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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
08-07-2012, 08:22 PM
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So the K5 coupled with a "WR" or DA* lens is fully "weather sealed" at least according to all online reference I can find. What I can't find is first hand information about the camera being used in "weather". I've seen the youtube video where a soldier covers his K5 and DA* lens in Afgan dust and sand, then then rinses it off in the shower, as well as people rinsing the camera under faucets but these seem more to me as novelty one-time demonstrations. I have some pictures I would like to take in heavy rainfall, and I'm wondering if the weather seals on the K5 are up to the task. The camera's going to be exposed to the rain and wind, and I plan on pushing buttons and twisting dials. I wouldn't expect trouble from one of Pentax's silly looking water-proof point and shoots, but the K5 is far more complex and has a lot more buttons.
Have any of you used the K5 (or K7) out in the rain, not just a sprinkle, but coming down cats and dogs style? Not just a story about how it started raining walking home from a hike and the camera half-hid under a shirt or something, but actually working the camera (and lens) in a heavy rain.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
09-30-2011, 05:00 PM
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I captured this light show Monday night ... I was really frustrated with how slow the K-x is with its stupid DFS feature that cannot be disabled. I only captured two passable images, and the show was over. Despite a conservative ISO 1600 and DFS, there seems to be an awful lot of noise in the photos. It was still great to see this rare (for my latitude) phenomenon.
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
05-31-2011, 06:32 PM
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I'm headed out to the desert next week, and one of my goals is to photograph a time lapse of the night sky. For whatever reason, Hoya chose not to bless us with a built in interval timer on the K-x, nor a wired remote port. They did give us a single shot infrared remote, and that was enough.
Reverse engineering their remote protocol, I programmed a little chip to pretend it's a "Remote F" and trigger the shutter remotely. A single button programs in any interval from 1/2 second to 59 seconds. On two AA batteries, I expect the timer to have a runtime of weeks, but that's untested as of yet.
I have a more detailed write-up here:
justDIY Project Log Pentax IR Interval Timer
and this is the finished project:
So far I've tested it out twice, first for 30 min and ~90 exposures, the second for 7 hours and 800+ exposures ... this video is from the short test:
You Tube
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src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mt0pTMDCKvI?controls=1" allowfullscreen>
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Any thoughts or feedback?
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Forum: Travel, Events, and Groups
05-31-2011, 08:25 AM
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I'll be in Moab next week hiking around the Moab and Torrey areas - anyone else planning to take their Pentax on vacation in the desert?
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-16-2010, 08:53 PM
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ahh the mighty google ... eventually I found a post on another forum, the trick is to tape a piece of RC (regular photo paper) to the canvas. I left about 1/4" hang out 'past' the bottom of the canvas, it loads and prints like a dream now - and I just reuse the rc paper again and again ... almost time to reorder ink!
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-16-2010, 07:38 PM
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Question:
How are folks loading large cut sheets of canvas into their printers?
The long story:
My xmas present to myself was a r1900 (hard to resist that huge rebate)... andI'm wanting to experiment with different paper types.
I picked up some 13x19 no-name "premium matte canvas" from atlex, during their holidays sale and I'm having a devil of a time loading it
I spent about an hour on the phone with Epson, to their credit, they didn't blame the paper or try to cop-out with the excuse "it's not Epson paper, so it won't work", but they did indicate the only problem is pilot error - I'm not loading it right somehow.
The problem goes as this.... I slide the sheet into the manual feed (rear single sheet feed), after 3-4 tries, the printer grabs the paper and takes it in.
now I go into photoshop and hit print... after a little delay, the printer starts trying to adjust the paper, backing it out, feeding it in again, etc... then I get the paper jam light.
according to Epson, this is because the printer's sensor is detecting the paper was not loaded perfectly straight. That may well be, but I've had it pretty darn close a few times, and the printer still rejects it.
I need some tips on making this work right... thanks!
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Forum: Travel, Events, and Groups
05-27-2010, 07:01 PM
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2009 was awesome, huge crowds but I didn't have any trouble getting around, and didn't notice any violence. Of course, I wasn't a typical American, trying to drive the 1 mile between the fireworks and my hotel... so I guess that's why so many complained about "congestion". I walked from near the fountain back to my hotel on wacker and michigan, changed clothes and took a bus to dinner.
That was LAKESHORE after the fireworks ... ten lanes wide and filled with people!
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Forum: Travel, Events, and Groups
05-27-2010, 11:38 AM
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Anyone from the boards headed to the Taste? Looks like it is being scaled back a lot from the 2009 show, which is sad since this is 30th anniversary and all. Worst of all, only one fireworks show this year, and it's only lasting 15 min :(
I'm headed down for an extended independence day weekend.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-14-2010, 02:47 PM
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I posted to both Craig's and Freecycle ... lots of calls and a few busy-bodies stopped by but no takers. Free wood is one thing, if it's cut and split ... having to wrestle 300-500-800 LB pieces to get that free wood is another.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-11-2010, 06:15 PM
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I recently had three big trees cut-down on my property, and to save money, I elected to clean-up the brush myself. Most of my front yard and almost the entire back yard is filled with limbs, branches and leaves.
