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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-04-2015, 12:18 AM
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-02-2015, 06:05 AM
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Yes, the A12 is for Leica M lenses.
Well you're exactly right about non-native glass. I think that to be bold because none of the other manufacturers seem to understand it!
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-02-2015, 06:15 AM
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I think if Fuji was really bold they would create fully functional adapters for Canon, Nikon and Pentax glass. Including AF (perhaps by even including a screw mount motor in the adapter). Should be technically possible (maybe not legally, but who knows...). They won't do that, because those lenses could hurt their bottom line. Old (and new) manual Leica lenses aren't dangerous. They are in a different league.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-01-2015, 01:24 PM
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What he appears to be saying is that you only gain by using slower shutter speeds (or linked iso aperture)+ rather than miraculously having two/three extra faster shutter speeds which he thinks the 'layman' understands by the term 'gaining 3 stops'
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-01-2015, 12:49 PM
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That's an interresting one ! I live in french riviera and here we have the luxury of having great weather so we don't go out when it is bad. It make sense... Except that there fantastic photo to be made of bad weather and you are going to get them by staying indoor.
I remember when visiting Ireland that even through it was summer it was raining all the time. The local explained to us "There is no bad weather, there is only bad clothing". And I think they are right, you can enjoy the day in the rain snow etc if you want. Nothing prevent that. And if they didn't do, they would never go outside.
A proof that I was here and the weather wasn't always good !
IMGP4993_DxO by Nicolas Bousquet, on Flickr
(A few minutes after the shoot we got an heavy rain. Some another day the plane to go back from a small iceland was cancelled due to the bad weather... it happen ;) Well we gone back by the boat. No choice ;)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-28-2015, 08:22 AM
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Hm, my 18-55 is still alive after 4 years in the hands of someone else and then 7 years of abuse by me, including rain, being in a humid country for a few years, hot sirup drink, ... no mold yet. Couple of scratches. And the knowledge that after this post no one on this forum is ever going to buy it from me. :D
I find the K-5, which is a bit lighter than the K-3, just at the limit. When I'm being a tourist I may have the camera + lens hanging on my wrist for 8 hours straight. A couple of gram can make a big difference. I held a 7D in hands for a couple of minutes, and I felt my hand hurt because of the weight.
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Forum: General Photography
01-26-2015, 09:22 AM
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I have been thinking this myself for travel purpose (underwater activity). One thing to understand is: action cam image quality will never be as good as DSLR (and those awesome shots in action cam ads, they are all edited heavily). Once you realize this, you can have fun with action cam. :D
Few years ago I settle on GoPro Hero2, it has pretty bad high iso shot, bad corner sharpness, bad underwater (the casing causing blurry image and low iso doesn't help) performance, and the worse menu interface you will find in any camera (only two buttons to navigate all the settings!). But! my wife and I have fun capturing some funky images with it on our trip to Key West the other day...
and thing like throwing the camera up in the air...(after countless tries though as the max burst mode on Hero2 is only 2 image/sec, now they improved to 30 image/sec in Hero4)
Not the best images, but.... fun (maybe only to myself... :D)
The latest version, Hero4 (Black and Silver version), have since improved on image sharpness, corner sharpness (change the casing design), and improve a lot on high iso, and most importantly, they now allow you certain control over iso, etc. And the Silver version even have touch screen LCD back integrated with the camera (Black version is the 'high end' version that gave 4K vid, but due to heating, they can't put a LCD on it)! this really make your live easy with changing settings. My GoPro Hero2 sucks, but I would like to "upgrade" it to Hero4 at some point to give it another shot, for it provide some images you wouldn't get with DSLR. :D
p.s. the accessories that you need for this little things will add up and you end up carry quite somethings with the GoPro. I would think the Ricoh 360 will give you some fun images as well.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-19-2014, 03:00 PM
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So it is not made for nature wild life photography, but for city social life photography. Quite understandable; I hate when someone points at me a rugged DSLR with a bazooka lens — I feel like a reindeer and want to run away.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-23-2015, 07:45 AM
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Hello all,
I have no idea if this will interest anyone but one of my older DSLRs, The K2000 recently gave up the ghost. Rather than sell for parts on Ebay, I decided to take it apart. Mostly out of curiosity to see if I could understand it better, maybe figure out a few things. Particularly of interest was the sensor and IR filter, as I am interested in converting another camera to IR.
Preface here... I am not a camera tech, I'm just a hobbyist photographer that enjoys DIY projects. Take what I say and post here with a grain of salt, and feel free to comment, or correct anything.
