changes since that's obviously best left for you to manually manage.
Let me just finalise this by saying that I bet by now you probably think "oh, here we go. Somebody who bought into the Mark II or got a K1 upgraded and is now reaching for sour grapes." Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I actually almost replaced my Mark II with a K1 when I saw those Cameraville videos a few months ago. However I decided to do my own testing and realised there's a lot more than meets the eye - quite literally. Also the AF of the Mark II is so much nicer for BIF and sports. Love it to bits
My attachment is below. Enjoy
I can also make a similar preset for Affinity Photo if anybody is interested.
|
|
Forum: Pentax Full Frame
04-10-2020, 06:34 AM
|
| |
A couple things:
The DFA 100mm WR macro is a truly astonishing lens. It really should be a limited lens simply because of its incredible edge-edge sharpness and the way it renders colours. It also seems rather diffraction-proof haha.
The CA will not be an issue at all. You’ll only see that being an issue with a bit of sun in your sight and shooting below f3.5. Otherwise, especially when shooting at f11 onwards for macro, it’s simply not there. I haven’t done any CA corrections for the photos I’ve posted here. Also it only costs about £400 brand new. My only wish would be for a focus limiter as the autofocus can definitely hunt a bit, being screwdrive. Then again I’m in MF most times anyhow so not such a problem. The MF is excellent. Really good at allowing fine adjustments.
Also the lens is absolutely wonderful for portraiture and funny enough, having used it at 2.8 for portraits, I can definitely speak for it’s insane sharpness and lack of CA, but as I say perhaps you’ll get a bit of that shooting wide open to 3.5 outdoors on a very sunny day.
As for the K1 Mark II, to be honest I’ve actually got both the K1 and K1 Mark II and I enjoy my K1 more because it lasts at extra 100 shots (I’ve tested this thoroughly, believe me) and I also enjoy the fact that pulling up exposure and shadows by a good 3 stops or more gives me zero purple artefacts. It’s incredible how much deeper the blacks are on the K1. And the noise reduction in K1 Mark II RAW files...why did they bother? The difference is insignificant and you actually lose a tiny bit of fine detail. I’m more than happy to post extensive proof of this. Autofocus is ever-so slightly better on the Mark II and tracking is more confident for BIF and sports but that’s about it. In all honesty that’s just comparing it to the K1...for sports I actually prefer to use my KP because the tracking definitely outperforms both FF cameras, and the frame-rate helps too.
Excuse the fruit and vegetable one. It was one of 20 focus-adjusted shots for a focus-stack :D
|
|
Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
04-05-2020, 07:58 AM
|
| |
Hey Roadboat24, I meant it as a way of addressing the purple artefacts on a Mark II once you've pushed the exposure by about 4 or 5 stops :)
Unless that's what you meant of course.
|
|
Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
02-20-2020, 11:39 AM
|
| |
A photo I took when I was first starting out and just got hold of my first ever Pentax. A Pentax K-5 for £190 from computer exchange with a kit lens. Then I got my first ever separate lens which was the fantastically versatile SMC 10-17mm fisheye. This particular photo was take in Bath University in the UK.
Thanks for looking :)
|
|
Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
03-02-2020, 02:53 AM
|
| |
Managed to get a D-FA 15-30 WR during Boxing Day sales. Was second hand but in mint condition. Couldn't be happier. Weight balances perfectly on K1 :)
Thank you all for contributing. I genuinely had a long hard look at all the options and decided that one of the main features should be some form of weather resistance.
Cheers
Dave
|
|
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
03-01-2020, 07:17 AM
|
| |
Hey so you've got the right idea but there's a fair bit that goes into this:
- The wider the lens the higher your depth of field for any given aperture
- Standing 1 metre farther away can almost double your depth of field
- When you pose people, ensure you don't pose them in a way that makes the closest and furthest subject eyes too far apart. When I do groups, and when others do, we ask them to stand diagonally so that we get a fairly consistent distance and can reduce the number of rows as we can now cram more people into each row :)
But to be honest focal length really is the big one here. To give you an idea, standing 4m away and shooting at f8 you would get a depth of field of 3.5m (when using a 50mm lens) and a depth of field of 15m (when using a 35mm lens).
