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Forum: General Talk
08-03-2020, 11:38 AM
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I know you've all been on tenterhooks waiting for an update on my broken Tamron 70-300 lens from this thread:
Just broke my Tamron A17 70-300mm - PentaxForums.com
so I thought I'd update you.
It's fixed! :D I gave it to my wife for her k-x earlier today :D
It's only taken six and a half years and a donor lens. I reckon that now I've had a bit of practice, I could even get the next repair down to just six years :D
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Forum: General Photography
05-28-2020, 01:34 PM
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I was using rechargeables a few years ago, but this time around I just used a pack of Energiser Alkaline batteries. They worked fine for the 5 to 25 second exposures, so I'm assuming that there's something else going on. I might try a few 20 minute+ exposures over the weekend and see if any work. Hopefully I'll get a bit more info and be able to narrow it down :)
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Forum: General Photography
05-27-2020, 01:35 PM
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Thanks for all the replies :)
Sorry, I forgot to mention, it's a K-x. I'd put fresh batteries in during the night, and I'd been out for maybe an hour already taking normal astrophotography shots, so I think I should be able to rule those out.
I went back out after posting and tried a 15 minute exposure pointed at Polaris instead, and that worked perfectly. I used the same batteries, as I wanted to check them. I'll post that shot below. A few days later I tried another roughly 20 minute shot and had the same problem, so I think it's the camera rather than anything else. The 15 minute exposure was otherwise set up in the same way, so it seems to be related to how long I'm using Bulb mode for, especially as I've been shooting regular shots during the day and night for longer overall durations.
@JohnX I haven't done anything over 30 seconds for a few years now. The light pollution where I am usually makes them difficult. Coupled with Dark Frame Subtraction they're usually more trouble than they're worth.
Thanks to those of you who posted your mistakes too, at least I know I'm not alone :lol:
I've just remembered as I'm typing this that I've been having some minor issues with the camera. The scroll wheel jumps every now and then, so zooming in on a photo sometimes jumps a few steps, and adjusting the shutter speed does the same e.g. if I'm on 1/125 and want to go faster, it might go to 1/160 then jump to 1/500. It's not all the time, and it's only when I use the scroll wheel, rather than randomly. The AF / MF switch sometimes sticks on Manual too, and can take a few tries to get back to Automatic. Neither of these should affect anything once they're set, but I'm wondering if it's part of a bigger problem.
Thanks again for the help :)
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Forum: General Photography
05-20-2020, 07:19 AM
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Hi all. Thanks for the replies :)
Apologies for not replying sooner, but I'm barely getting time to get online at the moment. I managed to get a star trail shot, but I'm still having problems. I'll be able to post properly again next week, so I'll post the shot and reply properly then.
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Forum: General Photography
05-11-2020, 04:34 PM
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I'm in the UK, and I've been stuck away from home for the last few weeks thanks to Covid-19. I've been stuck at home with my mother in law and my 4 year old, so as you can probably imagine, I need something for me.
Tonight is one of the clearest nights we've had, and my daughter went to bed with no complaints, so I've actually got some time to myself. Great! I'll get the camera out and try to capture some star trails. I had a quick try when I first got here, but I needed a much longer shot / set of shots. I found a good spot and took some standard astrophotgraphy shots first, then realised that there were regular satellites passing over (presumably Starlink). Even better, they'll add something a bit different to the shot too. I set up, got myself comfortable, set a timer on my phone, and pressed the shutter in bulb mode. I waited for just over 20 minutes, then pressed the shutter again.
Nothing happened.
I was using a remote shutter, so I pressed it again just in case there was some kind of battery saving that I'd forgotten about. Still nothing. I tried the remote shutter a few more times, then tried the physical button, but still had no response. Ok, I thought, maybe it's the DFS as I've used bulb mode. I haven't used it for a while, so I'm not 100% sure how it works without double checking. I brought the camera inside* and waited for over 25 minutes, slowly defrosting my extremities (it was about 5c, so not cold enough to cause major problems). Still nothing. I tried several buttons on the camera with no luck, and eventually shut it off. I've just checked the memory card in my laptop, and there's no sign of the long exposure.
