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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
09-13-2013, 03:36 AM
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It's also worth noting that you don't necessarily need to use HS if the weather is cloudy or you are in the shade where the sun doesn't hit your subject directly, like in a forest. The regular flash will freeze the action anyway regardless, though you might get some "ghosting" if the shutter is below 1/180; this can somewhat be countered with panning.
Also HS is not possible, as far as I know, if you use a trigger set.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
08-22-2012, 08:47 AM
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Indeed, that is good advice. I have noticed with the DA* 16-50 I don't really want to go below f/4 for several reasons, like DOF because I am usually up close and sharpness isn't that great below f/4. But I do wonder how high a number I can go in aperture, will have to test that. For me the focus speed is not as much of an issue as the K-5's tendency to focus on stuff in the background at times. The larger, than some other brands, focus spots are the only thing I really hold against Pentax. That being said, autofocus seem to work a lot better up close than when I zoom in. In those cases I also tend to prefocus manually.
Noted, I kinda forgot to vary the flash position in the vertical position for the most part. I do like to use the flash to make pictures look a bit unnatural, from what the riders are used to see, for variation. It's still new to me, so I will have to practice some more, but I did do some shots with the flash mounted on a tree.
Again, your feedback is much appreciated!
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
08-20-2012, 12:42 PM
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Had a splendid day out last Saturday (before mentioned 12 hour race), carried with me two flashes and stands to put them on. I want to thank you for opening my eyes to the wonders of radio triggered flashes, it simply just gives better results when photographing mountain bikers.
And this is the result:
So thank you Jase036!
Another question, If you own a K-5, does it give you trouble when trying to focus in low light? I can't figure out what I might be doing wrong, sometimes it gets it right shot after shot but then at other times it gets it wrong shot after shot, especially below f/4 it seems. Or it's just less apparent because of the higher aperture number.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
08-20-2012, 11:59 AM
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Thank you all for the comments, they are much appriciated!
Just done another shoot of a race and radio triggered flashes really makes a difference.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
08-15-2012, 01:12 PM
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Hello fellow Pentaxians,
First off, this is my first post in this part of the forums, so bare with me if I missed any details or procedures. Hopefully my contribution will be up there with yours :)
Main season of mountain biking is slowly coming to an end here and I thought it time to head out and do some strobist exercising. As always the location was deep in the forest with only little light to assist, ideal for flash photography with a black background desire.
More pictures than normal came out a bit shaky, while the flash unit/units was radio triggered, compared to having the flash mounted on the camera. If anyone can shed some light on that (unintentional bad pun), please share your knowledge!
Shutter 1/180 - f/6.3 - ISO 250 - FGZ540 + Metz 48AF - DA* 16-50 - K-5
Shutter 1/180 - f/6.3 - ISO 250 - FGZ540 + Metz 48AF - DA* 16-50 - K-5
Shutter 1/180 - f/8 - ISO 400 - FGZ540 - DA* 50-135 - K-5
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
08-08-2012, 03:55 AM
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I've used my K-5 with the DA* 50-135 in heavy rain and it survived just fine. My Metz flash stopped working after a while but came back after drying it.
After it stopped raining, and the camera was dry, I did notice that every time I pushed one of the 5 buttons on the right side, next to the LCD screen, water came out from the buttons. I expect that it was simply stored there without actually getting into the electronics. Camera is still working just fine.
On a more practical note, the viewfinder did become harder and harder to see through as rain didn't seem to move away from the glass area too well and created vapour on the glass. Also I had protection filter on the lens and somehow water vapour came into the compartment between the original lens glass and the protection filter, but removing the protection filter solved that issue.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
07-23-2012, 03:51 AM
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Hahaha, that's a good one, got to get me one of those :D
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
07-22-2012, 11:23 AM
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Sorry, I forgot that it is only moving "light sources" that go forward or trail if you don't pan but I know what you mean. I certainly wouldn't mind earning a few bucks at some point, course lts face it, the equipment isn't cheap.
I will most definitely give the radio triggers a spin on the track, only drawback I predict, from the top of my head, is that they are entirely manual set up, so you have to go to the flash if you want to make any changes to them, if I don't want to change the aperture or ISO. I have a 12 hour race coming up in august, so plenty of time to experiment there over and over.
I know panning works, but the easiest are not always the best. Took this at a straight road, but I couldn't stop because it was just so easy at that spot. Used the catch in focus option aswell.
I do however want pictures with more action in it, than above one, but again, it was just so easy to pan there.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
07-22-2012, 12:41 AM
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I had a feeling it wasn't possible to use rear curtain with triggers. I remember reading in my Metz manual that first curtain sync is just like rear curtain, except the "speed lines" will go in front of the rider, rather than after. "let ambient bleed over the sharp flash capture" is a very good explanation, thank you for that.
Next time I'm bringing the triggers for experimenting.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
07-21-2012, 03:28 PM
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Thanks for the reply! Indeed, HSS does leave me with a sea of black deep in the forrest at times, but so does rear sync every now and then, probably due to the dark weather in general. I did have the Metz 58AF briefly before I got the 540fgz, it did seem quite nice. I was sad to find out that it has the mentioned commander bug and aparently Metz have no intention of fixing it, from what I have heard, it may not be true though.