Use this calculator and you can't go wrong :)
Most of all, enjoy the shoot!
Depth of Field (DoF) calculator | PhotoPills |
|
Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
01-02-2020, 05:41 AM
|
| |
I would like to nominate this photo
|
|
Forum: Weekly Photo Challenges
12-10-2019, 03:46 AM
|
| |
| |
|
Forum: Weekly Photo Challenges
12-14-2019, 02:18 PM
|
| |
Oh let’s not even start with that. Just awful :(
|
|
Forum: Weekly Photo Challenges
12-14-2019, 11:55 AM
|
| |
Thank you for calling it Yule <3 :)
Awesome photos!
|
|
Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-04-2019, 07:00 PM
|
| |
Feel free to browse, comment, ask questions etc
Thank you for looking, fellow Pentaxians :cool:
|
|
Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
11-19-2019, 09:36 AM
|
| |
To all defenders of the past:
Please remember what came before and what must have existed in the days when technology we consider to be “genuine” and “honest” and “true” today. When that technology was novel it, too, was criticised and any attempts to push the boundaries would have been viewed as some form of heresy. History repeats itself here over and over again.
Every single type of technology that has ever been created and exploited by humans has been exactly that - a way to exploit the natural laws of physics to create a projection of ourselves and to paint our imaginations upon a blank, increasingly technically advanced, canvas.
I would say that STATING how the piece of artistic work is produced is far more important than the “how” question itself in abstraction, so that the observer can gain depth into a scene.
With all respect, I trust everyone here already knows that the camera already does it’s own processing of RAW files (be it the type of sensor, the style of shutter, use of lights, manipulation of exposures, tone and hue balancing, dynamic range restriction, pixel shift, HDR, etc). I think it’s very important we ask ourselves, as artists, at what point do we draw the line? At the camera’s ability? Is the photographer one who can work all the functions of a camera? If so, why are we then limited by the decisions of the camera manufacturer to express ourselves? Will I be yet another heretic if I find a work-around for a limitation on my camera? Is a macro with a reversed lens any less valid than one taken with a dedicated macro lens of both are identical?)
At what point do we just come clean and admit that music, painting, doodles, photographs, dance, poetry and all other forms of emotional expression are there to question the limits of our existence? Otherwise we create shackles out of our very attempts to free ourselves of restraints.
I think that an individual who uses a camera as one of many tools to begin a journey into an expression of their own imagination is doing exactly that - using the camera as a tool. The same way the computer is a tool, the multiple photographs merged into one is a technique and the list goes on.
For the so-called purists out there, I put it to you that you’ll never be satisfied unless technology develops to such a point where the photograph is the image from your very eyes, at which point you might as well just use the funky camera on your phone. Because that’s why we use our sexy gadgets isn’t it? For the dynamic range, the creamy or interesting vintage bokeh, the telephoto capability with uncompromising image quality. Our tools of creation are just that. Tools. It’s how and why we use them in the way that we do that counts, and ultimately whether we can make somebody feel something profound, using our masterpiece, that truly matters.
Lastly, because art and class have always been a contentious couple, just because somebody can’t afford all the physical equipment does not mean that they should be socially reprimanded for trying to create something truly astonishing using alternative techniques.
|
|
Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
07-19-2019, 09:29 AM
|
| |
| |
|
Forum: Weekly Photo Challenges
05-07-2017, 07:58 AM
|
| |
Primrose gardens of Boston Manor park in London, UK. Shot with Pentax K-5 using SMC Pentax-M 50mm F1.7:
[ f/1.7, 1/1600s, ISO 100 (-5 EV) ]
|
