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Forum: Pentax Medium Format
11-16-2021, 08:36 AM
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Having to pay for an SSD will make the body a couple of hundred dollars more expensive. I would say that a pro-grade cameras like 645 might prefer it that way, but for the consumer-level it's not worth it.
Also the drone example. This summer a friend of mine ditched his Mavic Mini into the river. It took us three days to find it. The main board of the drone was dead beyond repair, whereas the microSD was fine, we were able to easily extract all the footage we thought to be lost forever. Would I prefer to have everything on the built-in SSD and pay the serviceman to attempt to extract the data? I don't think so.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
07-01-2018, 11:12 PM
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Took this at Langkawi Island, Malaysia, in October 2017. Wish I had full frame by that time!
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
04-09-2018, 09:43 PM
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
04-09-2018, 09:43 PM
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
04-03-2018, 07:16 AM
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I took this picture during my company's "team outing" to Xiamen city in China. I think it gives quite a feeling when you see the most luxurious part of Xiamen on the background and these three old guys on a small boat cleaning up the water in front of it.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
06-08-2017, 11:19 PM
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
05-03-2017, 04:43 AM
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An old wooden bridge crosses the dried river in the middle of Chinese Inner Mongolia. I took this picture exactly one year ago on my short road trip.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
04-09-2017, 07:37 AM
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I wonder if one can nominate himself...
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-06-2017, 06:23 PM
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Ok, so my problem is solved.
1. You do have to get away from big constructions and electronic devices: switch off your phone, wifi sd card in the camera, etc.
2. Calibrate with the tripod. Yes, attach the tripod and rotate camera with it.
Results are fascinating: on 21mm, I got 300 seconds exposure with practically no trails. On 70mm it was 180 seconds (sample). For 300mm, I only got 10 seconds without trails, but it's still 7 times more than I could do with "500 rule".
Can't wait to get out of the city to shoot a really dark sky!
So I guess in your case it's either hardware problem, or you have magnetic fields nearby that fails the calibration, because mine goes much further than just 2-3 stops with no trails.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
03-04-2017, 07:05 AM
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Alibaba Hangzhou (China) headquarter has a fascinating "net" right above the entrance, on a level of about 20 meters. Trees growing under it.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
02-24-2017, 02:07 AM
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Nice pics, also got Helios-44 (K mount) lately.
Is noise in Q cameras really that bad even on ISO 125, or it's just processing issues?
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
02-23-2017, 06:51 PM
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Updates
Good thing is, service guys admits the issue and did "adjustments" to the sensor.
Bad thing is, no clear sky to test it.
Updates 2
Ok, dunno what they did in the service center, but now it's not 5° but 20° difference between the star movement and the sensor compensation. Can anyone here try to do the same kind of test? (two long exposure shots with and without astrotracer)
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
02-16-2017, 08:29 PM
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In my region (Mainland China), Wacom CTL-471 cost $59 in an official retailer store, and less than $45 in other stores. Not to mention that Wacom pen are lightweight and does not require battery/charging. Is basic Wacom so much expensive in your country?
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
02-16-2017, 06:43 PM
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Anyhow, I measured angles of star trails and matrix shift, and there is 5-6° difference for both lenses. If only it shift sensor in the right direction, it could compensate trails completely.
I will contact service center further and see what's their decision on it.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
02-16-2017, 09:35 AM
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But do you also see movement compensation in a wrong direction? I mean, on my pics sensor is clearly moving, but not quite the right way.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
02-16-2017, 09:09 AM
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So I finally received an answer from my local service center, saying:
"We studied your pictures and we think the issue is too long exposure. Please study manual of K3II and Astrotracer feature and try to operate accordingly. If you still have the same issue, please send it for repair". (my poor translation from Chinese).
First of all, I looked through the manual and never found any specific restrictions or warnings about exposure time, only the limitations set by the camera. I also went to Pentax website to see their samples of Astrotracer feature. According to their sample pictures, Astrotracer can deal with exposure up to 300 seconds without a sight of trails:
I went outside today and made a second series of shots with 70mm Tamron lens and 21mm Pentax lens, away from any metal constructions, and did basic and advanced calibration three times.
As you can see from the attached pics, I have significant trails at 120s on both lenses. So I'm going to send it to the service center and see what's their opinion on that.
If anyone can confirm this kind of behavior for K3II / K1, please reply, I will be very grateful.
(link for full size pics)
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
02-15-2017, 11:40 PM
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I would still strongly suggest using Wacom: even the cheapest one will work much smoother than no-name or Chinese brands. After all, you don't need a huge space to taste what's a good tablet.
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
02-15-2017, 10:20 PM
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So ok, here's my first submission ever to Pentax forum contest, hope you'll like it.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
02-15-2017, 12:12 AM
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Entrance-level Wacom would be a good companion for retouching photos in LR. I have a most basic Intuos CTL-480, more than enough for a casual photo editing, and way better than any mouse.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
02-13-2017, 06:14 PM
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Yeah, I don't expect much from the maximum limit, but these trails are just enormous, and obviously the sensor moves in a wrong direction. And yes, I did the precise calibration in astrotracer menu. The thing is, I don't know how to contact official Ricoh/Pentax to clarify this issue: the nearest service center located in Shanghai ignoring my emails, submit form on the Ricoh US are simply broken, and their twitter/Facebook account is silent as well. I could imagine how hard it would be to check Astrotracer function for a service center in a huge city...
upd: Facebook reply was "We don't care about customers outside of North America". :-/ Maybe someone could suggest an email address to report hardware/software problem with my camera?
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
02-13-2017, 07:41 AM
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Nope, but there's full scale jpgs in the link above, you can check them out.
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Forum: Pentax Forums Giveaways
02-13-2017, 07:13 AM
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And my question is:
(official rules). But today, February 13th, it says "4 Days Left". How?
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Forum: Visitors' Center
02-13-2017, 05:00 AM
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I'm outside, GPS signal is strong, and I did successfully calibration for a several times (always says "Complete"). But it's still the same.
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Forum: Visitors' Center
02-12-2017, 07:24 PM
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
02-12-2017, 07:11 AM
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Good people of Pentax forum, I need your help.
I'm playing with Astrotracer for a while, and I don't know if this is a normal behavior, or I have a broken camera, or it's an magnetic anomaly follows me.
Look at the image. (full sizes are here: Yandex.Disk)
1. 30 seconds in manual mode, astrotracer disabled. Distinct star trails (upper left to bottom right, about 40 degrees angle).
2. 30 seconds, GPS and Astrotracer enabled, precise calibration made twice. Trails are much shorter, but their direction is different (bottom left to upper right, something like 30 degrees)
3. 3 minutes 10 seconds (maximum astrotracer suggest). HUGE TRAILS in a direction different from the one without Astrotracer.
If I understand it correctly, Astrotracer moves sensor in a slightly wrong way, causing huge trails to happen.
Of course, for a 20-30" time Astrotracer is better than nothing, but it still inacurate in a pretty bad way. Can anyone confirm this behavior? Should I go for Ricoh service? Too bad I have just 1 month left before warranty runs off. And the nearest service provider is in Shanghai, which means they won't be able to check Astrotracer in field (light pollution is too bad).
Or maybe I did something wrong?
K3II, firmware 1.10. This was shot with Tamron 70-300, but camera shows the same effect with any lens installed. I'm outside (not in house), did calibration at the very same spot a minute before the shooting several times in a row, it always says "Complete" (no error messages whatsoever).
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