Nice picture, I was not aware you could use rear curtain sync with radio triggers, I have JJC JF-T2 triggers myself, I will need to test that! Also I bet that requires some good timing :)
Beginning to wonder if I should have gone with the Metz 58AF afterall.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
07-20-2012, 02:34 PM
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I recently bought the AF540fgz because I plan to do wireless highspeed at some point, when I can afford another AF540, which I was told this flash can do... and it also being the only flash for Pentax that can do that apparently. I wonder if it is even worth it/doable when shooting mountain bike races?
Anway, it seemed to work as expected, but the flash does at times make a loud mechanical stuttering sound, as if it was rapidly adjusting focus, is this normal?
Furthermore, when using the trailing curtain setting, the flash did not seem to fire at all, only after setting the camera itself to trailing curtain in the K-5's flash option menu, did it seem to work correctly, can that really be right? My Metz 48AF does not need for the camera to be set to trailing curtain, so that was a bit odd to me.
The AF540 seems like a decent flash, but it sure does take some getting used to, when it constantly forgets the power compensation. Kept burning out colour every now and then because it...
The rest of the time the pictures did seem to turn out well (K-5 + DA* 16-50 + AF540fgz, on trailing curtain)
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
06-19-2012, 11:11 AM
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Hello fellow Pentaxians,
I like shooting mountain bike races (hobby, not pro), but have felt that the straight on flash makes for a lot of similar pictures... My current setup is a K-5 with either DA* 50-135 or Tamron 17-50 coupled with a Metz AF48-1 flash.
I thought I could go with radio triggers, but found out that pentax cameras can go no higher than a shutter of 1/180 with radio triggers regardless. Now I may be able to do some shots with only 1/180 shutter, but I would really love to do high speed sync off-camera.
I was then told that with two Pentax AF540 flashes, I could have one on the camera and one setup elsewhere in wireless mode with HSS. There are a few areas that I am a bit uncertain about since I am not so knowledgeable on flashes, will the off-camera flash still have to be triggered by the flash light of the on-camera flash (as opposed to radio triggers, which seem more reliable in that way) or do they operate on something else? I know my Metz AF48-1 can not be a master, but I don't know exactly what a master flash can do.
Also, would it be possible to do wireless HSS with my Metz AF48-1 being off-camera in wireless mode and a Pentax AF540 or a Metz AF58 on-camera with HSS mode activated? Think I read somewhere that the Metz AF58 can do the same as the Pentax AF540 in regards of wireless HSS and only having to buy one more flash would be quite nice aswell.
The tests I've done with my Metz AF48-1 in wireless mode coupled with the built-in camera flash, did not seem to work too smoothly, so I'm also wondering if the above situation will be any different when it comes to reliability?
Hope you guys understand my question :)
//Mikael
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-14-2012, 03:36 AM
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Yesterday I was out again, used mainly AF-S to set a focus point and then switched to MF on the DA*. It worked a charm but I can see on several images that the focus point is still behind what I focused on, as can be seen on the picture below, where I focused on the blue mat, yet the PoF is behind it.
I found out early, so I just worked around it, but had it been a more sporadic sport like soccer/football, I still have the feeling it wouldn't work well.
The few times I did try AF-C, it gave the same poor focus results, only nailing it on one image. I did however have sucess with panning shots using the catch-in-focus option + trailing curtain with flash on.
All in all a lot more manual work on my behalf but it worked out great :)
Still can't figure out if this is suppose to be normal behaviour or not.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-10-2012, 10:25 PM
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I probably should try out the Sigma again in order to compare results. I decided to go with the DA* because I wanted less focal length, yet still have some zoom. Keeping in mind that the K-5 works better if zoomed in, standing at the same distances the Sigma could get better focus due to the fact that it is more zoomed in and the subject therefore is larger in the viewfinder. It's a theory anyway.
I did have 3 races in a row with the DA* where the majority of pictures were in focus as intended, more or less, which is why I think Marc made a good case towards the large sensor points being my actual problem.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-10-2012, 01:56 PM
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Taking into account that the DA*50-135 is apparently par-focal and a bit slow at focusing, same goes for the K-5, could it be possible to use that to my advantage by zooming in to focus with AF-C and then quickly zoom out and hit the shutter button in one swift go to capture the image?
I know it sounds unlikely, but I will try that on Sunday during the next race.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-10-2012, 03:38 AM
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I do tend to pre-focus, but the AF system will still start focusing on whatever has the most contrast or is the most lit. I was out yesterday and got around 96 usable pictures and about 78 where the focus had mainly fallen on some grass/moss in the background, a few had focus in the foreground, again grass in focus. It could almost seem like my K-5 have a fondness for bright green forest growth.
It can focus on the background even though the rider is entirely in focus and wearing bright colours, maybe grass reflect light better or something, but it is annoying me a fair bit now.
