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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
03-28-2024, 02:39 AM
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I missed this in your first post, sorry. Yes one would assume that if the flash is set to manual, only the recharge time would affect burst speed, as there is no pre-flash.
Worth pointing out that the same cannot be said with certainty when triggers are used as even in full manual mode, some triggers (Cactus for example) use the P-TTL protocol to trigger the flash.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
02-26-2024, 03:23 PM
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Appreciate the advice thanks , the k70 fastest shutter is 1/6000 but in winter in Wales at f6.3 I think that would not be usable.
The more practiced guys are panning and shooting as low as 1/50 , but ate well practiced and using pro level gear .
---------- Post added 02-26-24 at 10:24 PM ----------
Appreciate the advice thanks , your photos on second link look good , the 1st link won't work .
---------- Post added 02-26-24 at 10:27 PM ----------
Yes , the famous mach loop... wanted to go for ages , we started a little photography club in my town and some of the members are very skilled and offered to take me along next time , which I am super excited about 😁 I know my limitations and the cameras autofocus limitations ... had poor results trying to photograph birds in flight so not expecting expert level pics but the experience will be good hopefully ...
---------- Post added 02-26-24 at 10:30 PM ----------
Agreed , 1/6000 is theoretically the fastest but not viable in poor light at f6.3... I was kind of thinking that as you never know how many planes will come I might shoot the first pass at 1/1250 or higher if possible to " get one in the bag " then drop shutter speed to maybe 1/500 and try panning . I usually limit my iso to 3200 but may go higher on this occasion .
---------- Post added 02-26-24 at 10:33 PM ----------
Would you use view finder or live view. , seeing as they focus differently ... I'm not a big fan of live view unless I'm manual focusing and using focus peaking , which I won't be on this trip ...
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
02-16-2024, 04:08 AM
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
02-17-2024, 08:50 AM
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
02-17-2024, 02:40 AM
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
01-18-2024, 06:42 AM
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With many bodies people use debug to achieve greater than +/- 10 af adjustment.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-13-2023, 07:38 PM
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Just a heads up that anyone that has been using Walmart.com for their photo printing services should check their gallery for images that are not your own.
A close friend discovered many images uploaded to their account and then charged to their credit card for more than a year. It was never over $20 per charge, so it went unnoticed. Nearly $200 of printing from Walmart from a hacker.
I suppose any of us that had images on the cloud and have paid for digital printing online should check.
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Forum: General Photography
12-06-2023, 10:18 PM
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Pentax SV ... you can tell by the lil 'V' pointing forwards on the bottom of the film rewind crank side.
That crank is also a unique self-timer and that V is the position the timer is currently in.
The V stands for 'Vorlaufwerk' which is German for a 'gear-box' or delay timer.... popular feature/letter on Leica's at the time
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-07-2023, 10:59 AM
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Having used the K-3iii and astrotracer type 3 as well as having a small equatorial that I need to supplement with a bigger one hopefully I can shed some light on thigns.
Most astrophotographers use an equatorial mount of some sort. Depending on focal length and exposure times per shot a guide scope, camera, and guiding software may or may not be used. I don't have an autoguider setup and my little equatorial doesn't support one. The general sky tracking is done with the natural movement of the equatorial and is mostly dependent on how good your polar alignment is. The purpose of an autoguider setup is to correct for inaccuracies in the polar alignment as well as errors and inconsistencies in the movement of the equatorial. There are all sorts of setups for an autoguider system some will split off some of the photons from the primary lens, other use separate guide scope that is either in the same axis as the primary lens/scope or may be pointed differently (off axis guiding). In all setups you will need a separate guide camera that is connected to a device that does the processing to produce the guiding corrections. That device is connected to the equatorial and provides signals to correct the movement. That device can be a self contained unit like the MGEN-3 or a computer running software like Stellarium or other similar software. Most modern autoguiding systems offer sub pixel corrections and will make use of multistar guiding to provide better more consistant results.
