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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-17-2024, 07:16 AM
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For me digital was a huge step forward as my medium was colour transparencies and digital gave me the 'darkroom' control which in the film days was really only open to the b/w folks. To be fair you could, if you shot colour negatives for printing, get some benefit from your own darkroom but it always seemed to me that little creative/corrective control was available and for colour you basically had to process it correctly rather than do gross and unrealistic colour mistakes/manipulations , especially for the transparencies I used.
That said, for all digital's advantages, I think there *is* a difference in the look of film and digital images and that film images can look more natural, or at least less processed due to their different characteristics. Digital images tend to have their tones expressed as an 'S' curve while film evolved to have a few stops of latitude allowing more tonal range in the mid tones i.e. it was like an 'S' but with a linear section in the middle, also digital images tend to have increased colour saturation in the highlights while both film and the human eye see reduced colour saturation in the highlights. (For those interested recent versions of 'darktable' are making a genuine attempt to improve colour handling in general and in particular to allow more film-like rendering of images).
So, for me, I'll likely never get rid of my film cameras but may never use them again. I almost certainly won't buy another film camera as, even if I did, it likely wouldn't give me as much pleasure as using my original MX would.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-08-2024, 04:47 AM
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Don't get me wrong, I still have my old MX which I purchased with my first salary cheque and even ended up using it without the battery and a separate incident meter so it truly was a purely mechanical/clockwork camera, and it is a thing of beauty, and I love it. And it has proved far more robust and reliable than my LX.
But
The days when it was cheaper (or at least as cheap) to lovingly hand craft precision engineering than use electronics are long gone, trying to make something like this today would be outrageously expensive and impractical which might add to its loveliness but likely wouldn't do Pentax, and hence us, any favors. A 'modern' slr that uses an electronically controlled shutter and full compatibility with the lens range would surely perform better. Perform being an nicely ambiguous word that could either apply to photographic performance or sales figures :-)
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
04-26-2014, 02:39 PM
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The rendition is nice, but the LR processing has introduced a nasty halo on those mountains.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
04-26-2014, 03:25 AM
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Don't worry support for K3 PEFs is coming in darktable. Raw support in darktable comes from the RawSpeed project and we have already supplied Klaus PEFs from the K3 which he has in hand although darktable hasn't yet updated to his latest libraries. Personally I just take DNG in camera and haven't had mine set to PEFs for three years or so now even though dt handles PEFs from my kit but each to their own. As a stopgap I think some of the guys to whom the exif data is particularly interesting use exiftool or similar to read the DNG and rewrite non-standard field info into standard fields dt uses - and there was even some talk on the darktable forum of integrating that with darktable's LUA scripting engine so it is done automatically when an image is opened. That's about all I know as the extra lens detail doesn't personally interest me, my lenses are recognised even from the DNG file information so the lens aberration correction module can work properly and that's all I need.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
04-25-2014, 11:06 PM
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If speed is your thing you will just love darktable. It's written by folks fanatical about speed and response, everything is real time, mulithreaded and if you have a decent openCL capable graphics card darktable will offload it's processing to that and go even faster.
---------- Post added 04-25-2014 at 11:19 PM ----------
Lightzone is very nice. It was groundbreaking in its approach and usability when it came out but in the years it languished unloved darktable has leapt ahead in power and added in the selective area editing capabilities formerly unique to LZ in the open source world.
Today darktable is more capable but more confusing. LZ is great for someone who is new to post processing and not an image processing graduate :) yet it still has the power to produce compelling results from a simple and attractive interface.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
04-25-2014, 10:35 PM
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Here's another take, as has been said it's so much about what you personally like in the image. It is cropped just a little and processed with saturation and global tone mapping adjustments rather than split it into seperate areas and have tried to keep the soft toned feel it has.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-28-2014, 11:54 PM
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Watching with interest here :)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-08-2014, 04:03 AM
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It is worth considering the not very much talked about K30 as well, which is also at very good and at close out prices.
Although nominally a lower range model than the 5's the K30 is more modern and responsive and IMO better than the old K5. I think you would have to put the K5ii and iis substantially ahead of the 30 but they are more expensive and it still isn't a completely clear choice if you really want the 30's focus peaking for those old lenses. Comparing between them is difficult as the 5ii(s) models are ex top of range and better built but an older generation than the K30 (which is more like a cut down K3) so the balance of features is different and not a simple hierarchy. So look hard at what *you* want and how important the different features are to you.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-24-2014, 04:56 AM
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I still have all my Pentax cameras but as a sad commentary on modern times I have:
Just two bodies (Mx and LX) which was all I needed in 30 years of film photography and
Four digital bodies already (1*stD, K7, K-01 and K30).
