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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
06-08-2022, 03:18 AM
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I would like to nominate this photo
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-19-2022, 10:32 AM
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Depending on the type of editing required, if it's RAW file processing, then Darktable, RawTherapee, maybe Lightzone or even DigiKam. There's also the very decent AfterShot (commercial).
If it's just removing red eyes, lightening this and that and the such, all of the above can do most of that, plus the Gimp, also Krita might be of interest.
And Digikam is a picture editor and catalog that's a fairly all around tool that also plays well with the others.
All of those work in most operating systems (at least Linux and Windows, maybe also MacOS for most).
And, finally, don't stay on Windows 7. It's a stale system that's barely maintained. You can't even put it online any more. Upgrade it to 10, or better, 11, or if you have something against the recent versions of Windows, just slap Linux on the machine.
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
09-28-2009, 12:35 AM
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It's more like 100 000 so the ones that die are either faulty or substandard.
I've had two die (SD), both bought on the field because mine were full. In both cases they were noname brands that died very quickly (same problems as above).
As a rule, I try to stick with SanDisk or other high end makers, using their "ultra" (or equivalent) type of series (without going overboard with the fastest ones). I have a number of those that have seen a lot of use with no trouble whatsoever.
And of course I do empty them whenever I can. But bringing my laptop on a trip isn't always convenient (what kind of a desert is this that doesn't even have a power outlet ?).
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
05-21-2009, 05:42 AM
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Presumably people started to go out more...
I'd need a tripod weighing around 5 kg... :eek:
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-21-2009, 04:07 AM
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The (astoundingly crappy) French Pentax website (which has the K-7 buried in the inner pages for some reason with no mention on the home page lists the price as :
1249 € naked
1349 € with the new DA 18-55mm
1599 € with both new DA 18-55mm and DA 50-200mm
Availability is listed as end of June. None of the usual merchant sites seems to list it so far.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-21-2009, 03:39 AM
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Sorry, we've only got mutated K-Ms.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-21-2009, 03:35 AM
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Ah, but can it run Linux ?
Also there's no WiFi. And it doesn't play MP3s.
And it seems that the selection of games is very poor.
I don't predict a bright future for this piece of kit.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-21-2009, 03:30 AM
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I sometimes use the bracketing button for images that have too much dynamic range so that I can recombine them later in software.
Since it's not a very common occurrence, I can't say I use it often. But the button is convenient. Now I just have to get better at the software bit.
Tweaking the images to get them balanced so that they look natural isn't very easy (example).
As for the RAW button, I never use it. My camera is always set for either Raw+Jpeg or Raw, so there's no need.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-18-2009, 09:58 PM
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Actually they don't run out. ;)
If they do, yes, you have to remove the grip (not that much of a bother) if you want to change both. Or you can change just the one in the grip.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-18-2009, 09:46 PM
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If it's bad enough that you can't frame, the shot probably won't be too good anyway (that's as a 500mm user on my K10D).
So I'm not convinced. For me the only use of the EVF was to display a "live" luminance curve of the shot.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
12-09-2008, 07:52 AM
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Roughly, either you run a system that can run Aperture and you can consider running it, or you run an open system which probably cannot run Aperture and you don't even wonder about it, and that's the end of it.
In my case, I pretty much *had* to switch (long story I won't bore you with) around 1994.
Since then I've had a Windows partition, on and off.
For games. I never, ever trusted it for data (rather silly, I know, but it was more a matter of tools than environment... I had my tools in Unix, I didn't in Windows).
SO when I switched from chemical to regular photography, I used xpaint (now *that* was painful), and a lot of other tools and finally settled on Bibble Pro (already great, next version should be awesome), Gimp, digiKam (absolutely amazing, and looking to be truly wonderful with KDE4), Kate (made *heaps* of progress, not there yet, but almost), and the numerous command line graphical manipulation utilities (mostly pbmtools and ImageMagick, with lots of others though), the likes of which are mostly absent in Windows (and are /almost/ absent in Mac OS, for a few users have found the terminal).
All of this is why, although there are quite a few bumps to overcome on the Unix side, there are so many things that are waaaay easier that there is no way I'd go back, ever.
However I'm a Unix guy. Been one for more than 20 years now. Which doesn't mean anything other than "I've gotten used to (or I've learned a certain way to) doing things my way."
Windows people (or Mac people) will feel as out of place in my environment as I in theirs (and I have used an iBook for a year, it's now living a happy life as a paperweight because I hated it).
The moral of the story ? If I'm used to it, I'll like it. If not, I'll probably hate it.
Getting someone to learn something new is a *lot* of work. Some of it is learning something new. A lot of it is overcoming the basic distrust for anything that's "foreign".
(I hope that made sense)
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-29-2008, 06:50 AM
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So in other words they test SLRs as if they were point and shoot compacts. While this is indeed how a number of people (who will never leave the auto mode and will never use anything but the kit lenses) use their cameras, it still doesn't make much sense for this type of camera.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-20-2008, 08:58 AM
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I almost never use the preview either. In some extreme cases I'll check the histograms. Sometimes I'll actually look at the image right away when I wonder if I actually got the action in a wildlife shot that went real quick and is now over but that's really not typical.