I've just wasted about an hour for nothing because my camera decided to stop working. The satellites are long gone, and as my daughter tends to wake up at about 7AM, I haven't really got the time to go back out and try another shot. The worst part is, the camera has just turned on at the latest attempt, and the batteries are showing as half full, so I don't even know why it stopped working :(
*Yes, I know that's not the best idea, but I wasn't going to sit outside for another 20 minutes in the cold.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
03-02-2019, 03:17 PM
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I just wanted to say thanks for this heads up. I've tried DSS a few times and never got a good result. I'll try it again with your settings :)
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Forum: General Talk
02-26-2019, 06:47 PM
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A man with no arms and no legs was lying on the beach sunbathing when the two most beautiful women he'd ever seen set out their towels just a few feet away. The women smiled at the man and kept winking at him while oiling each other's bodies. After a while the women approached the man and asked him
'Have you ever seen naked breasts before?'
To which the man shyly shook his head no. The women removed their bikini tops, exposing their stunning bodies to the shocked man. He couldn't believe his luck.
'Have you ever kissed two women?' they asked next.
After a nervous gulp, the man replied, no, he hadn't.
The two women gave the man the longest, most sensual kisses he'd ever experienced in his life. This was the best day he'd ever experienced, it couldn't get much better.
One of the women leaned down and whispered breathily in his ear
'Have you ever been screwed?'
To which the man replied 'No'
'Well, you are now, the tide's coming in!'
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
02-19-2019, 08:47 PM
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I got it yesterday and it was the full version. There must have been a time limit
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
03-05-2017, 09:22 AM
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Basically, you give a small child a cake, and let them just go for it (under safe supervision, obviously). Ideally you end up with something like this :D
Best Cake Smash EVER! - YouTube |
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
03-01-2017, 08:27 PM
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Thanks everyone, it's done :)
I could cry right now - something so simple has caused me so much of a headache, and I don't even know why!
It turned out after a lot of trial and error, that EXIFTool hadn't actually changed the metadata, it just made Windows display the altered date. I have no idea how, and didn't even know that was possible. Once I figured that out though, I loaded the files from my camera into Lightroom and using amoringello's tip, corrected the Capture Date. It took me a few goes though, as I didn't realise that I had to tell Lightroom to save the changes to the metadata. Once I'd figured that out, I did the same for the photos from my wife's camera. All good, ready to rename.
Except they were even further out than before. The photos from her camera were somehow out by over 12 minutes, a bigger discrepancy than both cameras put together, even though I had a photo of a clock showing the correct time to the second.
Finally everything was looking good. As I was about to apply the corrected time to her photos, Windows decided that a program using 2GB out of 16GB RAM was not good enough, and crashed, so I restarted the computer and started from scratch with her photos to avoid confusion. I tried to load Bridge, as I knew that copying the files to an SD card would let it put the relevant jpg and raw files together, and is what I'm used to, but now none of my other Adobe programs would launch, something had been corrupted.
I had to reinstall the lot, so I stopped for leftover pizza and caught up with Modern Family, then came back feeling a bit calmer. I copied the files to an SD card and launched Bridge. I changed to settings similar to what emalvick suggested, Cake Smash HHMMSSxxx.dng and let Bridge get them from the card. When it was all done, I opened the folder, and there they were. Except the end of the list wasn't where it should have been...
I'd managed to leave one of the failed efforts in the folder, so I had double the number of files. Luckily enough it was easy to fix though, because if it hadn't been, or I hadn't noticed, I think my computer would be lying in the street by now! :D
I'm going to bed now, and not touching anything related to photography for at least six hours :D
Thanks again for the help and suggestions :)
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
02-27-2017, 09:50 PM
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Hi all :)
Apologies for not coming onto the forum for a while, but photography's taken a back seat for me over the last few years. I've got a one year old daughter now though, so I've got an excuse to dig the K-x out again :D
I need some help please. I set up a cake smash for my daughter, mainly as an excuse to take some different photos of her, and I'm having trouble getting them onto my computer in chronological order. We used both mine and my wife's K-x (raw + jpg), a video camera, and my mobile phone to take photos. After I imported everything to the computer, I realised that the times on the cameras were wrong, so I used ExifTool to bulk correct the photos from each one. As it stands, the photos now have the correct times that they were taken, but the filenames are wrong e.g. Cake Smash 001 should be Cake Smash 279 etc.
It doesn't seem to matter what I do to get them onto the computer, I can't get the names to match the order that they were taken in. I've tried copying them back to the SD card and letting Bridge import them again, but it still sorts them incorrectly. I've tried Lightroom, and even the Windows photo tool. I've also tried bulk file renamers, but they can't deal with the .DNG files.