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-24-2014, 04:48 AM
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Yes I still have my original 1*stD and probably will keep it for ever. As has been said the colours are good, making large prints from it is perfectly possible and it's a nice compact but solid camera to use.
But let's not get carried away - It is only capable of matching current kit in favourable light conditions where you can use low ISO and fit everything withing the camera's DR range. When it is very contrasty or you are shooting at medium+ ISO levels it is way behind current generation sensors.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-30-2013, 05:11 AM
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As a simplified formula for one setting, you might just add 1/3 to the shortest focal length of your zoom - it won't be too far out.
Personally I tend to set mine to something a bit longer than half way between the zoom extremes. This is of course entirely the wrong thing to do to get a compromise between all settings but the shots I tend to take in a hurry tend to be at the long end and for wider shots where I have more time I can reset to the proper value - but thats just me ...
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-21-2012, 05:07 AM
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I think standard advice to new raw shooters might be:
Just try to expose the shot correctly. Whether you are shooting jpeg or raw it is generally good advice and is going to yield a good image without excessive pp work needed. For absolute optimum quality such that highlights are *almost* overexposed, but be prepared for extra work as the image will usually look overexposed before pp.
And as regards software I would say beware of those telling you to spend substantial money. I suggest trying the best of free software first and then only if you don't like it spend the money as paid for software is not necessarilly better. My personal recommendations on free raw software go to RawTherapee if you are using Windows or for Linux either Raw Therapee, or DarkTable (which I have come to prefer). There is also Fotoxx which not only does raw processing but has more editing features.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
03-10-2012, 08:37 AM
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I've found the best reality check is a favourite print on the wall. My wall has a favourite taken with the old 1stD printed at 16x10 alongside ones from the K7 and it lacks nothing in comparison neither to my eyes or those of visiting friends. Every time I see that photo I smile and realise I just don't need to spend money on more pixels :)
Caveat: That image was only very lightly cropped (aside from that necessary for aspect ratio differences), was very carefully processed & upscaled to 300 dpi for printing. You can't get the same results with heavy crops but on this print you can eyeball it from inches away.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
02-03-2012, 04:20 PM
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Snap. Although I have moved completely from Digikam+RT to darktable now, darktable is becoming a quite stunning application so that plus a bit of Gimp on occasion is all I generally need.
That said I recommend a look also at the unfashionable but rather special Fotoxx as well. It's the only open source high bit depth raw editor I know offering selective editing and most definitely worth investigation. Also, if you do your own printing, there is the really rather good PhotoPrint to finish it off with true output resolution sharpening.
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Forum: Welcomes and Introductions
01-30-2012, 07:29 AM
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To understand your problem and just how short of light in these venues you are: When you shoot at 3200 ISO what aperture and shutter speed are you using? High ISO noise aside, are the results correctly exposed or are you still suffering underexposure? Are you shooting in raw or jpeg?
And about how much do you want to spend improving things?
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
01-29-2010, 10:44 AM
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As you are using some open source software here are a couple of options here. If you use the (thoroughly excellent) Digikam for DAM/basic editing/raw conversion that is fully colour aware and capablwe of soft proofing. You can call out to GIMP from this for layer based editing and optionally, either with or without Digikam, print through Photoprint which provides an excellent colour aware printing tool that has its own softproof window as well. So thats at least two ways of getting softproof into a free workflow :)
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
01-06-2010, 04:15 PM
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Not that I use Raw+jpeg, but it seems a very simple problem to solve.
Assumption: There is some sort of logic in file placement for your workflow i.e. you either store your raws and jpegs in the same directory or have matching directory pairs to hold them or some way of knowing where a jpeg is stored relative to its raw image.
Surely all you have to do is to decide which is the 'master' image in the workflow. i.e. if you delete an image and don't want to bother deleting both you always delete the raw (or the jpeg, whichever you prefer - but make it consistent). Then just schedule a script to run daily or weekly or whatever that just reads each jpeg file, checks to see if the raw exists, and if not deletes the jpeg (or the other way round).
If you are using linux and need it I'll produce the (trivial) script for you. If you are on Windows someone else can write the batch file ....
