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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
02-22-2019, 12:21 PM
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Thank you! I appreciate helping me clear this up. So Nikon compatible for my Pentax stuff it is from now on then. I guess I will put up with it until I can't take it any more and replace the transmitters. Yongnuo and similar brands aren't too expensive so I can handle that.
I'm not too deep into my lighting gear yet. Is there a recommendation for a low(er) budget multiple speedlight/ transmitter combo? My first thought was getting another one or two YN560IV and the N version of the RF603II transmitter. But I bought this a while back. I'm thinking there is a better model or another brand altogether that would do better by now? I'm not doing anything complicated. Right now, I just need to manually control the amount of power per speedlight and wirelessly trigger. Though I do wish I could shoot faster than 1/200. Heard good things about Godox. Is there a big difference there compared to Yongnuo?
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
02-21-2019, 01:29 AM
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Well, I have an update. But not quite the one I was expecting to deliver.
So I was about to factory reset the flash. But I had out a Canon 6D I recently picked up to play around with FF on the cheap (don't judge me, please! lol). On a whim, I attached the the transmitter to the hotshoe and turned the transmitter, camera, and flash on with no changes to the settings. Bingo, works every time. Every time I hit AF-ON to focus, the blue light on the flash lights up, as expected. Works like a charm.
Thinking maybe this woke the combo out of whatever stupor it's in, I attached it back onto my K-3 and turned everything on. No dice. As was happening before, one shot with successful flash trigger then nothing until I half press the transmitter button to seemingly re-pair it. So this confirms it is a camera thing, for some reason or another. Maybe a K-3 setting I am overlooking? I tried messing with any and all of the flash settings pressing the flash button on the back below the "OK" button. No change. I'm open to any ideas. But here is a clue: I observed that after every shot I took on the K-3, whether it triggered the flash or not, the blue light would light up on the flash. So there is a connection confirmation happening even without that half-press on the transmitter button, just not one that leads to another flash trigger.
Canon, you win this round (until this mystery is solved). But too bad there are so many other things my Pentax does way better, at least between the K-3 and 6D. But that's a whole other story.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
02-20-2019, 01:39 PM
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As far as I remember, nothing changes at all. After the first shot, the next shots do not trigger the flash nor do I see anything happening on it. When I half-press the button on the transmitter, then I see the blue light come up on the flash and it is ready to go again for another one shot. I'll double check this though tonight. I'm really trying to figure this out as I don't want to end up spending more money on something new, so I very much appreciate any and all help.
Will do! Thank you.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
02-20-2019, 12:13 PM
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After reading both manuals more carefully, I'm going to double check the advanced setting on the flash to choose if compatible with transmitter RF603 or RF602. Though my guess is that it either would work or not work at all.
After that, only other thing I can think of is doing a factory reset on the flash and hoping it just starts working normally again. I'll update. Thanks again for all the help!
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
02-20-2019, 03:36 AM
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Thanks for the assistance. Here is the picture of the current settings as requested.
Yes, the half press does make the blue light come on and seems to reconnect the two together to get it to be ready to trigger the flash again. However, it works exactly one time. Then I have to half press again to get it to be ready for the shutter to properly trigger again. So I know it works but why does it seemingly disconnect the link after one shot? Frustrating!
Edit: The only thing I don’t know what’s going on with in the picture is the channel and group setting. For now, I am only trying to trigger the one flash from my hot shoe transmitter and that’s it. But if I remember correctly, in the past I was able to correctly and reliably trigger from the hotshoe transmitter this Yongnuo flash and a Pentax AF200FG attached to another RF603II transmitter. No idea what changed from then to now.
---------- Post added 02-20-19 at 03:11 AM ----------
OR... maybe I have the problem backwards? Is it possible that the trigger on the hotshoe for some reason is needing to be woken up with a half press after every shot?
Here is an excerpt from the transmitter manual faq that may or may not be related:
“Unable to awake the flash:
When using the non specialized transmitter, it need to half press the button of transmitter to awake the flash when the transmitter set in TX state.”
What do they mean by “the non specialized transmitter”? And is the question referring to my issue of the shutter not triggering, deeming the flash needing to be awaken with a half press? Doesn’t seem normal after every shot. But I can’t figure out from what other perspective this particular faq is coming from.