BEFORE
AFTER
View the album here:
Picasa Web Albums - Gordon - Tree Cut |
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-10-2010, 11:51 AM
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WOW ... a big $10 a month for a software maintenance agreement, that's "mighty generous"
Software maintenance is the best fleecing deal there is, a license to print money! In the government sector where I do some consulting work, the customer pays more per year for software maintenance and support than they pay for the software to begin with, and largely with nothing to show for it - it's not like the vendor is installing a new version every 6 months, or even fixing bugs found unless they're very serious.
Bugs in the firmware should get fixed for free, and as a sign of good will from the manuf. New features should only be included with new bodies, not shoe-horned into old ones. Gotta give the manuf. a bone, doesn't make sense for them to keep people happy with 2-5-7 year old bodies.
With the amazing resale prices on camera gear, there's no reason you can't upgrade your body every year or two if you want; selling your old one for exactly what you paid for it, it's like renting the camera for free, the payment was just a security deposit. I wish other consumer electronics held their value like cameras do!
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-09-2010, 07:19 PM
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ok, so nothing postive about this picture - how about some negatives, so I can 'get it right' according to the herd for next time :)
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-09-2010, 12:17 PM
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I didn't even notice until zoomed in during PP, but this leaf is covered with tiny hairs, and the camera/lens picked them up. I'm usually not a pixel peeper, but I"m proud of this one even zoomed in.
This is a faux HDR; to preserve highlights on the leaves, I created three separate jpeg exposures from the raw, and then tone-mapped them in PS, plus a little tweak to contrast and color temperature.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
05-09-2010, 11:53 AM
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Breaking in my new-to-me FA28/2.8. It's softer than my M28/2.8 wide open, or "dreamy" as I've seen it referred to in a review, but I like the auto-focus and field of view, should be a good walk around for me. Cropped to 16:9 for a Mother's day wallpaper.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-03-2010, 06:05 AM
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So far this is just words on paper, there hasn't been any litigation on the fact yet. The words on paper are designed to suckle money from the likes of Rupert Murdoch, George Lucas, etc, not Joe the Photographer. When it was announced House was filmed on a Canon, I'm sure the mpeg group made a note in their little black book to pay Mr. Murdoch a visit after 2015 and ask for some huge chunk of change.
How is the mpeg licensing group even going to know about Joe the Photographer, unless your reseller rats you out?
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-03-2010, 05:54 AM
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-01-2010, 07:38 AM
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Yes, if you shoot in RAW or RAW+, you can go into playback mode and edit the photos in-camera, turning the various corrections on/off, as well as changing the color mode (bright, natural, etc).
You can also post-process the raw with the bundled program from Pentax, or in your favorite full featured photo-editor.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-30-2010, 07:36 PM
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Out of forty or so missed shots, I grabbed one worth sharing... settings still weren't right for a great capture, was afraid to push the ISO too much, with so much black the noise would show real bad. I dialed down to F5.6 but couldn't get the lightning to perform afterward.
Larger version here.
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Forum: Photo Critique
04-30-2010, 12:46 PM
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The cupcake itself looks tasty! :)
In my opinion the cropped knife, and your reflection in it is distraction for my eyes.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-30-2010, 05:31 AM
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Recharables certainly suck in cold weather. The energy density of small lithium ion packs needs improvement. For $40 the D-LI50 provides 12 watt-hours of energy. For $20, a four pack of 2.9 aH nimh batteries provides 14 watt-hours. Two more watts for half the price. Of course, the sacrafice being cold weather operation.
Pentax should head out to the bleeding edge and adopt one of the new lithium based electrolytes that provide a higher energy density - I think it was either Panasonic or Toshiba that recently announced a 6 fold increase for their 18650 size cells (that is a laptop pack/ hybrid car size). Of course, we'd need a bigger body to hold such a battery.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-29-2010, 01:47 PM
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agreed with noah, turn off all the corrections for the fastest display. if you shoot in raw, you can always enable those corrections afterward in camera for the keepers, or do it in PP.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-29-2010, 01:08 PM
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has anyone heard of eyefi doing a deal with the X2 and google? I'd be happy to pony up the $100 or so for the X2, provided I can get some additional google space with it. Buying the older 4gb sdhc card with their current promo doesn't seem safe with the K-x.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-29-2010, 05:38 AM
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Maybe it's the ice in my veins, but the camera was not getting much heat from my hand. I think the rubber and plastic on the hand grip makes a pretty good insulator.
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
04-28-2010, 08:10 PM
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SD cards are designed to take a pounding. Unless it is an old card (or a nock off), the insides are sealed with either epoxy or a silicone based conformal coating, hermeticaly sealing the electronics from the enviroment . The only thing washing might harm is the connector, those few microns of gold are fairly easy to remove. Unless you've got an industrial clothes dryer (uses microwaves), the heat from drying won't damage electronics, not nearly hot enough.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-28-2010, 12:04 PM
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for extreme cold weather, I would use lithium ... the thing is, the rechargeable battery jerks consider anything under 25C (almost 80 degrees!) to be "cold", otherwise why not rate their batteries for function at 10C or even 0C like the lithium's.
The hybrid electric cars that use nicd / nimh batteries have heating pads built into the packs, to allow the batteries to heat themselves to achieve optimal operating efficiency. In terms of fantasy options, I don't think it is too far fetched a request for a new body.
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