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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-29-2015, 05:46 PM
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How good is the HDR feature? The biggest problem I find with "Pentax special edition" 3 is that if I have a underexposed image with bright subjects, white ducks for instance, it's hard to get the brightness to the right level without blowing out the detail in the ducks' feathers. I ended up having to decrease the contrast and increase the sharpness to obtain detailed feathers at the correct brightness, would I have been able to do this with the HDR slider?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-26-2015, 05:06 PM
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Here is a photo I messed up because of focus issues using the DA35mm/2.4:
As the waves crash the phytoplankton give off a blue light, quite beautiful to see. After the water has washed over the beach you can walk where the critters have deposited and each step sends out "shockwaves" of light.
It is very challenging to shoot the waves crashing as there is so little light. This means the aperture needs to be wide so you can keep the shutter speed down, otherwise it will be too creamy. You also need to get lucky with a wave coming at the right time, I used 15s exposure here to get one wave.
To get the focus right I got my mate to run out to where the waves crash, while the water was receded, and I take a photo with the flash on. Keep taking photos and adjusting the focus until it's sharp.
Here is an article and photos of the event: Southern Tasmanian beaches aglow with Sea Sparkle | The Mercury
I think when I went the plankton weren't as prolific as these shots. I expect they used full frame cameras with wide angle lenses and multi-exposures. In real life the phytoplankton never looked as good as these shots though, I suspect there's a lot of post-processing going on. Unfortunately I accidentally took all my shots in JPEG.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-24-2015, 02:53 AM
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According to the app on my phone, the hyperfocal setting for a 40mm on APSC at f2.8 is 28.32m, and at f8 it is 10m. I don't see how this would be achieved in the dark using a focus scale that only reads to 3m. Perhaps I am missing something though.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-23-2015, 02:19 AM
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I see the same problem with the FA35/2 that the 40mm/2.8 has. What I mean is that it's not necessarily focus throw than I'm after, but precision towards infinity. Some lenses jump from 2m to infinity with little difference in angular displacement in the focus ring (such as the FA35), whereas others have more "resolution" before ramping up to infinity. It is possible to manually focus on something that is 5m away but you can't use the distance scale for this and the adjustments need to be extremely fine.
I think I'll just keep my eye out for a 2nd hand 43mm and start saving...
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-22-2015, 07:46 PM
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Sorry I should have said, Samyang is too large and heavy for me. The DA 40mm/2.8 has 3m as it's last focal point before jumping to infinity, I think this would be problematic when I need to manual focus in the dark. The 21mm has only 1.3m so it's hopeless too (requires lots of trial-and-error), I need one mid-length lens that has a long focus throw, I think most DA lenses are best suited to auto-focus. I will have three primes: DA21mm, A100mm/2.8 (Has a massive throw), and an in-betweener; you know what slots in neatly between those two lengths.. the 43mm. Is the 43mm suited to portraits or is 50mm the minimum?
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-22-2015, 05:48 PM
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Standard 6 has HDR according to that list.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-22-2015, 02:32 PM
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serious!? I want 6 for the HDR!
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-22-2015, 02:30 PM
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Try your camera's RAW developer with the various colour modes, neutral or bright are usually decent fallbacks.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-22-2015, 04:07 AM
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I'm looking for a prime to accompany my 21mm/3.2 in the 35-50mm range. I have the 35mm/2.4 but I'm really annoyed it doesn't have a distance scale and longer focus throw. Was trying to shoot some bio-luminescence at the beach and found it almost impossible to get the focus right by trial and error. The lenses on my list are 35mm/f2-A (the FA has too short a focus throw), 43mm/1.9 (if money was no object...), and a 50mm/f1.7 (A/F/FA). The 40mm/2.8 isn't on my list because it is only f2.8, has a short focus throw, and it looks too damn small for my liking!
Is the 50mm too long for general purpose photos (street, objects, nature) and is the 35mm too wide for portraits? How long does it take to recover from blowing $750 on a 43mm?
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-22-2015, 03:49 AM
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Downsizing or compressing an image when you convert from RAW to JPEG will cause loss of detail, including sharpness. When you are viewing your RAW image in LR or whatever at screen size you are a looking at a downsized version of the actual image because it is larger than your screen, and possibly a compressed image so that it renders quickly. If you aren't shrinking your images when developing RAW and getting Facebook/Ebay/Amazon to do it for you, more likely than not they won't be doing as good a job as lightroom would. I've noticed some sites are better than others at optimizing uploaded images, ie. photo hosting sites and facebook. The worst site I can think of is B&H Photo, people upload their photos in the lens or camera reviews and they always look terrible because B&H butchers them. The sharpening box should not be unchecked if you are downsizing and want optimal sharpness, you should apply the default/recommended level of "unsharp mask" which accounts for the lost detail.
