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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-20-2019, 06:53 AM
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please check the bottom right corner of the rear screen :P
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
11-13-2017, 09:00 PM
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My copy (bought used around a year ago) suffers from the same issue on rare occasion (3 times over the past year). The quick fix is to use a small screwdriver to turn the focus drive screw. Works every time. It's not the infamous SDM issue. I believe it's some issue where the clutch that engages between quick shift focus and SDM driven focus gets stuck between the two, engaging nothing and making the strange sound as a result.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
08-21-2017, 12:45 PM
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decided at the last minute to snap some pics ....
first one at beginning of totality 2nd one a bit out of focus but the reflected light made Venus (to the left) appear very BLUE ...3rd one just as totality was ending and sun was roaring back
just simple jpgs ...sure there will be many better but thought I'd share ...was really cool to be so dark in the middle of the day!
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Forum: Product Suggestions and Feedback
12-16-2016, 12:30 AM
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The following lenses still available at retailers are missing from the new Ricoh USA web site:
- HD DA 560mm
- DA 12-24mm
- HD DA 18-50mm WR
- DA 14mm
- DA 17-70mm
- DA 18-270mm
- DA 18-55mm WR
- All Q mount lenses
Are they discontinued or simply not added yet?
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Forum: Product Suggestions and Feedback
12-16-2016, 01:28 AM
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Accessories
Related to Adam's post regarding lenses:
With the demise of the old separate Pentax Webstore site many accessories are no longer listed. For example (to name a few):
AC power supplies
View screens
Lens Caps (front and rear)
Viewfinder magnifier (O-ME53)
Eyepiece Blind
Mount Adapter K (30120)
Eyepieces
Will any or all of these be available through the Ricoh website? Some are available through authorized dealers but many times we have to resort to sources like sellers on eBay.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
10-23-2016, 12:19 PM
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With much appreciation to the OP (Blacknight659), DavidDwight for the PK Tether workaround, and also posts on the other forum, I have been able to successfully complete the SDM to screw drive conversion without using PK Tether. This is great for Mac users like me (PK Tether is not available for Mac), but it should also work for PC users. I have just used this process to convert my DA* 16-50, using a K5IIs, firmware 1.07. I don't know if it will work with other camera models. For others who may like to try this, I have laid out the process I followed below. This is basically a combination of the processes described in this thread by the OP, David immediately above, and Ron (Brandrx) in the other forum, but I thought it may be useful to lay it out in one place, with some additional notes from my experience:
As noted by the original posters, continue at your own risk - I am not responsible for any damage that may occur to your equipment.
1. Download the two required files from Dropbox, depending on the camera you are using: Dropbox - enable Debug Menu
Note: When I did this on my Mac, for some reason the extension .txt was added to the file names during the download process. You need to remove this added extension, so the file names appear as 00077681.541 and DEVELOP.MOD. This is for the K5IIs - for other models, the numbers in the first file name will be different. The content of the first file is a single line: [OPEN_DEBUG_MENU]. The second file is empty.
2. Copy these two files to the root directory of your SD card. I did this using a card reader - you can also do it with the SD card in the camera, using a USB cord between camera and computer.
3. Put the SD card in your camera, and power on while leaving the memory card door open. The Development Menu will immediately appear. This is the step that gets you into the Development Menu without using PK Tether.
4. Scroll down to Development Menu 4, and select line "LENS ROM DAT CAMERA=>SD", press OK. This copies the LENSEEP.LNS file to your SD card.
5. If you are using a card reader, power off, remove SD card and place in card reader. This is how I did it, but you could also continue working with these files connecting to the SD card in your camera with a USB cord. Make a backup of the LENSEEP.LNS file, and save it to your computer for possible future use.
6. Open the original LENSEEP.LNS file on the SD card using the Textedit app (this is for Mac users, PC users would use Notepad or another text editor). Use the edit, find menu to highlight all occurrences of "C0". These were in the first column on the left, and in the column headed "03". Ignore the first column leaving it as it is, and change all of the "C0" occurrences in column 03 to "80" (in my case there were 16 of them in column 03 needing changing). Save the file changes, making sure that the only copy of the LENSEEP.LNS file left on the SD card is the modified file (the first two files from Steps 1 and 2 should still be there). Using the Textedit app on my mac, I did not have any issues with having to change RTF/ASCII save settings as reported by DavidDwight - I just used the standard file, save, and it worked fine.
7. Return the SD card to the camera, and power on, again leaving the memory card door open so the Development menu appears.
8. Scroll down to Development Menu 4, and select line "LENS ROM DAT SD=>CAMERA", press OK. This copies the edited file back to the lens. You will see "wait..." on the screen, and then some lines of text flashing past for a few seconds. This completes the process. Power off, and power on again normally with the memory card door closed - the lens should now be in screw drive mode. As reported by others, you may need to repeat this step. In my case it did not work the first time, but did after the second.
You will now find a backup file on your SD card created by your camera, called BACKUP.LNS. This seems to be the same as the backup of LENSEEP.LNS created in step 5. I have kept both of these on my computer in case of future need. As you don't need the files on your SD card any more, you can delete them, or preferably reformat the card.
The key to this method which does not use PK Tether is getting in to the Development Menu by having the two necessary files from step 1 in the root directory of your SD card, and powering the camera on with the card door open. I learned this from DavidDwight's post above - it works with both my K5IIs, and my K3. I don't know if it works with other Pentax models. I completed the lens conversion process with my K5IIs. Although I have seen that I can get in to the Development Menu the same way on my K3, I don't know if the whole lens conversion process would work the same as it did with the K5IIs.