Now on to AT type 3. For those who haven't played around much with any version of astrotracer it functions like an alt-az mount (x/y linear movement) with field rotation (rotational portion of the sky movement). Depending on where you have the camera pointed in the sky there will be differing amount of linear and rotational movement. For example having the celestial pole centered in the frame all the movement will be rotational while pointing it so that the celestial equator is centered in the frame results in all linear movement. Astrotracer uses the IBIS system to do the tracking and the theoretical maximum tracking time is limited by the maximum movement of the sensor in the x/y axes or the rotation that the sensor can do and the focal length of the lens. If one looks at the info page on the O-GPS units where they go into the details of tracking you will notice that in a lot of cases focal length affects the tracking time, except when pointed at a celestial pole. This is because the linear speed across the sensor is higher with longer lenses but the rotational angular speed remains the same with 1.5 degrees of rotation around the celestial pole being the same regardless of the lens. Also the celestial pole is likely not straight up but in the northern hemisphere is somewhere very close to Polaris (the north star) or if in the souther hemisphere near octans and the southern cross, also the celestial equator is not at the horizon but will line somehere between the horizon and celestial pole when facing directly towards earth's equator.
The use of astrotracer type 1 (original GPS based one) is rather finicky but once one masters it and figures out why it fails and struggles it could produce fairly good results however its estimated maximum exposure time was always wildly optimistic. The best I ever managed was getting great 20s exposures very near the celestial equator with a 400mm lens and once I managed 40s near the celestial pole. With Type 3 and my 400mm I have gotten substantally better results being able to get great results at 40s along the celestial equator with that 400mm.
The way type 3 functions is that it takes a preimage of the sky, possibly 2 I can't really tell, but it does not do autoguiding like realtime corrections while taking the shot. With the K-3iii this portion takes 12s and then it spends the next 18 seconds processign things to figure out the movement of the stars across the sky. Assuming that the data processing works it then proceeds to take the shot. With subsequent updates to the K-3iii the intervolometer feature has gotten better. This is important because when you use the intervolometer mode with astrotracer type 3 it will only take 1 preimage and then proceed to take the sequence of shots. With my 400mm I will frame up the object I am shooting set the exposure time to 40s and the intervolometer to take a shot every 41 seconds, no delay between shots, 6 total shots and to start immediately when I press the release button (remote release cable). When it finishes with that interval it is time to reframe the object and repeat.
If you notice I mentioned that this assumes that the data processing works. I have probed things to figure out where and how data processing fails. As is mentioned having things in the foreground or something big like the moon in the frame will confuse it and cause it to fail. However there are more reasons for it to fail. The first big one is being off on the focus and getting bloated stars. Bloated stars result in it not being able to really figure out what is a star or possibly not being able to effectively calculate the movement of them since they are bloated. A similar case is if the lens gets fogged/frosted (happens when you shoot the night sky) and the stars end up bloated. The other failure case I have found is if the focal length is off. I have lots of old manual lenses so I found that even being +/- 5mm with a 200mm will result in it confusing itself. This tells me that the problems with the zooms is that they don't report their focal length accurately unless you have them at the long or shot end.
While I think astrotracer is great it will struggle with wide and ultrawide lenses as the movement will be most correct in the center of the frame and gradually gets worse as you move out from there. That can be mitigated by using shorter exposures that are still longer than what you could do untracked.
I am surprised but pleased to see that type 3 is being backpored to older cameras. I figured they used some special DLP chip to do the processing but I may have been wrong as it seems like there is a lot of data to process with limited RAM and processor. K-1 and K-1ii owners enjoy your new toy if you are into astro or want to try it out.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
11-19-2023, 02:44 PM
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Unfortunately, due to age some older lenses are more prone to sticky apertures, balsam separation, and fungus. We know fungus is normally due the owner taking care of the lenses, I imagine the other problems are too. If you only knew for sure the life of a lens before buying.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-17-2023, 09:43 AM
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That depends on the strength of the liquid that you drank from the glass.
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
11-18-2023, 05:48 PM
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I confess I buy a lot of Chinese-manufactured items, and I find almost all of them satisfactory. I know what I paid and I have expectations accordingly. These goods are not the same as they were 15 years ago — the quality has improved. The worst part of Chinese goods is documentation.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-14-2023, 07:20 PM
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This series has never been my favorite. The Olympus versions in the past were better featured despite sharing most mechanicals.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-12-2023, 05:17 PM
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Good news or cleaning up the balance sheet for another sale?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-20-2023, 12:33 AM
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Pentax marketing at its finest.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
10-19-2023, 07:55 AM
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I have double-checked as directed above and "flash on" is selected & still it won't trigger.
