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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
06-08-2014, 01:59 PM
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Forum: Pentax Q
03-22-2014, 07:09 PM
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Went out street shooting for the first time with my new viewfinder.
I was super excited to shoot pseudo-rangefinder style and out of all the shots which didn't turn out so well, I think I might have gotten a few which are "gold." At least for me.
This one is my absolute favorite, It's the exact kind of shot I was looking for today with a full range of greys, a nice subject ( I love that long stride and it's shadow) and good composition.
This second one is a shot I snagged of these two people as they were walking along the diag in downtown Ann Arbor. They were discussing vinyl records and so whenever I see this shot I think of them talking about it. I had to literally power walk along behind them in order to get this shot. Well worth it.
The third is one I'm sure we can all relate to. I spied this photographer hauling his gear somewhere from the inside of the art museum. I was in a room where we weren't supposed to take photographs, but I took the risk to get this shot anyways.
It was a great day and I had an awesome time, I can't wait to go out shooting like this again.
~M
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
03-16-2014, 02:40 PM
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I think talking about maintaining acceptably sharp focus at infinity confuses everything (although it certainly is an important detail, it's just not the most important detail). Perhaps a better way is to imagine the following thought experiment:
Imagine we need to create a photo from a scene where "everything must be in focus from 15 feet to 45 feet" -- i.e. a total of 30 ft of critically-sharp subject matter. Now the most-useful rough "guesstimate" of hyperfocal distance is that approximately 1/3 of the total critical focus will be IN FRONT of where you focus and the remaining 2/3 of what will be in focus is BEHIND where you focus. Using this 1/3 vs. 2/3 rule, in the above situation, we would want to focus precisely at 25ft, with 10 feet of important subject matter in front of the 25 foot focus point and another 20 feet of important subject matter behind where we focused our lens. So now that we have established WHERE we need to focus, the remaining issue is what aperture do we need to accomplish our task? Clearly if we shoot wide open at 25 ft we are not going to reach our goal, since only the subject matter at 25 ft is going to be in focus. Thus we need to stop down. And how much we stop down will depend on the lens you are using. A 400mm lens is not going to achieve this goal for the given situation no matter how much you stop it down simply because long focal length lenses deliver shorter total length of critical focus at every aperture compared to shorter focal length lenses. Basically, the situation described would be impossible for such a long lens. But with a wide angle lens it is a piece of cake. Without consulting any charts, I would hazard a guess that a 10mm fisheye lens would be acceptably sharp in the above situation at f/2.8!! A 20mm lens might need to stop down to f/4, a 40mm lens might need to stop down to f/5.6, and so on.
The other banana peel to walk on is who gets to define what is "critically sharp"? If we are going to enlarge our K-3 24Mp images to 24"x36" then we might decide that what is sharp for a 12"x18" print is not quite doing it at 24"x36". So the OTHER factor is how big you are going to enlarge the image. Let's say you have a 12"x18" print that has subject matter in that critically-sharp zone ranging from 15' to 45' in the above situation and that the lens was stopped down to f/8 to achieve this. Enlarging this same image to 24"x36" may reveal that the subject matter at both 15' and 45' are not as "sharp" as we first thought. In such a situation, we may need to stop down to f/11 to achieve the same relative level of focus. Likewise, if we calculate our aperture for 24"x36" prints an aperture at f/8 but we end up only making prints at 12"x18". which might have gotten away by shooting at f/5.6 instead. As you can see, the ultimate size of the image plays an important part.
While there are indeed formulas to figure all this out for your particular (many are online), most try to include infinity into the equation which in my opinion makes understanding things more difficult. In the end, it is important to get your head around the idea that as you stop down your lens, the total distance that will be in critical focus will increase. And that the distribution of that critical range of acceptable sharpness will be distributed approximately 1/3 in front of where you focus and approximately 2/3 behind where you focus. And that longer lenses deliver shorter total distances of critical focus compared to wide angle lenses which have much greater. In the end. one must match the image requirements to the lens.
Hopefully, this is clearer for some of you. For the rest, I have no doubt I just made things more complex!! :P
Michael
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-08-2014, 03:31 PM
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This ^^^^
If there is an existing firmware in the location where you extract the new firmware, it is possible that the newly extracted firmware is being automatically renamed rather than over-writing the earlier firmware. The firmware placed on the SD card needs to be named fwdc220b.bin or it won't be recognized.
Also, my experience is that you do not need a blank SD card. Just make sure that the firmware is placed in the root directory (ie outside the DCIM folder). The recommendation for a blank card may be more for protection of images than anything else.
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Forum: Pentax Q
06-12-2013, 05:37 PM
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The first couple IR shots are what I'm used to seeing. The last ones are...surreal, I guess would be the word. Hit J inside Photoshop to get rid of the powerlines in #3 and #5 and they could be from an alien planet!
Here's a couple I came across on the memory card, I think the Q excels at macro as long as the highlights aren't blown. D-FA 100 for both below.
Two images stacked
And one by itself
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
02-07-2013, 10:34 AM
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press info while in live view, use the 4-way to move the zoomed section around
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