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
12-22-2009, 05:22 AM
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Neither a 35mm nor medium format DSLR are available from Pentax. Until and if they do nobody knows what their characteristics will be and what they will be best suited for. There have been many medium format cameras with widely different characteristics and uses - so generalisation isn't possible.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-22-2009, 02:33 AM
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I would try the 'refocus' plugin that is available in Digikam, Gimp etc and get as much from that as possible. After that you can apply whichever conventional sharpening techniques you prefer to finish it up, I tend to like the the wavelet denoise functions over unsharp mask myself but there are so many to choose from.
I guess the refocus tool is available in the PS world somewhere as well but no longer use that myself so am not sure. In any event the tool works completely differently than conventional sharpening techniques, I don't think you can get it as sharp with just refocus as with unsharp mask etc. but the two together are complimentary.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-21-2009, 03:47 PM
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OK, but photoprint is fully colour managed.
So, if you have a reasonable profile for your printer/paper/ink combination and your camera rendering is reasonably accurate to srgb or adobeRGB you should get a reasonable print. To improve on that print you need to improve on that profile, I'm struggling to get Argylle CMS to talk to an old borrowed spectrometer to do that but the other approach is to by some paper from Fotospeed who will then profile for free your own print on that paper - job done. Or pay someone to create a custom profile on your paper of choice.
Photoprint will also do soft proofing if you have your monitor profiled. Again Argylle runs fine on Ubuntu and display proofing devices it supports are quite cheap so, unlike spectrometers, that is easily done. With both printer and display profiles you do get matching prints and on screen display. As you do from Gimp printing as recommended on the Ubuntu forums. The difference is that printing from Gimp (which should also work well if you have good profiles) does not give you output resolution sharpening nor high quality automatic upscaling to printer resolution - so its all a whole lot less convenient.
You need a decent printer (and preferably monitor) profile to get anywhere really - trying to adjust the driver colour settings by hand I found a waste of time and an exercise in frustration. If the profiles that come with your HP printer are not good enough - I would sugest getting a better one, and the best is a custom one for your own printer and inks, and you can get one free from Fotospeed.
Good profiles=good prints :-)
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-19-2009, 02:48 PM
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I have two recommendations for you:
1) Try Raw Therapee which is free and a really high quality raw developer.
And as you have developed your own film perhaps a look at one that isn't free but very 'right' in how it approaches PP for a photographer.
2) Lightzone.
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Forum: Photo Critique
12-18-2009, 03:17 PM
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The composition of the two photographs is different, but ignoring that, I prefer the rendering from the jpeg. I don't have a problem with the sky but the raw processing has exaggerated the sharpness and contrast a bit too much for my tastes.
And that comes from someone who has never taken a jpeg in his camera in his life. Always raw (except when I ran out of storage space once).
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-18-2009, 03:10 PM
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I must confess I can't remember how I installed photoprint myself, whether it was from the tarball or repository, but have you tried 'sudo apt-get install photoprint' ?
As regards replacing the printer, although I have much preferred HP and Canon printers in terms of usability I came to the conclusion that on Linux there is better support for Epsons, and you obviously can't fault the print quality their better models can reproduce. I can't recommend doing the same but I took a big chance and bought an r2400 with blocked nozzles on ebay and managed to free them up, just stumping up the cash and getting a new r2880 would be more sensible. I am using a Lyson CIS and their inks - which I can unhesitatingly recommend if you are prepared to use their (provided) profiles, this is necessary as they use their inks to best advantage, exceeding Epson colour gamut in places, rather than attempting an exact match with no profile adjustment.
I'm running Ubuntu 64 bit as well but still at 9.04 on my main host with photoprint. I do however have 9.10 running in 9.10 64 bit virtual guest so, if all else fails, I could try to compile it and ship you a binary from 9.10. It is worth some effort to get photoprint operational.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-18-2009, 09:42 AM
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It looks as though NN is doing more than just noise removal here - some sharpening & maybe local contrast enhancement as well?
I suppose it shouldn't surprise me, some of the open source noise reduction tools have options to include a bit of sharpening etc with the noise removal as well and its anyone's guess what the commercial packages actually do. I did mentally tag NN as 'just noise eremoval' before though.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-18-2009, 09:34 AM
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Hi Dan,
I see you saw my recommendation for Photoprint on the 'other forum', that's worth using for all the good stuff it does, and I get a good match between what it shows in the print preview and final print on my epson.
Gutenprint seems to be the business for good quality output and offers lots of control - I haven't had to use any of that though as Photoprint with a suitable paper/ink/profile set works fine with gutenprint in its default settingsand/or those driver settings Photoprint uses.
Which HP printer do you have?
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