---------- Post added 10-19-23 at 11:05 AM ----------
I've cleaned the contacts, wiggled & wiggled & still it won't trigger....until just now! It finally discharged when I wiggled AND moved the "fix" lever on the flash. When I move the lever all the way to the right it won't trigger! Back it off almost all the way & it works. Success appears to be a function of the exact position of the "fix" lever, how convenient (NOT). I'll not be using this body for any serious flash photography.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
10-17-2023, 07:15 AM
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Well, going by the fact that my K-3/3 had replaced SD card slot, some lens mount wiring, eye sensor and something else I stick with so-so electronics :)
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
09-28-2023, 06:13 AM
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1. crinkle in monochrome
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
10-11-2023, 03:03 PM
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Cpl’s reduce light, long tele’s also with f5..f8 min. aperture and autofocus needs plenty light to work reliable, so on dim day it will be sensed. Pentax states that f2,8 gives best focus, see below on Image Tracking | PENTAX K-3 Mark III | RICOH, with a tele f5.6 and a Cpl, you are deviating too much...
Phase detect autofocus typically involves some (as most light goes to viewfinder, partial, filtering) mirror surfaces towards focus sensor, which can be also polarising (at least partly), hence combination with CPL can be tricky. If unlucky both polarisations cancel too much light.
Live view uses sensor, no mirror in lightpath, and should work better...
Sometimes rotating the polariser helps, but you might not get desired effect if beating certain angled reflections like from windows or water.
Note that for instance Urth advises professional CPLplus for tele’s and indicates a ot 1..2 stops light loss, so there is definitely impact , especially on f5 or narrower apertures.Urth CPL Lens Filter Plus+ | Urth EU..
In the manuals of teleconvertors - who also loose 1 or 2 stops - it is stated to use them better with f2.8 lenses , an indication that with the resulting ’above f4’ apertures, autofocus troubles start to kick in due to the lack of light ...
Some photographers advise against the use of any filter,... but let’s say there is always some impact...and not always positive.
Removal makes sense...
Or try the low light option of Tiffen? Polarizer Overview ? The Tiffen Company 1stop in stead of 1,5 stop loss...
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
09-17-2023, 03:32 AM
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
09-16-2023, 02:51 AM
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
09-14-2023, 06:38 PM
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THE BEST LENS I HAVE EVER OWNED
A List of for my lenses I have owned and used on my Pentax cameras are as follows:
HD Pentax-D FA 31mm F1.8 Limited
HD Pentax-D FA 21mm F2.4 ED Limited DC WR
HD Pentax-D FA* 50mm F1.4 SDM AW
HD Pentax-D FA 15-30mm F2.8 ED SDM WR
HD*D FA 24-70mm*F2.8 ED SDM WR
HD FA 150-450mm F4.5-5.6
HD Pentax-D FA 28-105mm*F3.5-5.6 ED DC WR
DA**11-18mm*f/2.8 ED DC AW
DA* 200mm f/2.8 ED (IF) SDM
DA* 300mm F4.0 ED (SDM)
DA 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 ED AL (IF) DC WR
DA 20-40mm*F2.8-4 Limited WR
31mm F/1.8 FA Limited Lens
ROKINON 85M-P 85mm f/1.4
Samyang 35mm f/1.4
Samyang 50mm f/1.4
Sigma*17-50mm*f/2.8 Ex Dc Hsm
I also have owned and used lenses from Canon, Sony, Fuji and Olympus.
Yes, the best lens I have every owned and is absolutely awesome especially on my K-1 Mark II is the HD Pentax-D FA 21mm F2.4 ED Limited DC WR.
It stands alone! It truly has a distinctive rendering that has captured my heart, I love it! The clarity up close and far off, the sharpness in the details is first class. The way it makes what ever I am shooting stand out, whether up close or far off. Such an inspiring lens. After using it, in my opinion it is worth the money I had to spend to get it. In this case you get what you pay for.
If I had to take four lenses to do what ever I wanted to accomplish with my type of photography, I would first choose the HD Pentax-D FA 21mm F2.4 ED Limited DC WR and second would be the HD Pentax-D FA 31mm F1.8 Limited and third the HD Pentax-D FA* 50mm F1.4 SDM AW and fourth the HD Pentax-D FA* 85mm F1.4 ED SDM AW.
But the 21mm would get 80-90% of the work load.
Yes, I am truly impressed with the 21mm F2.4 Limited.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 III
09-07-2023, 12:34 PM
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I never used AE-L so I have programmed that button to be AF-C with medium sized AF area while pressed. That way I can switch between AF-C and AF-S with two different areas super fast.
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