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Forum: Flashes, Lighting, and Studio
02-19-2019, 03:08 AM
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I'm using the combination of the RF603IIC flash trigger on the hotshoe to trigger the Yongnuo YN560IV flash off-camera. Generally it works fine but there is a problem I am having. After every shot, I have to half-press the button on the trigger in order for the flash to go off again. Sort of like it either loses sync and needs to be reconnected, or the flash goes into standby mode and half-pressing the button on the trigger wakes it up again. Seems more like the latter but makes no sense for it to go to sleep after every shot. I even turned the sleep mode off just in case but still having the problem. Just in case, I've tried different trigger units (I have two) and changed batteries, still persists.
Anyone else use this combination and might know why this is happening? I swear it wasn't like this when I first started using them together but somewhere down the line it started to do this. Really irritating!
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
01-21-2019, 03:35 AM
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These are all great suggestions. Thanks everyone. I'm going to do some exploring of all these program names or methods and find what works best for me.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
01-19-2019, 07:14 PM
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I have (well, the equivalent of it for the old K-3, page 76). Are you referring to modifying the folder name every time I am about to surpass folder 999xxxxx? If so, thank you, that is a possibility. Though sadly now the folder names give no clue at all to the images inside them. In a perfect world, I wish I could name it to follow a "yyyy-mm-dd-###" convention. But after reading about file and folder standards on some other threads, I guess those types of things are not up to us mere mortals.
If you weren't referring to custom naming folders after folder 999xxxxx, could you please clue me in to where page 83 could assist with the problem?
---------- Post added 01-19-19 at 06:19 PM ----------
I'm the opposite, I work in software development lol. Yet, here we are at the same place where when my computer says "that's a duplicate folder!", I was stopped in my tracks and didn't know what to do. Luckily there are much wiser and experienced folks (like you and everyone else on PF), as always, here on the forum to help me out time and again.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
01-19-2019, 07:06 PM
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Thanks for the suggestion. I'm nowhere NEAR your needs for unique file names, I bow to your superior actuation numbers! But point taken. I'll think of something creative for my needs.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
01-19-2019, 06:45 PM
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So it's my turn now to go through this as everyone eventually does. I go to transfer a folder as usual to my hard drive and... it's a duplicate folder?! No it's not, it's new! Actually yes, it is a duplicate because another "###_mmdd" was bound to happen. Plus, I'm approaching my 10,000th image.
I read about the file name trick of changing "IMGP" to "IMG0" or something to that effect. I can deal with that I guess.
But I haven't come across established (or much of any really) answers to the folder duplication problem. My workflow starts with transferring folders from my SD card into my external hard drive. Before resorting to third party folder renaming programs or changing my workflow altogether, is there possibly a setting I am overlooking where the K-3 can just name the folders by date (yyyy-mm-dd) or something reliable and permanent? Or does everyone end up having to utilize some tool or software or method to keep their collections working? Would appreciate any suggestions!
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
12-18-2018, 04:25 PM
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I picked up a Toshiba Flashair but I am about to also buy an Apple Lightning to SD card reader adapter as well. I haven't yet tried out the Flashair so I can't speak to that right now. But even if it worked perfectly, I doubt it gets any easier than ejecting the SD card, insert the SD card into the adapter and into the phone, select pictures and transfer. None of the hassles of finding the Wi-Fi, connecting to it, and using yet another app (and that's assuming all this works).
The only reason I wouldn't go this route is if I had to do it a lot, in which case the card slot and ejector along with the memory card door could take a lot of wear and tear. I only do this occasionally so this could work for me as the most reliable method. At the very least as a backup option to Wi-Fi transfer which doesn't take up a lot of room in the camera bag.
I'll update my experience on both. The Flashair was really inexpensive compared to the near extinct and random Eye-Fi units floating around on eBay, let alone the even more rare and expensive Flu Card. I didn't even need a 32GB card for what I'm using it for but buying a smaller capacity didn't make any financial sense. Not sure why but I'll take this rare occurrence.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
12-11-2018, 02:47 PM
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This is great. Thanks for sharing your experience. Honestly, this is all I really want. My experience with the built-in camera capability with the Eye-Fi card has been on the whole pretty good. But I can also describe it as clunky and frustrating sometimes. Navigating the K-3's pictures and folders, checkmarking and saving my selections, then transferring isn't without its pain points. If all that needs to be done is connect then transfer, skipping all the selecting in camera, I welcome that as long as it is reliable and doesn't drain battery.
