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Forum: General Talk 2 Days Ago  
Heads up about Ford wheel nuts.
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 37
Views: 783
Imagination contributes greatly to less accidents.

I have a set of snow tires and wheels for my wife's car. It's work to change the wheels twice a year but the lug bolts come off and on easily. On my other vehicles, those tires stay on for many years. Getting them to budge requires some effort.
Forum: General Talk 5 Days Ago  
Your vehicle: what do you have, why do you like it, and what do you not like?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 2,951
Views: 202,972
I watched the Rivian event for their midsize SUV called the R2*, coming in 2026. I thought it was pretty interesting. Of course the company has to survive that long. I want something electric but still don't see exactly the right car on the market, new or used, for some reasonable price.

*My wife will add D2 to the nameplate.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 5 Days Ago  
*istDL electrical mount connection exposure weirdness
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 12
Views: 402
I don't know if anyone ever shorted out the pins in the mount. I have a parts DL and should probably check to see how easy this is.

I really liked the split screen and I have one for two older cameras. I adapted quickly to the K-3 III viewfinder, though. It's rare for me to be that flexible but the K-3 III viewfinder is supposed to be very good.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 03-10-2024, 04:46 PM  
Raw vs jpeg
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 46
Views: 1,703
I know the technical distinctions between RAW and JPEG, but they aren't necessary. You just need to know a few things.

1. When you have a RAW file, you can change the white balance later. This is to prevent the problem you'd have with daylight color film in the camera, then you finish out the roll with indoor shots at a birthday party and the color would be all wrong. Today, who knows what lighting tech is in use. You need this - JPEG images can be fixed sometimes but not always.
2. A RAW file starts with more data and less manipulation done in advance, and that might come in handy if you botch something when shooting.
3. Last, you'll have to use some software to make all these choices after shooting. The extra steps take time. Recent cameras are good enough so you don't always need to micromanage every detail, and maybe just don't want to.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 03-07-2024, 11:10 AM  
SF10 - need help to fix!
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 1
Views: 244
The mirror is probably stuck in the up position. One wild guess - there are light seals around the mirror that keep light from the viewfinder from getting to the film. Those can get gummy and glue the mirror up. I'm not sure whether this happens with the SF10 era of cameras. Another guess is the battery is too old. It may have died mid cycle. Even if you purchased a new battery, it may have been old stock.

Some of the mechanism for the mirror is under the bottom plate, about the only thing easy and quick to access. You might be able to poke the right thing and get the mirror to complete its cycle. It might give you a clue about the internal condition of the camera. I have taken apart a broken SF1 and seen corrosion in the bottom plate area. I assume water that got into the camera ended up there.
Forum: General Talk 02-29-2024, 11:25 AM  
Your latest de-acquisition
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 999
Views: 89,975
I de-acquisitioned my natural gas service. That only took six months to sort out.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 02-14-2024, 01:02 PM  
Mirror lockup vs mirror down shooting
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 13
Views: 597
I have tested that and other things by taking long exposures of planes at night. If you don't get an even streak of navigation lights across the frame, something is causing vibration in the system.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 02-05-2024, 10:05 AM  
Colour issue
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 30
Views: 1,302
I find that a scene with all wood in it needs +1 Ev compensation. If you have some moderate areas of shiny metal like polished brass hinges, be cautious with Ev compensation because those spots can get too bright. I have some assembly areas with white Formica surfaces which also cause the meter to underexpose a project with the Formica as a background.

A light tent is a good idea for smaller wood items. Some woodworking supply places have similar tents for spray finishes.
Forum: General Talk 01-31-2024, 03:01 PM  
Do you loved or hated touch control ?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 25
Views: 703
My dog is great at a touch screen. He will pull up some screen I've never seen before by flicking his ear or whatever. Takes me a while to get back to what I was doing.

I just saw a Youtube video on how the touch keyboard didn't work at all in iPhone prototype testing. They had to add in the ability to guess the next letter you were likely to use and expand the touch zone around it. So you're not actually typing, you're confirming the keyboard's guess.

