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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-14-2011, 12:55 AM
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hahaha thats what happens when you live in the "wrong" hemisphere ;)
seriously tho, thats the correct orientation for the southern hemisphere
Thanks for the comments everyone :)
Dave
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-13-2011, 12:04 AM
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thanks :) yes Im a diehard Pentax supporter... Almost went over to the "dark side" ( Canon) last year whilst waiting for the K5 to be released but thought better of it and got the K7 as a fill in till I could get a K5 haha
going by the sad face I take it that something didnt quite turn out as expected.
Specifically what lens, shutter speeds etc were you trying ?
To get a reasonable sized image in the frame you need at least 250mm and even then the moon is a relatively small disk. 500mm and up and you start to get a significant image.
Dave
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-12-2011, 03:16 AM
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Thanks :)
No they werent, But as always I use a cable release.
I will look forward to seeing some of your results :)
I also did several pix of Jupiter, could just make out 2 of the dark bands and a couple of the moons
Dave
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
12-12-2011, 02:04 AM
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Yup
yet another post like that :)
Now my K10 aqnd K7 have a new playmate ;)
Its first work out was a storm chase on saturday followed by the total lunar eclipse on sat nite/sun morn.
the camera was using my 8" mirror Newtonian astronomical telescope in prime focus mode, ie. no eyepiece in scope, no camera lens, rather the telescope is a large telephoto len 1000mm @ f4.5
Pic1 - IMGP0046b = full moon prior to eclipse -- 500th sec; ISO 200
Pic2 - IMGP0055b = partical eclipse starting -- 250th sec; ISO 800
Pic3 - IMGP0106b = mid totality -- 1 sec; ISO 800
Pic4 - IMGP0118a = a intense storm cell producing lots of lightning, heavy rain and some hail, near Windsor, NSW, Australia
so far very happy with my new toy :)
cheers
Dave
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Forum: Pentax Full Frame
10-22-2011, 02:57 AM
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Thanks for your efforts Adam, on composing that letter to Pentax. Although not high on my lists of needs I would happily invest in a fullframe assuming its compatability with my existing lenses for my K10/K7.
I have felt for a number of years, that Pentax's biggest problem has been public exposure of their product. It is severely lacking... well at least in Australia anyway. There are only 2 or 3 retail shops that support the pentax brand (particularly the DSLR range) and 1/2 the time they dont even have the latest models on hand. Yet Nikon and Canon are in your face in virtually any shop that has even a mild interest in photography products.
Tho I would welcome a FF pentax in the body style of a K7/K5 etc, I'm not going to hold my breath. If the project ever went ahead, unfortunately, I doubt that it would be available on the shop shelves any time in the next couple of years.
I suspect in the short term I will be upgrading to a K5 within the next few months
Thanks again
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
06-06-2011, 03:46 AM
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HI Bill and Marc,
Yes I have got some shadow compensation set. Obviously auto mode ignored that setting.
No not on a tripod. I was taking particular attention to the metering when in manual to make sure I got the correct "0" exposure.
I appreciate your continuing patience and comments it all helps my understanding thankyou
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
06-05-2011, 12:03 AM
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hi guys.... after a week of wet and crappy weather, I have finally seen the sun again
here's 2 pics of the same scene the first in Auto (green) mode the other in manual
I tried to keep the manual settings as close as possible to the auto settings only varying to get a "0" centre for exposure.
ohhh I discovered that in auto, the camera forces multi segment metering. when I had it set for spot (which is what my manual shots were done in) And as an aside, I also discovered that it wont do Raw+ in auto mode :rolleyes:
so it would seem to me that the camera can't be trusted to give a correctly exposed image in Auto mode ? I did a number of pics today ... the results were all pretty much the same. Auto mode pics were all much darker.
cheers
Dave
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
06-01-2011, 03:51 PM
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There seems to be a few non-still life pics amongst the selection
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-29-2011, 07:30 AM
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I will do some pix in auto mode over the next couple of days, weather permitting. Its started pouring down outside tonite. hopefully rain will clear.
