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Forum: Photographic Technique
12-02-2012, 11:21 PM
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I think you folks are very good at explaining things. I've thrown all my confusion at you, and you've taken the time and trouble to smooth out some previously quite irksome snags for me. Once again I thank you for all your help. (It's amusing that now I realize I would have had the correct focus, even if I'd never questioned it. Even so, with your input, now I see how it works, and it is a whole lot better to understand WHY.)
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-28-2012, 10:23 AM
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Thanks very much again, everyone. For those of you who expressed confusion, the easiest way for me to explain might be to not use a camera at all, but rather binoculars. It's not the same thing—but it caused my own confusion. Looking through a glass window or through [the intentionally curved "glass window" of] binoculars, we really do see depth. Agreed on that? So that is true three-dimensional viewing, as we're using both our eyes.
—Okay, so I'm focused on a distant bird. Perfect focus through the binoculars—but that is perfect focus for my eyes, with my glasses lifted away. Now I pass the binoculars to you. You have excellent natural eyesight. As you find the bird, you refocus my binoculars to your vision.
Looking through a 1970s non-digital, single-lens reflex camera, we really do see through the lens—the whole point of the "reflex" in SLRs.
We are using just one eye, so, erm, technically we are seeing two dimensions only (length and width) but our brain is supplying, uh, virtual depth. Are we okay on that? (Please feel free to disagree if not.)
Now, if I focus on what I see in a 1970s SLR—and my vision is imperfect—I think I'm using the camera to correct my own vision, just as I was using the binoculars to "replace my glasses", which I had removed. Even though my personal preference is to lift my glasses up out of the way, I don't think I'd better do that. If I did, that nice Kodachrome II ASA 24 finished slide would show the bird according to my own focus, which is distorted. The projected slide would be out of focus for you, just as the bird in the binoculars was out of focus for you when I handed you the binocs so you could see it.
When we move ahead 40 years in time, we have LCD screens and Live View. And auto focus.
In the 1970s, "AUTO" on a Super-Tak prime lens—we never, ever used anything but prime lenses then—referred to the aperture automatically closing to our desired f-stop at the instant when we pressed the shutter. Our focus was always manual; we never thought about it. An "automatic" lens gave us full brightness to focus, but we did the focusing ourselves. Not the camera; not the lens. That was what those gorgeously firm-yet-slinky "Just HOLD a Pentax" focusing rings were for. A right-handed person focused, usually, with his left hand, whilst viewing the image through a wide-open lens aperture. Not very "automatic" by today's standards.
(Of course, if our camera's [mercury] battery failed, well, what the heck, that's f/11 and I want it at a sixtieth, so, well, we don't need no stinkin' battery! Pick one up on the way home.)
Since then, the world has become a much better and a much worse place. No wonder I feel out of focus. ;-) Again, thanks to all. My new camera can keep me in focus; okay, then.
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
11-18-2012, 09:27 PM
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Wow! That is what I call Creamsicle-Orange. Creamsicles still exist, but basically were an ice cream confection of the past, with that orange colour. They tasted delicious, like a combination of orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream, eaten on a stick like a Popsicle.
I love your orange Pentax!
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
11-18-2012, 09:15 PM
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Yes, it is slipping down and down. Here in Vancouver, Canada, it is now $650 as a "cheapest price I've seen so far" but NOT a sale price—a regular price, at one of our most popular chain stores. Last month it cost more than that in the same store as a sale price.
The market is a strange and fluid place these days. In situations like this, we're happy. But I do wonder how small specialty stores survive, or IF they do.
I'm intending to buy the blue body too. There is a photo in these forums showing a Creamsicle-Orange K-30 body, which I think isn't available in North America.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-18-2012, 09:04 PM
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You folks are very helpful indeed, and I thank you for your good advice. I was always aware of being in the minority in choosing to push my glasses out of the way when using binoculars, but, for birding, the advantage or disadvantage was merely my own. In photography, the result was more permanent—a good or bad slide.
Now I'll be able to use your suggestions to get things straight in this new way of doing things. New for me, I mean. Thanks very much, again.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-18-2012, 10:10 AM
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I'm in my 60s, and I've been a naturalist all my life. Sharpness was the natural way things looked if the viewer had normal vision for distance. Using binoculars at age 12, I wanted to see the very best definition possible when I was focusing on a distant bird. Sharpness was simply TRUE—it was neither a tool nor a contrivance; it was the best possible view.
A black bear or a grizzly, or a dog, has pretty poor vision. The only reason they don't wear glasses is because they have fantastic senses of smell and hearing, which are indeed so good that we cannot imagine the world in which our pet puppy lives. It is drastically different from ours.
We humans are among a very few mammals equipped with colour vision. Rover sees colour, sort of, but his vision is much more attentive to variances of grays.
The Red-tailed Hawk soaring high overhead—WAY up there—is not using binoculars to see mice, but has out-of-this-world (out of our HUMAN world) "pixel" definition. His eyesight is something like a camera with the ability to catch an impressive "grid" of detail, so that the image he sees is no larger, but it is much, much better defined than ours would be. He really can see a mouse when he is way up there. Ask him what importance he places on sharpness, and he'll tell you his life depends on it—on his ability to see detail.
Similarly, your life, just a couple of million years ago, depended on your ability to discern distant danger. Humans place vision as their most important sense; even our night-vision is superb. We think of cats as having excellent night-vision, and they certainly do. Theirs is much better than ours. But, if we were not comparing our night-vision to that of the feline masters of the night, we'd be aware that our own night vision rates as "darned good", at least.