I'll check out the Toshiba Flashair too. Does anyone have experience with both and can recommend one over the other? The reviews for both aren't exactly glowing.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
12-10-2018, 03:43 AM
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Thanks, JohnX. Yeah, that's what my recent findings are pointing me to as well. The app(s) on iOS seem ancient since last updated (if at all) but as long as they are solid and reliable, that's fine with me. Reviews seem OK enough for just the direct connection and transfer functionality. I'm not doing tethering and all of that other fancy stuff so I don't mind if that doesn't quite work perfectly. I'd consider it a huge bonus if I did decided to try out tethering or remote control once in a while and it actually worked. Thanks for affirming the Flu-Card, it's looking like the solution unless someone has another suggestion.
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Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II
12-10-2018, 01:22 AM
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My Eye-Fi card broke. I mean literally, the SD card shell cracked and came apart. My attempts at repairing it or transferring it to a new SD card shell failed. So after some research, I also found that Keenai is in app purgatory, not long for this world and declaring its ability to keep alive questionable at best being at the mercy of an app stores willingness to keep it functioning. Especially being an iPhone owner, this is not good. Therefore, I'm moving on from my current wireless solution and looking for a new one.
Is there a current wireless SD card with a compatible iOS app solution out there for the K-3?
For additional details on my usage, I just need the basics. I store small JPEGs on card slot 2, mainly for quick sharing to others or online via Wi-Fi transfer to my phone. Before using the Eye-Fi, sharing with people or social media took forever or never happened at all since it had to wait until I had time later to transfer to computer. But with Eye-Fi, any pictures I wanted to share was able to be shared on the spot, whether by text message or uploaded online. It's a must for me now. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
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Forum: Sold Items
12-15-2015, 10:56 AM
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Thanks! Appreciate the support on the decision. Loving my FA 77 and 43, but sometimes you want to get some spontaneous variety or are in a situation with unexpected circumstances. Switching lenses in and out isn't always possible. And the 18-135 aperture can be limiting. Looking forward to the Sigma's versatility + IQ!
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Forum: Sold Items
12-14-2015, 10:28 PM
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
11-23-2015, 04:32 PM
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Agreed that scene modes are a lot better as a learning tool to see what typical setting certain specific situations call for. I wouldn't also use them in general. In fact, I would and had used green / auto mode to much greater success than the scene modes back when I wanted full auto. It's not because the scene modes don't work at their intended settings and situation. I'm sure they work well enough. In my experience, I feel it didn't work for me in that a lot of the times, you shoot mixed things that are hard to classify so the mode that you pick often doesn't benefit with the assumptions the camera is making. Plus, changing modes from shot to shot when just photographing different things is just a big inconvenience. Unless it was fast moving, green mode seemed to work out fine for almost all things when you wanted a quick shot with no expectations other than a generally decently exposed picture.
But that's where the limitations are. It can't read your mind and doesn't know your intent. That's why you are better off learning from seeing or reading the scene modes settings, shooting green mode to see generally acceptable results, then deciding what would you want more from the images you are getting: Less subject blur? More out of focus background? Darker or lighter overall? That's when moving to a different targeted mode like Av or Sv will get the image closer to what you are expecting.
As a relative beginner to my K50, I've felt Av has benefited me the most. Unless the subjects are blurring because of movement, I don't particularly care about shutter speed. I set a range for the auto ISO so that is mostly taken care of, not unless the camera's extreme choice is causing other issues. But what I want in focus is what I want most control over. So setting the aperture according to my needs has given me the results I always wanted out of auto but could never get. Hope any of that helps... best of luck!
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
10-12-2015, 10:21 AM
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Thanks, all. Your comments are helping me with coming to terms in the need for a superzoom. I know us gearheads are all about having the best gear possible, which is why endlessly (and happily) discuss such nuances and minutiae. But as others have said, the best gear possible is one that allows you to do something vs nothing. So perhaps I'm doing a little maturing of my own in the sacrifice for convenience.
Before I came to Pentax, I used an 18-200 as a full time lens. Now with the 18-135, I find I don't miss the 136-200 all that much. I might even give the 16-85 a whirl and see if I don't miss the 86-135 enough to gain back some IQ while still having zoom convenience. Plus, the 16-17 sounds fun to have without switching lenses.
This is a great suggestion! Definitely in theme with the situation at hand. I'll look into this. Thanks!