I think of an occasional accident in the finance world where a trader accidentally enters an extra zero and purchases or sells a million of something instead of 100,000. I think they blamed the May 2009 Flash crash on that. Other traders saw the mistaken order and were kind of twitchy because markets had slid since Sept. 2008. They reacted by selling their own stuff too fast. Anyway, they call it a fat finger error.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 01-31-2024, 01:33 PM  
Stuck "adapter ring" in my Pentax Autobellows
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 15
Views: 753
All the good ideas are taken above, darn it.

It looks like you have access to both sides though it's limited in the back. It would be useful to grip just the Wollensak adapter on its front and back faces with something like a clamp or vise. With enough grip on those faces, then unscrew it. In my imagination, that keeps the adapter from expanding. I have wood, vises and time so my solution is geared for my situation.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 01-27-2024, 01:27 PM  
The K-50 standard lens vs. old Spotmatic telephoto
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 27
Views: 870
In the 18-55 shot, the camera was very likely to choose a focus point in the foreground, maybe the bushes or the house roof. The point of focus really matters for comparing lens sharpness. I think you can open the original image in the Pentax software and it'll tell you which focus point was used, but I couldn't tell you how to get it to do that.

If you had the companion lens to the 18-55, the DA 50-200, and you set up a comparison between that and an S-M-C Takumar 200mm f4, the Takumar would be sharper. In the center third of the frame, they'd be close. The farther you get out from the center, the larger the difference. The DA 50-200 isn't considered that good but the same is true for the well-regarded DA 55-300 and an S-M-C Takumar 300mm f4. The pretty good DA 18-135 is nowhere near the sharpness of an S-M-C Takumar 135mm f3.5. The DA 18-55 won't hold up to the S-M-C Takumar 55mm f2. This is where you can see that sharpness is not as important as you might think. In real photos, you aren't looking at the edges or corners of the image. Modern lens coatings make colors and contrast better with a new lens. You get a zoom with AF and aperture adjustments on the camera. The zooms are lighter too, maybe even weather resistant. All that adds up. It's fun for me to have both types.
Forum: General Talk 01-25-2024, 01:27 PM  
What problem can't be solved on EV ?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 105
Views: 2,468
Some math: NZ vehicles cover around 48 billion kilometers a year (rounded up from the numbers I found for 2021). I am going to use 6 km per kilowatt as a consumption number, could be wrong but it's a number a lot of EVs can hit. That's 8 billion watts, 8 gigawatts. Let's make it 20 gigawatts to account for inefficient power transfers from grid to vehicle. Wikipedia says the NZ grid generated 42,858 gigawatts in 2020.

I keep looking at this to discover my math error and I don't see it.

Edit: I figured it out in the shower. I went from kilowatts to watts up there - so it's 8,000 gigawatts to 20,000 gigawatts which is a completely different result.

https://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Report/AnnualFleetStatistics.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_New_Zealand
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 01-25-2024, 11:07 AM  
Shutter speed settings
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 10
Views: 539
The scene is too dark for the meter. The K-70 meter works from Ev 0 to Ev 22. The EXIF for your photo shows f8, ISO 800 and 31.6 seconds shutter speed, which is about Ev -2.0. The camera was probably trying to tell you that it couldn't meter the scene correctly, by blinking the display. This happens so rarely, it just seems like the camera is doing something weird that you don't understand.

When it is too dark for the meter, you can still use M mode as you did (or B), and the camera will take a shot with those settings. Other modes rely on the meter for settings so they won't work well. I usually take several shots and vary the settings each time. Like in your case, I would try 15 seconds, 30 seconds and a minute. Later on you can see which image worked best.

At 30 seconds shutter speed, your camera might start automatically taking a second shot to reduce noise. This behavior also is confusing because the camera appears to lock up for another shot, then return to normal operation. And it only happens with very long exposures. There is a setting for turning that off, called something like Slow Shutter Speed NR.
Forum: General Talk 01-25-2024, 10:06 AM  
What problem can't be solved on EV ?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 105
Views: 2,468
Sodium ion batteries are safer in one aspect than lithium-based ones. They can be completely discharged, so they are safer to ship.