Not to mention that apart from the framing and possibly the fact that a shot is completely out of focus, the LCD won't show you anything interesting. Colours will be off, it'll be hard to tell if the image is really sharp, etc.
All in all not very useful. I wait until I'm back with a machine that has a proper screen and Bibble or another bit of decent processing sotware to check the images.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
11-16-2008, 09:53 AM
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In that case he shouldn't forget to get a spare battery with the grip ;)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
11-16-2008, 09:50 AM
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There is some open source software (essentially dcraw & co) that satisfactorily processes PEF files, so this is a non-issue since that software won't disappear.
Should Pentax obscure its format in the years to come to the point that it can only be read by licensed software, then users will just switch to DNG.
However if they removed DNG support in that context, some may have to leave the brand (I know I would)... executives have been known to make stupid decisions...
And regarding DNG becoming a standard... That's hard to tell. It may become a standard in the same way that Microsoft's .DOC is a standard. A format that is widely used but that cannot be guaranteed to be fully read by anybody (it has provisions to make it so, at the request of the camera makers).
And I'd rather use PNG than TIFF as a generic large colour depth format. So there. :D
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-06-2008, 09:00 AM
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Assuming Pentax went belly-up and my body(es) died... I probably wouldn't go with Nikon despite the quality because I can't get used to their interface which I simply find terribly poorly designed. I remember that the D70 that now sits unused at home was really painful to use.
After that it would depend. Maybe Canon or one of the smaller makers such as Sony.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
11-06-2008, 07:41 AM
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Finally some reliable rumours ! ;)
I wish the K3 went beyond being just a pro camera though. Maybe it could be, um, super-pro or something.
The K30 is going to make a killing with astronomers apparently.
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
11-06-2008, 06:38 AM
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Finding a good hiking bag is a neverending quest. I know I'm still looking.
I dabble in nature photography and regularly go to "rustic" (to say the least) places worldwide where I regularly spend night in tents (although I arrange the trips so I only have to carry the day's stuff).
This means I need a way to carry :
- Body
- 16-45 lens
- 105 macro
- my travelling long lens, usually the Sigma 50-500
- Sometimes a 70-200
- The usual assortment of batteries, filters, cards
- Sometimes a compact camera
- Sometimes my 11" laptop
And
- 3 litres of water (typically 2 x 1.5l bottle)
- warm clothing
- rainproof clothing
- a bit of food
- a microfibre towel
All this in a proper bag that I can actually walk with and that will protect the gear in case of a mild fall.
Well sometimes I think I'd rather search for the grail. Those arthurian knights had it easy.
So far I'm using a computrekker+ AW which is of course far from ideal, but which more or less works, mostly becase of the integrated belt (the hips must take a lot of the weight, not the shoulders). However it's really lacking in the "non-photo related" storage department.
Apart from that it's a great all around bag.
I've been looking online at the larger National Geographic backpack. It's already heavy empty though and I'd like to actually see it before comitting myself. However does *seem* to have the storage space.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
11-06-2008, 05:51 AM
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I've been using BibblePro for a while. It is exclusively a (very complete) RAW processing tool. It's not meant to process other types of files. I have no idea how it compares to Lightroom which cannot run on my machines.
*However*, the upcoming version of Bibble (version 5) should integrate a full workflow management toolset. It's expected by the end of the year.
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Forum: Photographic Technique
11-05-2008, 05:38 AM
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Here, I have a master file tree kept on my workstation which is duplicated on a RAID1 (mirrored disks) NAS.
The volume of data doesn't allow for DVD backups (I'm not really very confident in optical media anyway). I'm waiting for fibre upgrade of my internet access (normally next year) to add some sort of online backup since everything is currently stored locally which is a major potential risk.
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
10-06-2008, 03:01 AM
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I'd never seen the "Snap Cap" thing although the idea is ingenious. Bt this prevents from using a hood which is IMO pretty much essential in most settings.
However they have a thing called the "Hood Hat" which might be a good compromise.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
10-05-2008, 05:46 AM
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Currently testing it. Don't have any interesting shots to show with it, mostly personal tests that I don't keep but so far it seems to perform fine.
The hood makes it a bit long (but then I'm used to carrying the Bigma so it isn't that much of an issue) but it's comfortable to use. I'll see how it does in the wild pretty soon.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
04-22-2008, 10:07 AM
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I own the Bigma and use itregularly. I found that for its price it's a fairly amazing piece of kit. You do however need to learn to use it as it certainly isn't a point and shoot lens. I can now get pretty good results with it consistently if I have a tree to lean on or my monopode.
I wish I'd had it when I was in Tanzania (only had a 70-300 kit lens which was fairly crappy).
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
04-22-2008, 09:45 AM
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Regarding lenses, wasn't it possible to adapt digital APSC lenses on some canon (I think) FF bodies with an adaptor ? I seem to recall this is possible with one of the makers. No idea what impact there is on light/optical quality though.
Presumably such a stunt could be pulled which would considerably augment the number of available glass.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
04-22-2008, 09:27 AM
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RawTherapee, BibblePro, sometimes the RAW converter from digiKam (just a frontend for ufraw really). I played with LightZone a bit but I'm not very fond of it so far.
I'm in Linux though so YMMV.
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