I now have a fully functional DA* 16-50 again. As expected the screw drive focus is a bit noisier than the SDM was, but that is a small price to pay for having a working lens, and the confidence that it is not going to fail on me as it has three times previously.
Many thanks also to posters on the other forum for sharing their solutions (especially Ron - BrandrX, RIP).
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
03-24-2016, 10:07 PM
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In a next firmware release, I'd like the AF button to wake up the camera.
At this moment, the only way to wake the camera up, is to half press the shutter button.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-09-2015, 09:03 PM
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I was just thinking about this tonight and wondering why it isn't part of the feature set. It shouldn't be that hard to define and mathematically calculate something analogous to the f-stop for focus then bracket 3 or 5 exposure at user defined "stop" intervals from the calculated ideal focus point or even the manual focus. The focusing system would have no need to analyze the image, just incrementally move the focus mechanism a predetermined amount. In-camera stacking could even be implemented without too much trouble.
I intend to experiment with focus stacking and I suspect it will be tedious at best to manually dial in precise increments from front to back. I don't know how precise those increments even need to be so it will be a learning experience for me. A simple focus bracketing function implemented in the camera body would take a lot of the tedium out of the process.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-10-2015, 02:31 PM
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I'm sure some of this is correct, but I still believe that it is entirely feasible to implement an AF bracketing facility. Yes, of course different lenses require a different amount of screw drive turn to achieve the same degree of de-focus, but it should still be possible to offer a scale which allows people to choose an amount to shift forwards and backwards. It would then be up to the photographer to do some tests and set an amount which works for them, for a particular lens. This would be useful even if you just had to control it completely manually, but it would certainly be possible to record this setting in a profile and have it brought up automatically for each lens, in exactly the same way as AF adjustments are. Also, given that it's possible to calibrate AF so that it settles a certain amount forwards or backwards from where the camera thinks the image is in focus, surely this indicates that the camera is able to achieve exactly the same kinds of shifts that a bracketing facility would require.
For Canon and Nikon systems, focus stacking software is available (eg Helicon Remote) which is able to automatically rack the focus through a range of distances for a selectable number of steps, which is a form of AF-bracketing. If this is possible through tethered software then surely it is possible to make the camera's firmware do the same? And yet to my knowledge this has never been done on those systems. This suggests to me that the decision not to implement this feature on those systems at least is due to something other than technical barriers. It does not necessarily follow that the same technical abilities are available on the Pentax system, but neither have I heard any convincing evidence to the contrary so far.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-04-2015, 11:44 PM
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t
I think there might be a different way. Simply by having an offset in the ficus adjust, that you vary over the range of AF adjustment, that way even if you have an AF error on a lens,may bracketing around the AF adjustment point you might just get one shot that's perfect
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-05-2014, 06:14 AM
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Not a dumb idea at all. I've been meaning to post about this for ages now. Cameras have bracketing for loads of silly things which are of virtually no use, but nothing for one of they key photographic components of any exposure - focus. I don't know of any camera to date which implements this feature and I can't understand why - it has always seemed like a no-brainer to me. I have wondered if there is some technical reason which would make this difficult to implement, but can't think of one. I can only think that it's a marketing thing - implementing this feature would be an admission that autofocus can actually sometimes be wrong! I personally don't use autofocus in any situation where I have the time to do it manually for this very reason - it simply isn't accurate or reliable enough. In particular, autofocus systems aren't capable of assessing optimum focus for the entire frame and ignore such things as the curvature of field which many lenses exhibit.
I manually focus-bracket almost every shot I take, if the subject is static. Automatic focus bracketing could greatly speed up this process for me. Given that AF accuracy is one of the most commonly talked about obstacles to getting sharp images, I'm sure it would be of great use to many people - particularly when using fast lenses at max aperture, where autofocus is notoriously unreliable. I actually think it is potentially so useful that it should be implemented close to the top level of controls in the 'ease of access' hierarchy - probably assignable to a hard button, or at least to have easy access from the function menu.
Trying to think through any issues in implementing this system, probably the main one relates to variance between lenses, which all require different degrees of travel for the same shift in focus distance, plus of course different aperture settings might require a different degree of focus shift to be optimal. In theory, firmware could be developed which allows for the camera to come with a good set of defaults for current lenses, which take into account focus throw etc, but which allows user customization to be saved for each lens, as it currently is for fine focus adjustments. However, even a basic implementation which just uses a single set of user-controllable parameters which is easily changed on a per-shot basis would be of huge benefit. This could be implemented in a similar way to exposure bracketing, where the user chooses the number of 'points' on a scale, forwards or backwards of 'normal', and also whether to shoot three or five images.
Getting truly optimal focus is one of the hardest technical details to get right in photography - one of the few which has not yet been nailed by technological development. Focus bracketing could help immensely with this - and in my eyes be a lot more useful than having a zillion focus points - and it doesn't even need additional hardware to work - just firmware changes. If fact it could even be done through a firmware update.
... or am I missing something? Would be interested to hear other opinions on this - would you find this useful? Why hasn't it been implemented before?
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-04-2014, 10:00 AM
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Just a dumb idea, I was thinking about today. Why not implement a couple of auto focus functions that could be activated by the green button.
The first was to have an auto focus limiter, which would limit the range within the depth of field (assumes Av or Tav mode ), This would be great for doing shots where there is some foreground interference, twigs etc,
This obviously could lead to focus bracketing. Since for new AF lenses the camera knows aperture, hence also depth of field, as well as focus distance(when you press green button) hence it could easily do a 3-5 frame bracket around the focus point.
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Forum: Winners' Showcase
02-14-2015, 06:36 PM
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The full moon just coming up over the horizon next to the Milwaukee harbor lighthouse. The moon distorted by the lower level atmospherics.
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