I agree that the frog photo looks over-processed. The contrast and saturation seem a bit high causing the colors to look a bit "sickly". I would also increase exposure a little and apply some sharpening.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-22-2015, 03:08 AM
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Yeah I don't see that setting. It could be that only the pro edition of 3 has it or maybe I need to upgrade to 6. I'm considering upgrading to the Standard edition of 6 with the Pentax discount, wonder if standard 6 has the option.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-21-2015, 09:29 PM
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I've compared brick wall shots with in-camera distortion correction on and off. The RAW file for the corrected photo is corrected when I view it in Silkypix 3 before any adjustment.
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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing
06-21-2015, 07:55 PM
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When I take a photo in RAW with my K30, which development settings are stored in the file? It seems confusing; some settings only affect the preview and others show up in Silkypix but even then its hard to tell if they were turned on or not. There are color and white balance settings, white balanced seems to get imported. The highlight and shadow recovery I can't tell. The lens correction settings import but its impossible to tell if they were turned on or not when looking at EXIF. The barrel distortion is annoying because it's obviously imported but the Silkypix adjustment is still neutral. If I take a picture with my 21mm and forget whether distortion correction was in-camera, how am I supposed to tell in Silkypix? Also, are there lens profiles for Silkypix similar to LR or RawTherapee?
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Forum: General Photography
06-18-2015, 04:32 PM
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Pretty sure I can see an American flag flapping in the breeze there...
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Forum: General Photography
06-17-2015, 04:26 PM
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I never knew custom lens making was a thing. If you don't mind me asking.. How much was it?
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Forum: General Photography
06-17-2015, 05:23 AM
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Those photos are amazing, beautiful colours! That's a very good argument against lenses with narrow base apertures performing poorly.
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Forum: General Photography
06-16-2015, 08:58 PM
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f2.8 14mm would be useful for astrophotography, no?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-16-2015, 05:40 PM
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The lens club on this forum is but a small sample of what's available on the rest of the net. Only a very small percentage of Pentax users would be posting photos here, but if you do a google search for "pentax [insert lens here] photos" you will usually find a flickr group or pixelpeeper page for that lens that has tons more photos and is better organized. The Sigma and Tamron lenses have an advantage here because you find photos taken with other camera manufactures, some that use the same sensor as Pentax (Nikon and Sony?).
If you want to rely on the "like" button to judge a lens' rating, it should be divided by the number of photos posted, otherwise the most common lenses will always win.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-16-2015, 04:15 AM
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Looks like Norm has one of the bad copies :D
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-15-2015, 05:43 AM
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I haven't ordered the filters yet so I can't try it :D
Hmm maybe I'm misinformed about the autofocus issue, but from that same Wikipedia article: I think the circular polarizer will just act as an ND filter if mounted in reverse.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-14-2015, 04:46 PM
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No I'm looking at the forum on a 23" 1920x1080 monitor, at work at the moment on an incredibly fast fibre link. Other photos on the forum look good (if they are good!), and clicking on the flickr link, if they have one, doesn't change the quality for the same size image. I've also made sure the forum isn't resizing users' images if they are large.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-14-2015, 03:27 PM
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I might get reported for this but I'm gonna say what I suspect a lot of people are thinking... All your photos are soft as butter. Maybe the jpeg compression is too high, but the at size I'm viewing them on the forum they look like they were taken with a point and shoot. Hell my Nokia 925 takes sharper shots than that. A lot of people buy a DSLR for the image quality improvement over a point and shoot or their smartphone, and I doubt these pics would convince someone to get the 18-135mm.
Nice of Pentax to weather seal their studio lens line...
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-14-2015, 03:05 PM
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I'm going to quote myself because you are the second to miss my post above:
From Wikipedia: "Circular" polarizing photographic filters consist of a linear polarizer on the front, with a quarter-wave plate on the back. The quarter-wave plate converts the selected polarization to circularly polarized light inside the camera. This works with all types of cameras, because mirrors and beam-splitters split circularly polarized light the same way they split unpolarized light.
The order is reversed, the linear polarizer will be be on the sensor side, so autofocus won't work.
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Forum: Pentax Camera and Field Accessories
06-13-2015, 05:01 AM
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Can you please explain how the step-ring acts as an aperture? As I understand it hoods are designed to block light that comes from sources that aren't in the photograph. If you take off the hood and your images are brighter, does that mean you're getting light from sources outside of the composition?
I've got this hood for my 35mm: B+W 49mm Screw-In Metal Lens Hood #950 65-041210 B&H Photo Video It is designed for 50mm on full-frame, which is close to 35mm on a crop sensor. Just tried it on my 21mm + a filter and surprisingly it worked fine. Was expecting some vignetting but nada. B+W also make a wide-angle version of the hood - they aren't cheap but look better than plastic ones and thread on nicely.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
06-11-2015, 11:18 PM
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Just sold a mint Tamron 28-75mm on Ebay. Started it at $350AUD, ended up having to relist it twice and eventually sold it $260AUD. If only I had some patience and waited for demand to go up when the FF gets released...
To sub salt in the wound, I decided to open offers to international and some Spanish buyer ended up sniping it. I had a fixed postage of $25 but it actually cost me $40 to ship it :(
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