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-29-2011, 07:19 AM
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So as I asked in the earlier post, thats a time when I should have used spot metering?
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-29-2011, 07:15 AM
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yeah I know it/was VERY dirty that was another prob with the K10D, constantly getting dust on the sensor, it drove me nutz, was constantly having to clean it. At least the K7 doesnt suffer that prob, its weather seal appears to be so much better.
speaking of which... is there a method in lightroom2.7 where I can take 2 images, let it see the commonly located dust spots and auto remove them from all subsequent images?
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-29-2011, 02:53 AM
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no this is a general issue of my operation of, or of the camera or both ;)
ok was going through my archive tonite and found one typical example.....
The first pic I did was in auto (green) mode it was pretty much black. So went to manual and did several shots of which this was the best
Yes the sun is high behind the subject. So how do I get a decent pic in this situation?
Is this a time when I should use spot metering ?
What really frustrates me is my Fuji S9500 in auto or even my mobile phone camera will give an excellent pic in the same situation! So why cant my >$1000 Pentax camera
cheers
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-22-2011, 05:44 PM
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Thanks so much guys,
Appreciate you patience and teaching.
Bob will have a look for that book "Understanding Exposures by Brian Paterson"
Mprince , have bookmarked that page. Jeff, I will work through you exercise :)
I do a lot of storm chasing photography, as a result many of the pix are taken under rather adverse lighting conditions. And under such conditons, I rarely have time to do serious composure of the shot as things in the sky are changing so fast. I normally have left the ISO fixed unless really needing to adj it. Maybe I should also experiment with auto ISO as you commonly use Jeff.
cheers
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-22-2011, 05:51 AM
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Hey Jeff
dang I have some serious reading to do there :) will work my way through all that.
including the exercise. I have in more recent times started to use RAW+JPG I should have done it a long time ago.
OK as promised I did some pics today, resized to 1024x680 and ~ 170kb each
http://www.sydneystormcity.com/IMGP1869a.jpg
http://www.sydneystormcity.com/IMGP1870a.jpg
http://www.sydneystormcity.com/IMGP1872a.jpg
69a .. multipoint
70a .. centre weighted
72a .. spot
All manual mode, I adjusted f-stop and or shutter for 0 (centre) exp. You wil see how I had to seriously lower the shutter speed in the spot metered pic tho it could have been a little faster :)
at 160th sec as with the other 2 the pic was metering ~ -2EV
hopefully you can read all the other EXIF data. Used that IrfanView prog, thanks Cats Five :)
Give me your opinions please
These are not the real serious underexposures that I have experienced
cheers
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-21-2011, 06:03 AM
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Hi Ash,
is that a better or worse problem in centre weighted rather than multi-segment visa versa or much the same ?
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-21-2011, 04:50 AM
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hi guys
just a quick update, now that I am at home with the camera.
I have discovered that I am on centre weighted metering mode rather than spot metering as first thought. I have changed that to multi-segment metering and tomorrow if weather is fine will do a few pix and see what happens :) will report back
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-19-2011, 10:30 PM
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Thanks Marc and Wheatfield, OK will do some playing with centreweighted metering
Just maybe some of the hassles have been self induced by using spot metering :o
Hey, we live and learn. Am just an avg amateur photographer, tho for many yrs. :)
Thanks for everyones responses, appreciated
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-18-2011, 09:08 PM
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Thanks for everyone's responses ...
I will do some pics this weekend, by the time I get home from work on week days the sun has pretty much set. Im not sure how I can resize pics to make them easily viewable without wiping the EXIF data
@ Timh ... if its a bright sunny day no, they will be well overexposed assuming an avg shutter speed (~ 250th sec).
@ Wheatfield ... ok ... so what do most people use for general outdoor scenery pics ....
spot or multipoint metering ?
@ Ash ... ok you are indicating similar thoughts to Ole, re not all lenses are created equal and having a permanent +EV compensation setting may well solve my probs.
