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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
1 Day Ago
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I find the suspicion level rises dramatically when using a "real" camera. Was taking a picture of a flower one day in Austin, TX and a guy came over and started yelling at me that I better not take any pics of his daughter. I assured him she had "no socially redeeming value"*. Not sure he got the joke. He turned kinda' red.
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*For the international crowd, that phrase was part of the original US Supreme Couort definition of what constituted porn.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
3 Days Ago
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Asking Copilot (powered by ChatGPT, I think) "did caravaggio use a camera obscura" we get the following. I do not vouch for its accuracy...
Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio was indeed a trailblazer in his artistic techniques. According to research, he employed revolutionary optical instruments that predated the invention of the camera by more than 200 years. Here’s what we know: - Darkroom and Illumination:
- Caravaggio worked in a “darkroom” of sorts. He created a hole in the ceiling to allow light to enter.
- His models were illuminated through this opening.
- Projection Techniques:
- Caravaggio used a lens and a mirror to project the image of his models onto a canvas.
- The image was then traced and painted.
- Fixing the Image:
- Caravaggio applied light-sensitive substances to the canvas.
- He used white lead mixed with chemicals and minerals visible in the dark to paint the image with broad strokes.
- Photoluminescent Powder:
- Hypotheses suggest Caravaggio might have used a photoluminescent powder from crushed fireflies (used for theater effects).
- Mercury, present in these mixtures, could explain his notorious temper.
- Influence and Collaboration:
- Caravaggio’s friend, Giovanni Battista Della Porta, a physicist, suggested this entire setup.
- While Leonardo da Vinci had described the “camera obscura”, Caravaggio was the first painter to actively use it. [NOTE: I am certain that this last is an error. Camera obscuras or at least their concept were long known into antiquity to my knowledge, imperfect and confused as it may be.]
- Proof and Controversy:
- Art historians debate these assertions, but Caravaggio’s lack of preliminary sketches supports the idea.
- His subjects’ left-handedness could be due to the image being projected backward.
Caravaggio’s innovative techniques continue to intrigue and inspire artists and researchers alike! |
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Forum: Welcomes and Introductions
04-10-2024, 11:12 AM
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Welcome from Newfoundland.
There are great K-70 and general photo threads here for you. I might add (I get no cut!) that the K-70 e-book is pretty good and dirt cheap. Covers everything in the manual in less dense and compressed form. I think you'll fine your kit great for travel. For birding, in the wild anyway (unless you have some sort of close blind setup) you'll probably want at least the 55-300 PLM. It's not all that expensive.And you seem to have the right idea that it's usually better to spend cash on gaining experience(s) and skills rather than buying more and more gear and passing up on too much of the former.
TRUE birders (not me) use hugely expensive 450s, of course! And $5K SWAROVSKI spotting scopes/binocs or even more expensive glass! Some birders here in St. John's drove 1700 km each way and took 2 ferry rides across the Straits of Belle Isle to see one of your birds--a brown something or other I seem to remember--that blew over here possibly from your very own back yard last spring! Took them like 2 and a half days just to get a sighting report in their notebooks!
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Forum: Post Your Photos!
04-11-2024, 02:52 PM
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Took this photo last fall for a local Ukrainian group and they decided it was good enough to include as the June shot for their fund-raising calendar. I took it at f10 intentionally as I did NOT want to isolate the model from the surround.
Came in the mail today... (I include a copy of the original that I have processed and cropped to mimic how the graphic artist processed and cropped the original file)
BTW, the .50 cal casings were not my idea at all and were frankly uncomfortable for me but my job was to take photos not judge. In any case they certainly do send a message in the religious/pastoral scene (model is decked out in gear for a Ukrainian saint's holiday). Model was a tough girl as many of the shots were taken with her IN the water which was running about 4C that morning. Air temps in same range.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
04-09-2024, 05:07 PM
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Did you get these on E-bay and report them to their buyer protection folks?
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
04-08-2024, 04:26 PM
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Not good here. Cold as heck (just below freezing), 100% gray, high winds and 100% humidity. Significant snow 50 miles to the east.
Took a time lapse with my KP instead...
http://www.nfgarland.ca/MyEclipse.mp4 |
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
04-08-2024, 08:15 AM
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In Newfoundland, the odds of seeing the eclipse are quite low though there is a bit of a possibility. Am at a place near the center of the totality line with a fine view out to sea. Will use one body to take a time lapse of the bay. We'll see about the sun.
