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Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-19-2022, 03:59 AM
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-21-2022, 03:14 PM
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Forum: Ricoh GR
06-21-2015, 09:49 AM
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As with film photography, the "actual image" is the product of what you do with what the camera captures. In regards to film photography, Ansel Adams is widely quoted with an example drawn from the musician's perspective,
 Quote: The negative is the score, the print the performance... Is a "straight print" from a film negative or a transparency using box speed and standard development more "authentic" than an intentionally exposed and processed exposure transformed to a well-made enlargement by a master print maker? Is an in-camera JPEG more real or genuine than one generated by a person skilled with PP tools? Is a hybrid (film/digital) workflow tainted by the means used to generate a print?
Steve
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Forum: Ricoh GR
06-21-2015, 09:22 AM
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If you've ever printed in the darkroom, you wouldn't be thinking these thoughts because it is just a transfer of that process to the computer world, although certainly the possibilities for change are much greater and some things are total digital fabrications which only really matter in news/documentary photos where you are "telling the truth" with your photos, at least in terms of people, places, events, objects, etc. (But "the camera doesn't lie" is a lie -- it ALWAYS lies in some aspects.)
So there never has been "true to life" capture of what's in front of the camera and there never will be. Even with slides -- if the world really looked like Kodachrome, I mean wow. How about black & white? Isn't that unreal? If you want to get really esoteric, consider that the world doesn't exist "in color" at all, it is just our eyes being sensitive to a certain narrow set of wavelengths of a much greater electromagnetic spectrum. And lenses all have some distortion, etc etc.
Anyway, with digital there is "leave it to the camera/computer" to do it for me, or use your helping hand to guide it where you like. But there is always post-processing or there is no image to see...
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Forum: Ricoh GR
06-21-2015, 09:07 AM
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As a former and, not a very good slide user, an even worse B/W film user, I bought my first SLR (Ricoh XR-P.) Then I joined a local camera club. A chap there who was a very keen B/W artist took me under his wing. The best thing he did was show me some prints from Ansel Adams. One look at these and any reservations about post processing vanished.
If it was good enough for Adams to post process then there is no argument. There are just different tools. Digital brings the possibilities within the range of mere mortals like me and I still have a long way to go..
That said. there is still much to the arts of composition, and exposure, that no amount of skill in post processing, digital or otherwise can compensate for.
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Forum: Ricoh GR
06-21-2015, 08:55 AM
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There are a multitude of posts scattered throughout the forums addressing this topic... and lots of opinions. In short, there is a "software program" inside your camera that develops the image, and it is not designed to be perfectly true-to-life. And really, it is the same with film. Each film has its own color and contrast characteristics, and of course lens coatings also impact the color and contrast of your images.
I don't think post-production software "expands" the capabilities of your camera. Digital cameras are inherently a meld of hardware + software. If you shoot JPG, you are using the development sensibilities of a group of Ricoh engineers. If you shoot RAW, you are (mostly) using your own development sensibilities. Either way is fine, as long as it meets your requirements.
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Forum: Ricoh GR
06-21-2015, 08:33 AM
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Most people only do exposure and color edits in post, not the "oh I'll just add Obama here" aspect of "photoshopping". Actually, most usual edits were possible in the darkroom already.
Keep in mind that what you're seeing is just what the camera or software settings produced anyway. You can tweak those settings to your liking, you can set them up for later editing or you can shoot in a raw format that you'll have to edit/convert later.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
06-10-2015, 09:27 PM
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I believe the brightness is beyond the range of the sensor. The only solution to to do a localized brush fix to reduce the brilliance. I don't think you could have done any better in the capture.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
05-26-2015, 01:43 PM
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I'd have to cast a vote for the extraordinary DA* 60-250mm.
Michael
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-20-2015, 03:06 AM
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Very very colourful. Sure, its overdone in parts but go to 500PX and they are nearly all like this.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
04-10-2015, 02:13 PM
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Any modern desktop with a good screen will be more than enough. 2006 is a long time ago.
If you want actual suggestions for a real top notch computer: Intel i7 processor, 16gb RAM, an SSD drive for the OS and a 1 or 2 TB hard drive for storage. If you can possibly swing it get the SSD, nothing I have ever seen has improved the speed of a computer like it. That is plenty and you can certainly get by with less. Don't worry over much about the graphic card unless you are going to do 3-D renders or heavy (really heavy) Photoshop work. Lightroom, at least last I heard does not even use the GPU so it does not matter.
The screen is more important than most people realize. More important than the computer IMHO. I like the Dell Ultrasharp line but there are lots of good ones. Just do not cheap out on the screen if you are going to be processing images. Get a good one that will last you. Also, get a monitor calibration tool. Spyder or something else, a calibrated monitor is required to develop images IMHO.
For back up an external 2tb USB drive is standard, but cloud storage should also be considered depending on how serious you are. Lot's of ways to do cloud, many of them free. If you are an Amazon Prime member you get unlimited storage.