 2
Getting to the good stuff now...
One thing about electronics is they don't need to be plugged in to give you one heck of a shock. Even without batteries, cameras like this have one huge capacitor that stores electricity. I have read on the DIY sites that if you depress the camera shutter button several times it will discharge the capacitor. Not wanting to get knocked on my butt or worse, I discharged it with an insulated screw driver by touching both terminals in case the DIY sites were wrong. Guess the capacitor didn't read the DIY sites, because that thing made a snap crackle and pop like you wouldn't believe. I've no idea how much juice it stored, but its the size of a AA battery!
I ran into my first technical glitch at this time. I wanted to get to the image capture sensor.,.. but Pentax has it sandwiched between metal plates, that have tiny hex heads, and my particular version was cemented/glued in place as well. Whats a guy to do when he really doesn't have the right tool or alot of time, and isnt planning on reassembling? Have Dril will travel! ;)
Of course if I was trying to put this back together, I'd have to be real careful here and see if I could free it up another way..I have a feeling its designed to not come apart, but be replaced as an assembly. Once the screws are drilled out the plates come apart with a little force. They are held together by a perimeter of magnets...
Here are the magnets...
and here is the back of the sensor...
And this was the GEM I was seeking.......What you are looking at is the "film" of the camera. In this case its a 10.2 megapixel CCD. The light you are seeing is reflected from my phones flash. Not sure what exactly causes it but its beautiful.
To protect the sensor from infrared (IR) light theres a special filter on top of the CCD that allows normal light in and blocks IR light which the digital cameras are sensitive too. Its blue in color.
and here is the CCD without the filter...again, really pretty colors there..
And heres what the patient looks like exploded out...:)
So what did I learn after spending 3 hours taking apart a dead camera... well actually a lot!.
The Pentax camera has a dust removal system that relies on shaking the sensor. From what I can tell the sensor actually "floats" in between those magnet bound plates... I could move it around a bit and can see how that mightbe how the dust removal works Pretty ingenious at the time it was developed.
The IR filter is something that alot of DIY hackers remove..This allows you to do Infrared photography, which was the main reason I did all this. I wanted to see how hard it was to get to that IR filter. On Some cameras its easier than others, but not this model! I found a company that will make this modification on this camera for $350. http://www.kolarivision.com/pentaxco...onservice.html
Of course they definitely know a heck more than I do and may know better ways than I could find, but tell you what. $350 is not unreasonable! OUT of my Budget, but if I had it..why not. I have a huge interest in IR photography and this little exercise was time well spent!
If I was to do this as a DIY on my other cameras I also need to de-solder a few wires from the circuit boards and re-solder when I re-assemble. Not too difficult.. In this break down I cheated and cut the problem wire.
The capacitor in the DSLR is massive, relative to the camera size.! I did not expect something that big in such a small camera... but I should have. Also noted..discharge , do not assume its discharged.
The IR filter is easy to remove and exchange any filter I want with.
Lastly theres one heck of alot wires,screws and circuit boards in the camera. Do yourself a favor, don't drop one!
Don't know if this was interesting or not for anyone, but gives you a better understanding of the "magic" that goes on when you try and take a picture with a Digital SLR camera.
al
ps.. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME with a good camera! AND IF YOU DO.... DON"T ASK ME FOR ADVICE ON IT.. I like to try and figure out how things work. It doesn't make me an expert, just inquisitive.
---------- Post added 01-23-15 at 07:47 AM ----------
If I put this in the wrong place, please move to the best location. Still getting used to the forum layout.
thanks,
al
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
01-21-2015, 04:53 AM
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A couple of days ago i was experimenting with focus stacking using my D FA 50mm and a cheap tripod under the faint lighting of my room, just to practice the workflow.
I like to use open source software, so i went for "align_image_stack" ( included into the Hugin package ) to align and correct the images for their slightly different magnification.
Then "Enfuse" was used to stack the exposures. At first i started with a small statuette to be sure it stood still.
The result may not be the best ever, it's my first time but i was surprised you could get a pretty decent result with 3 seconds exposures ( i took six shots at f/8, iso100 under normal artificial lighting in the room)
What surprised me more is that a bug had flown on my desk in the meantime. Though well alive, he was lazy and didn't want to move much. So i attempted to take some shots; i managed to get two (still 3" ones) before it moved, this is the result.