We pick up a camera, and immediately we question sharpness. Well, I suggest this is analogous to knowing the rules first, so you can break them with wisdom. Sharpness is default. It's correct, or accurate, or true. Ask any bird-watcher, as he looks at a four-inch bird moving quickly through branches a hundred and fifty feet away. He may well be attempting to discern whether the bird has a whitish stripe between its bill and its eye. Just ask that birder whether sharpness matters.
In bygone years, we used to use Kodachrome II, ASA 25, and slave flashes in daylight to take macro-photos of wildflowers trembling in alpine breezes in the Rockies. We lived in f/22 and f/16 worlds of razor-blade definition, so we could take those slides and project them to billboard-size for our evening theatre audiences of 100 to 250 people.
But in art, or in creative imaging, or in our dreams, or in a beautiful impressionist picture intended to evoke our imaginations, then you can paint with as abstract a brush as you like.
In my humble opinion. :rolleyes:
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-18-2012, 09:41 AM
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Thirty years ago I did a lot of photography and a lot of bird-watching. I wore prescription eyeglasses for distance.
Using binoculars, I lifted my glasses up out of the way. This was the less-favoured technique, but I grew up bird-watching, and I prided myself, as a boy, how fast I could do that. It was a virtually instant reflex reaction, and I easily focused on birds in flight. I was birding every day.
Binoculars corrected my vision for me. In photography, however, the same technique would have resulted in photos likewise "corrected for ME" and not for people with normal vision. At least, that was my understanding, and so I always wore my prescription eyeglasses when I was taking pictures.
Thirty years later, my distance-vision has improved considerably, whilst my close-up vision has lost its thread-the-needle focus. On the street, I don't need to wear glasses for ordinary living. I go without.
But, bird-watching, I wear a single contact lens. This can be done when av person's eyesight is within a certain range of normalcy. If your vision needs a lot of correction, wearing a single contact lens will likely cause headaches and irritability. :mad: But, as my distance-vision has become closer and closer to normal, I've been able to use the single contact lens for precise distance vision (thereby seeing birds quickly, at a distance) whilst maintaining the ability to read a field guide or my watch close-up at the same time. (I said my close-up vision is worse than it used to be, but I can still read—just not as well.)
Using auto-focus digital compact and bridge cameras, I've let the camera find the focus. No problem. I've been mainly composing and watching light; I didn't need to see detail until the picture was on my computer.
Now I'm considering a Pentax K-30. I suppose—but I stand to be corrected—that it will be exactly the same: I'll wear a single contact lens whilst photographing birds. But there is a catch. In the 1970s and 1980s, I had few details to examine on the camera. Now I suppose I'll be looking at myriad SMALL digital focusing contrivances. This should be interesting: my left eye will have unaided close-up vision, not the best, but adequate for reading. My right eye will have a contact lens for corrected distance vision. I sure hope that God has pre-programmed both eyes to know WHICH should be viewing the camera's digital focus gizmos, and which should be viewing the distant bird. :confused:
If all this sounds ridiculous to you, I won't blame you for still being 30. But the surgeon-general has determined that all those sunsets and sunrises are hazardous to your health, somewhat, if you experience quite a lot of them: three weeks ago, I'm sure it was, I was 30. Now I'm older than I've ever been before. I blame it on all those sunsets and sunrises. :lol:
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
11-17-2012, 10:20 PM
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Still doing web research and questioning some good people in sales here in Vancouver, where K-30 body-only has dropped to Cdn $650-$700 now. I have 5 classic screw-mount Super Takumar primes in very very nice condition, and I've considered them to be white elephants for the past 20+ years. My idea is to maybe, maybe, maybe rejuvenate them with a K-30 and an M42 adapter. It's a question of real use, nostalgia, some passion, impulsiveness and the best things in life no longer paying much attention to me, as I'm 66 now. (Thirty years ago I was not 66.)
I have a Sony HX100v bridge camera, which I really love. My main interest is bird photography, and the HX100v (plus a couple of compacts with lesser tele) has been a delight. To buy a K-30 is a lot about logic and good sense versus being just plain silly. However, "if you still haven't grown up yet when you reach 60, you don't have to," and so I may do this silly THANG. And, to make it even sillier, I might even get one single zoom lens to go with ther body: for my birding passion, that would be a 50-300. I know I can't justify it, but, well, there you are.
What I DON'T want to end up with is disappointment that, honestly-to-goodnessly, my bridge camera does just about almost as well in terms of end-quality; or that I've overkilled myself and have weighed myself down with lenses and material bother. But I figure the really impressive HX100v photos are very close to 100 ISO, and where I go in the middle of nowhere in Costa Rica, that ISO just ain't so very available. I used to use these very same Super-Taks in Parks Canada in the 1970s to take photos that filled giant screens with razor-sharp definition; the very sharpest that Kodachrome 25 could do. Our photos were so sharp we had to wear heavy rubber gloves to sort our slides.
(cough, cough)
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
11-17-2012, 09:55 PM
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This photo: I've seen a huge lot of wedding photos, but this one is really beautiful. It's an old thread, so maybe my praise is wasted here now, but, man alive! The tear on her face; the near-silhouette of the figure framing the image: the photo is so beautifully achieved, without regard for millions that went before. Here is a good photographer with the right tool to do the job; a nice harmonic blend. Excellent.
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