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
10-09-2015, 02:35 PM
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I agree, Just1MoreDave. When I want to take pictures for myself, it's the FA limited on full time. Definitely gets you in the mindset for that lens and you put yourself in the right type of shots vs trying to make shots work. But yes, when you want to fit in some shots of surroundings while taking shots of the family, that freedom to take the time to compose and put yourself in places goes out the door. You need to be where you are and make things happen, and fast. So now I'm wondering if there is an alternative I'm not considering to replace my 18-135. Even better if the trade gains me back money that I can re-route to another lens.
Perhaps the Sigma 18-200 Contemporary? Or the Sigma 18-250 Macro HSM? This idea of having a bonus macro in there just in case is very tempting. Should a family/documentation/walk-around be a "jack of all trades"? Especially with tools like Lightroom and such, can these "master of none" superzooms give results that offset their shortcomings?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
10-09-2015, 12:55 PM
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Thanks jatrax. Not a huge fan of them either in general, but I understand and must accept their usage in my life. It's hard enough trying to keep an eye on and carry the kids. But changing between a couple zooms, let alone changing multiple prime lenses every time something catches my eye is an impossibility when out with the family. I'm lucky if I can get snap a quick picture sometimes! Any convenience helps these days.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
10-09-2015, 12:00 PM
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Like a lot of people, my current walk-around all purpose lens is the 18-135. VS my prime lenses, I'm OK to give up IQ for the trade off of being able to handle an unknown and variety of situations which may require going from wide to telephoto from one image to another. Also, when I'm just shooting to document family events and memories.
But to take the thought further, if I am just looking to get a wide variety of shots or document events that don't require the utmost in IQ, does the 18-135 make sense any more rather than going with a lens that has a much larger FL range? I'm thinking 18-200, 18-250, maybe even 50-200 and the like. I'm assuming all these types of zooms have comparable image quality. Yes, some are better than others, and of course there is a minimum quality expectation; I'd never accept a lens that negates me using my DSLR in the first place. But as long as a zoom lens is capable of taking decent pictures to share online or make small prints, am I not following through on my primary purpose by limiting myself to the 18-135? Are there other lenses out there that do this job better and for comparable costs?
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
10-09-2015, 10:42 AM
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Can you compare the IQ and general use experience of the 18-135 vs the 55-300? I'm referring to the 55-135 territory. Noticeably better results from either? When you have either on, do you more miss the 18-54 or 135-300? I know this depends on personal preferences, whether someone is doing one type of shooting vs another. I guess I'm asking more from a one lens / walk around lens perspective.
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Forum: Pentax K-30 & K-50
10-05-2015, 12:31 PM
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Dakight's tips are invaluable. Can't go wrong with those.
As a relative beginner and someone just learning too, here are some other practical comments/suggestions specifically for the K-50:
1) Switch to back button focus. After leaving half shutter press focus, I got better, more consistent results.
2) Use the zoom review feature. Most pictures previewed when fit to screen look okay. At 4x zoom, I find out if it's really a keeper or I should try again.
3) If you shoot with AUTO ISO, and you haven't already, adjust the range to get more desirable shutter speeds. Mine is at 100-6400. 3200 to 6400 still often looks pretty good. Even when the increased noise is noticeable, it is often an attractive sort of graininess.
The 18-135mm has been a pretty reliable lens for me in terms of focus. Maybe because it doesn't get as wide open as most of my other lenses. But it's definitely suited for the job as a walk around and one lens fits all type of situations. Great IQ for what it is and how much it costs, fast focusing, relatively compact, and well built. No complaints by me and if I ever start doubting it's capabilities, I look at the "Show us what it can do" thread and start thinking how I can improve myself. Best of luck!
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Forum: Photo Critique
09-29-2015, 08:52 AM
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Thank you for the thoughts and suggestions, everyone. All very helpful and highly appreciated.
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Forum: Photo Critique
09-18-2015, 02:32 AM
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Looking for some opinions on this shot. Sun was going down and losing light because of all the tall trees but was getting some nice highlights here and there. I was trying to go for a shot through the grass peek at a cabin that had a very contrasted color compared to the surroundings. I didn't want to disturb the environment so I tried to find a good break in the grass to peek through. Tried several angles and this was the best one. At first I didn't feel any were close to being keepers, especially because the grass arrangement wasn't in my control nor liking. Also, focus was tough to be happy with as it was always just not right. But after playing in post a little, I started to like it more. I deepened the shadows to strengthen the "hidden" feeling but emphasized the warm light source to give the illumination of the cabin a "pleasant discovery" rather than "creepy mystery" feel. There was a nice scene here. I just don't know if I got it or not. Thoughts?
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