For software, get a copy of Lightroom and learn to use it. Unless you are really into graphic design and layers and creative work Photoshop is massive overkill. If you think you want to get into Photoshop type things try the $9.99 a month Lightroom / Photoshop bundle. But honestly, just get Lightroom, it handles 95% of what most photographers do anyway. After you have learned LR and find you still want more then get Photoshop. But you need Lightroom anyway for the catalog and retrieval functions so start there.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
02-26-2015, 02:45 PM
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They are your photographs and you have the right to do whatever you want with them. "Pure" photography can be very much over-rated. Remember, Ansel Adams manipulated his photos a great deal. He was known to re-touch out power lines etc. Here is a discussion of the photograph "Moonrise over Hernandez" and the difficulties of printing it:
From "Ansel Adams: Some Thoughts About Ansel And About Moonrise", by Mary Street Alinder (Copyright 1999 Alinder Gallery):
"Moonrise was made on a typical Ansel trip to the Southwest in the fall of 1941 combining two commercial assignments: one for the U.S. Department of the Interior at Carlsbad Caverns and the other for the U.S. Potash Company. Accompanying Ansel were his son, Michael, and his good friend, Cedric Wright. The trip was a grand, meandering one, tailored to show eight year old Michael the sights of the Southwest. After a few days exploring Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and Canyon de Chelly, they decided to photograph about Santa Fe.
"Driving back to their hotel following an unsuccessful day of picture making in the Chama Valley, Ansel glanced to his left and saw a fantastic event. The sky was illuminated by brightly-lit clouds in the east and the white crosses in the cemetery of the old adobe church seemed to glow from within. He nearly crashed the car as he screeched to a halt in the roadside ditch, dashed out, yelling at Michael and Cedric to find the tripod, the camera, the meter, etc.
"Ansel rushed to assemble and mount the 23.5 inch component of his Cooke Series XV lens on his 8 x 10-inch view camera loaded with Ansco Isopan film and find the Wratten G filter. All was in place, but he could not find his Weston light meter. He remembered that the moon reflects 250 foot candles and he based his exposure upon that fact. He quickly computed a setting of 1/60 at f/8, but with the addition of the filter it became 1/20 at f/8. To achieve the same exposure with greater depth of field he stopped the lens to f/32 and released the shutter for one second. He prepared to make a second exposure for insurance. Dramatically, the light faded forever from the foreground.
"Moonrise, the negative, was far from perfect. It took me two years to convince Ansel to make a 'straight' print of Moonrise. He printed it without his customary darkroom manipulation as a teaching tool to show the basic information contained within the negative. Comparing this print with a fine print, one is struck by the immense work and creativity necessary for Ansel to produce what he believed to be the best interpretation of the negative. His final, expressive print is not how the scene looked in reality, but rather how it felt to him emotionally.
"Moonrise was Ansel's most difficult negative of all to print. Though he kept careful records of darkroom information on Moonrise, each time he set up the negative, he would again establish the procedure for this particular batch of prints because papers and chemicals were always variables not constants. After determining the general exposure for the print, he gave local exposure to specific areas. Using simple pieces of cardboard, Ansel would painstakingly burn in (darken with additional light from the enlarger) the sky, which was really quite pale with streaks of cloud throughout. He was careful to hold back a bit on the moon. The mid-ground was dodged (light withheld), though the crosses have been subtly burned in. This process took Ansel more than two minutes per print of intricate burning and dodging. Ansel created Moonrise with a night sky, a luminous moon and an extraordinary cloud bank that seems to reflect the moon's brilliance. Moonrise is sleight of hand. Moonrise is magic."
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
08-15-2014, 07:31 AM
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Historically....
Nikon made good bodies, lousy glass (no change)
Canon made Lousy Bodies, decent glass
Sony/Minolta had great glass elements, Fair bodies, lens bodies (Rokkor) didn't hold up.
Olympus made smaller but decent bodies, great glass, but field support was lousy....
The Germans had great glass, oversized and overpriced bodies
Pentax has solid but smaller bodies, had longer than average new product cycles but made large innovation leaps when they did, kept rearward compatibility as much as possible (lots of Nikon and Canon glass paperweights out there...$50 bucks cheap cheap). ANd Pentax glass was the best engineered and executed (mathematically and benched right with the Germans)...
So What's All the Kvetching about? We need ASAP... The Gap Filling DA Long Zoom 135-150 to 380-450(OK somebody pick), a WR 12-24 nice (but no rush), stop making so many overlaps (looks cheap- more is not better), and LONG glass 400-800 Primes and zooms for 645z.
And for the FFers, Cram a FF into the K-01, add an EVF, and lets be done with it...
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
10-10-2013, 10:03 AM
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This strikes me as gratuitous pessimism, particularly given what we've recently seen from Ricoh. Essentially, Ricoh is doing everything they reasonably can to save the Pentax brand. And we're angry because they dare to put their name anywhere on the camera? Why do some people here have such a bad attitude about Ricoh? Would it really be preferable if the Pentax camera division was still run by Hoya? But Hoya didn't want the camera division; they were going to sell it regardless. Under such circumstances, Ricoh seems to me the very best buyer that we could possibly have hoped for. (And if there were a better possible buyer, who would that have been?)
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
04-05-2014, 03:01 PM
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Are you using the original Pentax Mount Adapter K, or are you using an adapter from a third party with a flange that sits against the lens mount? The flanged adapters will not allow infinity focus - they hold the lens a few mm further from the film plane than the correct adapter does.
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