In the meantime, did notice a seal cruising down the beach and saw a "moose".
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
03-27-2024, 03:09 PM
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I'm sure. And I live in one of them.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-25-2024, 06:15 PM
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I've noticed that same effect when trying to take shots of birds as well. For example, ospreys always hover when they hunt. Even an old screw drive 55-300 could still get a pretty good BIF shot if you caught the hovers...
When taking off from the water, clicking at the top or bottom of the stroke gives better results. Etc. Etc. Etc.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
03-26-2024, 05:05 PM
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Many years ago I used the classic kit pair of zoom lenses for a K-50 (OK, I was mistrustful for my more expensive lenses at the time!) at about -10C, 120 kph gusts, and completely horizontal salt ice spray during a winter North Atlantic hurricane (common name, not meteorological one). No problems though I will admit to being extremely slow when extending the lens zooms and to changing lenses only inside the car.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-25-2024, 06:14 AM
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The only problem I've had with KP battery life is below about -3C. For winter hikes I've now taken to mounting the battery grip with a big battery in it as well and then there are no problems down to -10C or so..
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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
03-23-2024, 06:11 AM
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Given what passes for content on the internet, I hesitate to even think what sort of intelligence might arise from that training set! At least we know it will be very well informed concerning porn and propaganda.
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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
03-22-2024, 11:45 AM
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There will be huge changes. To my mind the Pill was probably the greatest societal reshaper post WW2 followed by the transistor --> semiconductor revolution. Over half a century later we are STILL very much in the middle of working through the huge changes these 2 biggies have wrought.
AI will further and much more directly shape brainwork. Already even general chatGPT can generate quite complex software. More directed bots will generate code far better and faster than most programmers can produce it today (I almost never bother with asking/answering R questions on stackexchange any more, chatGPT produces correct scripts just fine, for example). Whoops...there go all those reasonably well paying coding jobs. Same in many other brainwork areas like help and support as we've all seen.
Already change is obvious in art and graphics and they will change drastically as well. Further, as you allude to, I read recently that some 7th graders were recently arrested for generating deepfake nudes of their classmates which surprises me absolutely not at all. What 7th grade boy would not do this?
Big changes coming. No idea in the least how things will shake out. But there's gonna be a whole lot of shakin' going on (w/ apologies to Jerry Lee Lewis).
This is not new. Consider the societal effects of the automobile post ww1. Or the rise of washing machines for that matter (my grandmother on the farm in the 50's budgeted a complete whole day for a couple of loads of laundry--she lived alone--and that was with the help of a "modern" wringer washer and 2 large washing tubs on the kitchen floor for soaking).
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-18-2024, 07:03 AM
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Small lithium-powered impact drivers are available these days for about the same price as a home visit by a pro!
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
03-07-2024, 01:22 PM
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A KP will autofocus at f14 in dim inside light most times for me, at least. Here are 2 quick shots of a bookcase near me using my KP w/ 100 macro. KP handles fine.
First shot: f2.8, 1/160 sec, ISO 3200
Second shot: f14, 1/10 sec, ISO 6400
Both hand held but well braced on my computer chair. Didn't equate ISOs. Note DoF in 2nd shot is visibly wider (e.g., Emma, 2 Body Prob, & A Passage to India).
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Forum: Pentax K-70 & KF
03-05-2024, 09:23 AM
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I just use a card reader, personally. Super fast and convenient. That said, you (well I actually) need to remember to put it back in the camera before you (or I) go out for a session.
Doh...you feel real stupid when you do that!
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Forum: General Photography
02-26-2024, 11:29 AM
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Spending on experiences--really good teaching or expert guided travel--will improve photography far, FAR faster than spending to keep up with the latest and greatest gear.
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Forum: General Photography
02-26-2024, 08:30 AM
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You see hikers with Zeiss and Swarovski optics and you see others with bare eyes. I'll bet the happiness quotient for both groups isn't all that different.
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
02-24-2024, 06:36 PM
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Back in the early 70s I needed to invert a 50x50 matrix but the U Minn CDC computer available to me of the day routine crapped out at 20x20. And CDC machines were considered to be pretty hot at that time! Did some research and found a Victorian method for inversion by submatrices* that only required storage for the original matrix and 2 vectors of the same length as the matrix order and coded it up in old FORTRAN. Sadly it "worked" even on zero determinant matrices which is most definitely NOT a good thing as the computed answer is meaningless! But I was able to check for that too in the available space as a separate run.