Yesterday i got home, and the bug was still there :P This time i managed to take a 7 shots stack...even if you can see some halo around the middle joint of the left leg because it was slightly moved, i like the result.
I think those free softwares are doing a pretty good job, i'd say the peack sharpness of the stacks is comparable to the original shots, but indeed extended to a much wider area of the picture, which is the very purpose of this technique.
What do you think ? Any suggestion is welcome :) ( you can view full size pics if you click on the link )
BTW, i believe this is the bug i saw :P Brown marmorated stink bug - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There are plenty here even if i live far from China, Japan and Taiwan :P
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Forum: General Photography
01-19-2015, 09:53 PM
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My 12 yr old grandson told me to map some photons.
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Forum: Pentax K-5 & K-5 II
08-07-2014, 12:55 PM
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
01-09-2015, 10:03 PM
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This is quite artistic. A look of fine grain and texture.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
12-29-2014, 12:35 PM
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I believe that's a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in that picture.
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Forum: General Photography
12-28-2014, 08:19 AM
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Thank you for the post. I totally agree with you on the notion that we need to focus on image-making and sharing the magic.
For Christmas, I treated my self to a book I saw at COSTCO called "Photography: The Definitive Visual History" by Tom Ang.
I almost never buy books especially coffee-table books. I borrow my books from the library and return them later. However when I saw this book, I could not resist. It is a photographic journey like no other. There are pages dedicate to selective masters who were trend setter. Steichen is one of those photographers along with Bresson, Adams, Avadon, Cappa, Weston and many more. One of my favorites of all time, Karsh, does not get his own pages but is mentioned in the rather comprehensive biographies section in the back of the book.
Reading this book has inspired me to go back to pure image making. I do get tangled in the technical distractions of all the technology that is in front of us and what is coming down the pike. Just a few months ago, I mentioned this to a photographer buddy of mine. That we should stop the tech madness and focus on image making. I created more memorable images with a Pentax K1000 and a 50mm f1.7 than all my digital gear I have owned over the years. There was something magical about film that has completely disappeared in this new world of instant gratification with digital photography.
I feel guilty sometimes thinking about all the gear I have and not using them enough. I hang out at a local community college that has an unbelievable photography program. They have high end gear coming out of their ears. Yet, the students are for most part borrowing equipment to do their work. I keep thinking how most of these student long for gears of their own. The extensive hallway galleries at the college exhibit some very innovative work form these students. I go to see these constantly changing exhibits for inspiration.
When I went to college in the early 80's, I had no money either so I borrowed a K1000 from the college media center to complete my assignments for the one photography class I ever took. I always longed for my own gear until a summer job and savings paid for my Pentax MX purchase. Long story short, all of us on this forum have more than enough gear to create magic and share it with the world.
I wish I was in London and could see the Steichen exhibit. For now, I am going to read my book and let the inspiration kick my *** into picking up my camera to do some real photography not the kind of mundane photography work I do to pay the bills.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-23-2014, 02:45 AM
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-22-2014, 05:14 PM
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Nice work. Love the back-story as well.
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-22-2014, 04:04 PM
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Beautiful photos! You did well trapping the light!
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
12-18-2014, 06:06 PM
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I hope you don't mind, but it doesn't have to be overcast.
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Forum: Pentax K-S1 & K-S2
12-16-2014, 01:00 PM
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Optyczne (the Polish original for Lenstip) has recently posted a quite positive review of the KS-1:
Test Pentax K-S1 - Wst
Enjoy (with Google Translate if you need it)!
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Forum: General Photography
12-08-2014, 05:18 AM
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OMG! Get out and shoot! Fog is a great time to shoot because everything takes on a bit of a mystical quality. Plus, fog can hide all sorts of ugly backgrounds. As you already said, adding light sources in your pictures can be very cool in the fog. Heck, I used to get up before dawn and check the weather just to specifically look for foggy conditions. Btw, the closer the dewpoint gets to the temperature, the denser fog you'll get.
[IMG] [/IMG]
[IMG] [/IMG]
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
11-16-2014, 10:32 AM
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That's probably part of why they succeed... an unusual lens/subject combination is more likely to give unusual/unexpected, hence probably interesting results...
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
11-15-2014, 05:14 AM
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Forum: Monthly Photo Contests
11-13-2014, 07:17 PM
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Forum: Photo Critique
11-11-2014, 08:26 AM
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I like the original Parachute better...seems softer...new one is to harsh. I like the second one of the rock...contrast is better making the rock harder.
Just my opinion for what it is worth.
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