In the US, coal is too expensive. Some coal power plants are being repurposed to use their grid connections for other energy sources. One example is this project in Utah, which takes advantage of a former coal plant that exported electricity to California, lots of space for solar or wind, local natural gas production and some convenient salt caverns for hydrogen storage. Add in a few billion dollars and if it works, you get a power plant fueled by hydrogen. The hydrogen can come from natural gas refining (supposedly a temporary stopgap) or using solar or wind power to make it. They can run the electrolysis whenever they get wind or solar, store the hydrogen in the salt caverns, and run the power plant whenever electricity is needed.

Hubs | ACES Delta

It seems like they've thought of everything but it'll come down to selling power at a competitive price.

Hydrogen powered cars exist but when you look into the details, they are not practical. In the US, you can operate a hydrogen powered car if you live in LA and don't go too far away. That's about it. Hydrogen car fires aren't going to be better than battery EV car fires, although they are likely to be a lot quicker.
Forum: General Talk 01-24-2024, 03:19 PM  
What problem can't be solved on EV ?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 105
Views: 2,468
I looked for an explanation on how sodium ion batteries are safer, but no luck. I thought sodium was too reactive to even expose to humid air.

Some EVs are now using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, considered safer than lithium nickel manganese cobalt (NMC). But even a common lead acid battery is kind of dangerous and toxic.
Forum: General Talk 01-23-2024, 03:32 PM  
What problem can't be solved on EV ?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 105
Views: 2,468
I just want to mention, Tesla's current US powertrain warranty is 8 years 100,000 miles. Hyundai is 10 years/100,000 miles.
Forum: General Talk 01-23-2024, 10:07 AM  
What problem can't be solved on EV ?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 105
Views: 2,468
Tesla talked about batteries that were easily exchangeable when they introduced the Supercharger network. They showed the chargers you see today, but that was the slower alternative. The other part was supposed to be a robot creeper that crawled under your car, unbolted your battery, exchanged it with a fully charged one and you were on your way in 5 minutes. Since they didn't even do this with the semi, it was either too costly or too complicated. Maybe customers were just OK with charging.

Renault has a battery lease program option in Europe which sounds like your idea, but I don't know the details.

A standardized battery might not fly for passenger cars, just because it might be a competitive disadvantage. But lots of vehicles aren't passenger cars. Delivery vans, taxis, buses, shuttles and trucks can be more generic, so a standard battery would be the modern version of a Volvo truck with a Cummins engine.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 01-22-2024, 09:15 AM  
Need to change my pentax k x :(
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 15
Views: 637
If you don't mind camera repair, a K-30 with a failed aperture block solenoid would be cheap. Rob the flash solenoid from the K-x, don't lose any parts and you should be good. If you don't want to repair one, I would not get a K-30 or K-50 because of the uncertain aperture block status.

The K-7 should be cheap enough. A K20D has almost the same sensor but not as good rear screen and some other features.

I feel like the K-5 IIs is overpriced and K-3 prices have fallen. But this depends on what cameras and condition you can find in your area.

I think the models that don't have a plug for the remote are the K-m/K2000, K-x, K-r and K-500.
Forum: General Talk 01-21-2024, 10:09 AM  
What problem can't be solved on EV ?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 105
Views: 2,468
Today's battery tech has room for improvement in so many areas. Lighter, but also smaller, cheaper, better in the cold, charge faster, last longer, easier to make, not as flammable... Battery evolution is historically slow. Lots of new technologies have been proposed but are still in the plodding slow process of proving whether they can meet any of the above goals.

One example is solid state batteries. I think they hit most of the goals I listed above. They exist; small solid state batteries have been produced. The remaining problem is manufacturing large batteries suitable for vehicles at a reasonable cost. This tech is not all that revolutionary and has been in development for years. I think the optimistic predictions are now for 2026 models. Tesla was supposed to solve some issues with their 4680 battery, which is pretty much a bigger version of the current tech. Tesla still can't make these as fast as they want. I don't know if any other technology has gone beyond laboratory demonstrations. It would be nice if battery tech could develop like digital storage - some cost hitches going from floppies to hard drives, then solid state looks good but is expensive and limited, then it gets better. But you can't just skip all the work.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 01-20-2024, 01:54 PM  
Histogram ??
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 11
Views: 539
I know my K-7 had histograms for the separate red, blue and green channels as an optional display, and all my later cameras. I don't know when this was introduced. The reason you want this feature is that the meter can look at a whole scene and suggest an exposure that maxes out one channel. Usually it is red or blue - the classic photo is a red flower surrounded by dark green foliage. You might get a photo of a red blob, most of the flower blown out, surrounded by nice green leaves. The basic histogram won't show this channel issue as clearly. Some cameras have metering for each color channel to reduce the problem. If your camera has the RGB histograms, they are a useful tool to check up on how smart your meter is. If not, be cautious of scenes with solid red or blue elements that are important to the image, especially smaller details that the meter might discount.