If anyone knows of a way to import or rename the files so that they're in date order in the Photos\Cake Smash (date)\Cake Smash 001.dng format, preferably without manually renaming over 500 files*, I'd be very grateful.
Thanks in advance, Tippon
*I haven't started sorting or editing yet, until I can get them into some sort of order.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-16-2014, 10:40 PM
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I've just tried downloading the charts, and they're asking me for a password to open them. Is the file no longer free, or have I missed something?
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-16-2014, 01:18 PM
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Hi Hartless_1 (love that name! :D ), thanks for the tip :)
Like you say, looking back, the ad does look a bit iffy. I'm pretty sure it was me that broke it though. When I twisted it and got the crunch, it felt like something gave. I'm treating it as a slightly expensive lesson in how to repair lenses. I've been a computer engineer for years, and have plenty of experience in repairing small fiddly items, so this is more like a branch in a new direction :D
All I need to do now is remember where I put my small screwdriver set :confused:
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-15-2014, 07:32 AM
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Fine! I'll go get the hacksaw and blowtorch instead :mad:
:p:p:p
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-15-2014, 07:12 AM
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Quite possibly. Unfortunately for me though, I heard a crunch as I turned it, so have no way of knowing who broke it, and wouldn't feel right sending it back to the seller when it probably was me :(
I've got the hammer and chisel out, so if that doesn't fix it, I don't know what to do... :lol::lol::lol:
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-14-2014, 05:29 PM
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Hi Julie, thanks for the reply :)
I forgot to mention, the macro switch seems to be working, in that it only switches when the lens is set to 180 - 300mm, and only lets the focus ring move to the macro settings when it's engaged. It looks like I've disconnected the zoom ring from the rest of the body, but it still rotates to the correct positions.
Hi Tom :)
I definitely agree with you there! Unfortunately for this lens, it would cost me more to get it fixed than it would to buy a replacement. I'm going to treat this as a learning exercise, and see if I can do anything about it. If not, I've got a fancy looking 70mm lens :D
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-14-2014, 03:42 PM
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That's a bit cheeky. The ad makes it sound like it's suitable for beginners, and that it can rotate. Thanks for pointing that out :)
Funnily enough, I found out today that a new group started up yesterday. They're running an eight week course for beginners, so I'll join that to get a bit more insight.
That's great, thanks :)
I remember reading about these about eighteen months ago, when I first started reading about astrophotography on here, but because I wasn't thinking of using a telescope at the time, I forgot all about them. Building one of those might keep me out of trouble for a while :D
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-14-2014, 03:10 PM
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I won a nice, second hand, Tamron A17 70-300mm on eBay, and had it delivered this morning. Gave the focus and aperture rings a quick twist when I unpacked it to make sure they worked, then did the same with the zoom, but harder than I meant to. Everything seemed ok, so I connected it to the camera (K-x). Realised then that the zoom wasn't doing anything. The ring twists, but nothing happens. Looking at it, I think I had it set to Macro when I twisted the zoom ring, not realising it should only go so far :o
Does anyone know what I've broken? Something rattles now when I shake it. It's not worth sending off for repair, as it was so cheap, so I'm going to try fixing it myself. Any hints or tips so I don't make it worse? :p
This is the eBay listing:
Tamron A17 70-300 mm F/4-5.6 LD Di AF Lens Pentax 62mm 0725211177142 | eBay |
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-12-2014, 07:05 AM
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That's great advice, thanks Ted :)
I'm tempted to buy the Helios now, rather than risk not getting anything before my birthday (beginning of Feb). Time to start trawling the shops to see what's available :D
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-11-2014, 07:55 PM
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Thanks :)
I'll pass that on to the wife in the morning (almost 3AM now, waaaaay past my bedtime! :eek: )
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
01-09-2014, 08:24 AM
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I've got a K-x with a few lenses, and am starting to experiment with astro photography. I'm quite comfortable with what I'm doing, but want to take it further. As it's my birthday next month, my wife wants to buy me a telescope. I know pretty much nothing about telescopes, other than they let you see things that are far away! :o
Ideally I want to spend around £100 (GBP) or less, unless there's a big difference in quality etc. for slightly more money. I want to be able to mount my K-x to take photos through the telescope, and preferably be able to carry it with me (I live on the edge of a dark skies site :D )
Does anyone have any suggestions please?
Thanks in advance for any help :rolleyes:
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