Let me assure you of MY feelings in this matter: I have ZERO trouble with wasted RAM and cycles these days!!! (I do realize that at the far edge these issues always come into play and back then said "far edge" really wasn't that far away.)
A year or two later I was involved in analyzing a national database that came in many hundreds of boxes of cards. Each box then had 1,000 cards holding 80 bytes/card or 8K/box. Took TWO moving trolleys to roll them over to the CC. Probably weighed 500 pounds at the very least, maybe half a ton. Soon after we got new data on 6 9" reels holding something like 15 Mb each. Took a JCL stream of like 30 commands just to copy file A: to B: . And individual computations had to be processed and written (VERY slow in computing time) on to a second tape since there wasn't space for the whole dataset in the memories of the day.
The old days had their charms but I VASTLY prefer today's computing environment!!!
_____
*typical algorithms use 2 copies of the full matrix plus further space.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-21-2024, 06:02 AM
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It's passing by me quite closely and I have an AirBnB booked with family. That said, April in Newfoundland has pretty low odds of seeing anything but rain, drizzle, and fog. When Hyakataki came by years back I was only able to see it on ONE night--hapily that was the night of closest approach.
Expect a photo entitled "Confused Seagulls in Dark Fog" in a couple of months.
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Forum: Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories
03-17-2023, 12:26 PM
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Was already pretty dark. Didn't see him. Would have liked to get a pic as smaller raptors are hard to find to shoot.
Eagles, owls, and ospreys are a dime a dozen here...
    
The above shows you the reason for his "bad mood" here! (This is one of my fave eagle pics for some reason! The expression, I guess.)...
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Forum: Pentax KP
02-12-2024, 05:40 AM
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Those ducks sure get around. I could have taken that exact same shot--albeit with some snow in it--here yesterday in Newfoundland.
No dried oak leaves, though.
(Frog grad here, so I know Granbury well)
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Forum: Welcomes and Introductions
02-14-2024, 06:29 AM
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Welcome. Check out the film areas of the forum.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-31-2024, 07:01 AM
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I live in Newfoundland.
'Nuff said.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
02-12-2024, 09:38 AM
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I'm in Newfoundland which is related in many ways to the Faroes (plus their boats come here to fish consistently).
Some points:
--First off my go to lens pair is the 55-300 PLM and the 16-85 (I was never satisfied with my original Sigma 17-50 on landscapes). I have many others, but those two are the foundation. KP/K70 bodies.
--Parts of the land are BIG. So if you are thinking landscapes, you want a good lens for that. I've found the 16mm end of the 16-85 useful. That said, I've stitched panos in the midrange of the 16-85 with great success at times. As mentioned above, mid-tele landscapes can be excellent. Here is a 5x2 stitch of Holyrood Arm in NL (at full res--27 meg jpeg!--it prints beautifully with great detail). The peak to the right is exactly 1000' (and a very nice provincial park to boot). The bluff to the upper mid-left is a bit over 300' (and also has a mated pair of eagles on it!). The lower bluff to the right is ~400' with a 600' trail up there--and that's a very little bit of hyperbole! The Faroes have elevations 2 or even 3 times bigger, I think...
--You're North Atlantic maritime subarctic. Even in June the "spring" can be hanging on which means essentially rain, drizzle, and fog. Be prepared in camera gear, hiking gear, and photo-op ideas. You will have sun basically 24 hours (though some twilight depending on your dates), so you will have plenty of outdoor time. And even in June the North Atlantic can be cold and here we often still have ice (don't know about there). This was early June here as I remember...
--If you're looking for wildlife, do a lot of research first. If the Faroes are like Newfoundland, there are many VERY good facebook and other sites where photogs congregate. If you don't have a lot of time, some sort of guiding would be good. For example, tuna are becoming quite common again here like they used to be many decades ago. But a nonlocal has basically zero chance of seeing any. Some related situation probably applies there as well...
and of course local birders know where various species congregate...
EVERY local in St. John's knows this mated pair and the great location from which to photograph this nest (and I'm not really a birder)...
--BE PREPARED. I had my 55-300 on here when a minke suddenly came out of nowhere and decided to examine the underside of my boat. BARELY got this shot off at like 60mm.
If you've never experienced the North Atlantic maritime arctic/subarctic, it's unbelievably beautiful from Labrador all the way over to the Faroes and Svalbard. Bit harsh at times though! Good luck!
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