I currently only have one fully auto lens, the one mentioned in my first post. It pretty much lives on the camera and only comes off when I wanna use the very old manual 400mm and x2 teleconverter for doing sun and moon images.
I will add a comment ..... This is a thing that only really hassles me when doing outdoor pics under moderate to good daylight conditions. And the camera exp meter is telling me that the exp is setting is good but I get dark pix. Its not a prob when doing indoor portrait experiments where I have respectable flash and softboxes etc that result in a well lit subject.
cheers
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-16-2011, 09:42 PM
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thanks so much Ole
Of course .... the lens aperture only gets stopped down to whatever I set it at right at the time of exposure !! DOH forgetting the basics in my old age :o
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-16-2011, 07:51 PM
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Hi,
Thanks :)
well I take a pic and look at the pic on the display and its really dark, so I may go through 1 or 2 more shots of the scene, decreasing shutter speed or increasing aperture (or both) till I get an acceptable image.
getting home and looking at the images on the computer only confirms the under-exposure of the initial and sometimes second shot.
Yes that thought has crossed my mind that it may be the lens
To answer that I would have to check the settings. Off the top of my head I suspect I'm spot metering rather than multipoint and I rarely change that setting.
Any thoughts on my response to Ole's comments on how the metering works ?
I would have thought (maybe incorrectly) that if the lens is a little "dark" to use one of the other guy's comments, then that would obviously result in lower light falling on the meter sensor. Therefore if I adj shutter and or aperture to bring the meter up to central correct setting then the "dark" issue should be taken care of. ? I shouldnt have to add yet more + exposure to bring up the brightness ?
Cheers
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-16-2011, 07:20 PM
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greetings Ole,
thanks .... now thats an interesting comment. I have learnt something!
I was sorta under, what now seems a misunderstanding, that the exposure meter would just take the light coming onto it via the lens and give the appropriate exposure reading. That is if you then adjusted aperture/shutter speed/ISO accordingly to give the centre reading of correct exposure. Then any effects the lens had would have already been taken into account ?
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-16-2011, 07:14 PM
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hi twitch,
thanks for responding...
yes I can... will do so when I get home from work, see if I can find some that I havent already adjusted :p else will take a few more pix
as to your second part ... no not my eye .... these pics are usually really dark!! :)
Dave
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-16-2011, 06:42 PM
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hi guys,
I'm am unhappy photographer. I own 2 pentax cameras a K10D and a K7. The K7 was purchased Aug 2010 in the hope of solving the apparent underexposure issue with the K10D. The lens is a Sigma DC 18 - 200, purchased new by myself.
I VERY rarely use auto mode as 80% of photos will turn out under exposed even when the exposure meter is "centred" for correct exposure.
As a result I always use manual mode and find I am usually setting exposure to ~ + 1 - 1.5 stops. to get a respectable amount of exposure.
I put it down to some fault in the K10D and after only owning it just on 2 yrs splurged out on the K7 in the hope of solving the issue. NO such luck. I have the same issue with the K7 :(
I dont get it... what's the point of an exposure meter if its always reading significantly low ?? Or am I doing something wrong ?
Surely the meter is accurate to at least a 1/3 stop or thereabouts ? :confused:
In all other ways the cameras work well. The softer focus with the K7 pix I have yet to narrow down to the camera or the lens or a mix of both.
My local camera shop has offered for me to bring my camera in and take a set of pics with my lens and with a new lens ... go home and have a look at any differences in focussing. .... I find I have to sharpen the majority of the pix that come off the K7
thanks for your time
Dave
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Forum: Welcomes and Introductions
04-05-2011, 01:03 AM
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hi Ernst, welcome
like you new to the forum but a pentax fan for yrs :)
yup look forward to seeing a few fields of tulips with windmills in the background ;)
Dave
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Forum: Welcomes and Introductions
04-05-2011, 01:00 AM
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interesting idea :eek: haha personally I wouldnt, I would always want to leave it as original as possible for resale value.
Thanks everyone for the replys :)
I have been an amateur photographer for over 40 years, my first camera was a good ol' kodak box brownie :)
cheers
Dave
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