You don't always need a nice-looking histogram to get a good image. A good example is a photo of the full moon, say with a 55-300mm lens at 300mm on APS-C. The moon won't take up enough area in the image, and the rest of the scene is black. If you get a histogram with a peak that's near the middle, your image probably has a very overexposed moon, just a white blob. A photo that shows some moon details will have a histogram way to the left. Lots of times I have images where some unimportant parts are overexposed and the histogram shows that. But the parts I care about are fine. The meter and histogram are advice not rules.
Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion 01-18-2024, 12:41 PM  
Pentax M lens coatings
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 16
Views: 783
The coatings are very durable in my experience but there is always that kryptonite-like solvent. "Glass cleaner" can be a mix of alcohol and ammonia and does attack some lens coatings. In my experience, Windex does not harm Pentax coatings, but older photographers often have dire warnings about it.

Heating up the screws should help. The idea is that everything expands, then you let it cool off. When the screw and mount cool off and shrink, the bond between them breaks.

I watch this guy on YouTube, Andrew Camarata. He's always fixing some old heavy equipment with frozen bolts. He'll try all the common techniques - more leverage, hammer taps, power tools, heating the bolt. Then he gets out a torch and melts it off. Not recommended for lenses. :)
Forum: General Photography 01-18-2024, 10:15 AM  
A stolen tripod recovery story
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 2
Views: 751
This photographer found his stolen tripod for sale on eBay and has a long story about getting it back.

https://youtu.be/Ui5E8SlGbU4?si=Rd32PGfU8AL8h3uP
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 01-13-2024, 09:42 AM  
SMC Pentax-M 50mm F1.7 on a K-X and astro :)
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 45
Views: 1,175
There has been a lot of forum talk over the years about Pentax not having certain camera features. In my opinion, the missing remote shutter release port on the K-x was a serious annoyance. I really notice it now because I exercise the old cameras with weird projects like once a day photos of the garden. Some day I'll take the K-x apart and sneak in a shutter release port.
Forum: General Talk 01-10-2024, 12:28 PM  
Ads?? Do you ever take notice?
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 31
Views: 879
Once you're beyond 50 years old, most advertisers don't care about you anyway. They already locked you into Coke not Pepsi 40 years ago, job done, where is the next group of kids. A small subset of products like drugs, insurance and scams still target older people, but you may notice those ads have a different feel about them.

I gave a younger person a ride in my 2002 pickup truck recently. When I got it, it was a mid-level trim, mid-size truck. Most purchasers were getting the equivalent thing. The younger person walking up to it said he needed to get his own truck "like this". But he was clearly disappointed - manual transmission, manual windows, no screen, no seat heaters, no subwoofer. Advertising has told him to expect a whole level of truck. I did the same thing in 2002 - someone down the street has a late 70s version of my truck and that was too bare bones for me.
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 01-08-2024, 09:51 AM  
Manual focus through OVF on a dslr (K1ii)
Posted By Just1MoreDave
Replies: 35
Views: 1,439
Lenses that aren't very sharp wide open make manual focus difficult. The in-focus zone doesn't pop out. That's where focusing screens help because they exaggerate the detail in some way to make it obvious. You can see the difference if you have another sharper lens of similar focal length, like a 90mm macro vs. an 85mm portrait.

The green hexagon is an alternative. You can use that to locate a zone while turning the focus ring where the hexagon lights up and goes out. Sometimes the zone is slightly different going the opposite direction. The actual point of focus is between those points.
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