This picture is an example of focus landing on the hill behind the rider, though it is not as pronounced as some of the other pictures I took, can't show one of those because I haven't had the time to upload one yet:
All sizes | IMGP2531 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Same goes for this picture, different place, not sure if the reason is wrong focus, actual back focus, the lens focusing too slowly or the rider just being too fast:
IMGP2634 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! |
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-09-2012, 07:28 AM
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Does that mean it will mainly focus along the cross lines, picking whatever fits AF criteria the most?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-09-2012, 02:25 AM
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Does anyone know if the AF areas are square or rectangular?
If they are rectangular in shape, I guess some precision could be gained from holding the camera vertically when shooting mountain bikers head on.
Or using the long AF points in the sides, those that are shown as a line, assuming of course that these AF points are rectangular.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-07-2012, 08:58 AM
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Thank you for the chart JinDesu, if it is correct, the K-5 does seem a bit inferior compared to the Nikon D7000 AF system. Will have to try and be more meticulous next time I'm out taking pictures.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-06-2012, 12:29 PM
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Used the DA* 50-135 for a family wedding yesterday (bit of a gamble) but there were both shots in focus and out of focus, which for me could indicate that it could be the camera focusing different from what I am expecting. I find it a bit odd that there is no indication of the actual focus area size, which could help determining if that is the reason behind the back focusing.
If this is the case, it frustrates me that the K-5 can pick the background over an object that fills out, what appears to be, the entire focus point. Is there a chart out there somwhere with a more specific indication of the actual focus area?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-04-2012, 10:11 AM
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I know the AF points are pretty big, so I have also considered if it is just the K-5 focusing on something else.
This picture is an example, if I remember correctly, it's 58mm focal and f/3.5. If you look at the picture,
you can see the tree behind the rider is sharp and she is a bit blurred: All sizes | IMGP1253 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! |
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-04-2012, 07:40 AM
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Hello everyone,
I realise there are plenty of threads about this already but I hope you can bear with me on my lengthy thread anyway, it will be much appreciated :)
It's not long ago I bought my first Pentax lens, the DA* 50-135 as you might have guessed. Was excited to get it since it go t good reviews, however, right from the box it did seem to back focus a lot in the beginning. Went out to put it to the test with a mountain bike race and much to my dismay, it could not even focus on the well lit side of a stationary tree, it constantly threw focus in the background, zoomed in or not...
I had a protective filter on which I took off hoping that it was the culprit, sadly it was not, so in a frantic panic attack, I went into AF fine adjustment and put the lens to +10, suddenly the pictures seemed to be correct in focus! I thought to myself that it was a bit high in compensation but whatever it takes, right? Attended a few races more, the occasional back focus picture did appear every now and then, still the lens seemed to be working, the back focus could after all be due to riders coming towards me and me not pressing the button just fast enough for the rider to still be within the focus area.
Then the other day the lens appeared to go haywire with consistent back focusing at +10 AF adjustment, even with a flash on, broke my heart a little. Behaved that way through out the entire day, relentlessly, shade and direct sunlight alike.
Today when I got up, I saw a crow down on the lawn from my apartment. Took several shots and again focus was not right, however this time it was front focusing, ended up with a +5 on the lens in order to have focus in the middle of the focus point, at 135mm f/2.8.
Later, after I got home from exercising, I thought for the hell of it I'd try taking a picture of the wooden model sitting on the window sill and again back focusing reared it's ugly head, as I could see the dirt on the window a lot more sharply than the model I focused on. Several tries at 135mm and 50mm with f/2.8.
My initial take on it is that focus seem to lay very differently depending on light amount and the light source type, like sunlight vs artificial light.
Is this normal behaviour for a DA* lens at f/2.8?
I keep comparing it to my Sigma 70-200 HSM APO EX and it doesn't seem to suffer from the same focusing issues, I don't use AF fine adjustment with it.
As I'm writing this I realise I should go back and check the aperture of all the good race pictures I took previously to see if they were generally higher than f/2.8, sorry for not having done this already, still I'm think focus should be more consistent even at f/2.8.
I have already had my K-5 body replaced once due to focusing issues so but I'm sure it can't be the body once again.
Any thoughts?
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
04-24-2012, 03:27 AM
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I think it might have been caused by overturning the cap, if that is possible. I tried that lens pen again yesterday and it did seem to do the job right this time.
I will agree there is no point in going on a compromise on lens pen, if you are going to use it on expensive lenses.
Thanks for the replies and advice
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
04-23-2012, 03:36 AM
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I've been using a lens pen to clean my lenses and filters, but the other day I noticed what seem to be tiny grains of fluff or smudge (not sure on the right word) left behind on the glass. It didn't seem like much, but when I turned an LED flashlight on the filter glass, there did seem to be a substantial amount of these tiny smudge grains. IT's like the lens pen is leaving behind it's carbon compound.
The lens pen is as good as new, so I am a bit curious if any of you guys have a similar experience? ...Or am I just obsessing over nothing... I'll see if I can get a picture of.
//Mikael
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
04-05-2012, 11:56 AM
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Thanks for the input, will have to try that. The only problem there for me is, that a lot of the time it's cloudy and it's in the forest, so even on an aperture of F/2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/1000 the ISO value can go above 2000.
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