NSW 10th Anniversary - Any Pentax users?

Ron,

if you take most of your shots as jpgs try adjusting the settings

picture quality - 'best'
Saturation - 'high'
Sharpness - 'hard'
Contrast - 'high'

and see if these improve your results, as I said Pentax are generally a bit soft straight from the camera. Looking at the manual for the ist there isn't as much scope for adjustment as with the later cameras.


Martyn

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Originally Posted by Bushie

I think you have misunderstood the aperture range 4.5-5.6 means that at the shortest focal length it has a max aperture of 4.5 and at its longest focal length it has a max aperture of 5.6 minimum apertures may be up around f22 or higher.

Martyn

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Whew! I thought that too but didn't want to comment.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by p38arover

I use Picasa for simple processing. I was going to buy either PS or LightRoom (as my daughter can get it with the student discount). I didn't know which to buy.

Any recommendations on either of those from anyone?

In the meantime, I'll look into ACDSee.

Thanks again and for taking the time to look and play with the images, Deano.

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If you like photography and would like to learn how to present an image (and also make enlargments) then the best option is Photoshop.
I believe that if you look in the net you will be able to get a CS3 version from the box at very attractive pice.
Any pro photographer do a PP in their work. It is not such thing for them to post an image without PP.
It is not a new thing because the digital era, the operators in the dark room used to do fantastic manipulations and corrections in their work.
The great Ansel Adams is an example of this.
Regarding you 18-200 lens, try to take shots at 20 mm between 180mm @ f/7 and see the results.
Do not take shots in JPG!!
Take the shots in raw after you have done the basic corretions then save the image in Tiff to do tha final adjustments.
Avoid high ISO, the process of removing noise make the image soft compared to the original sample.
Try to use the camera in manual mode, it is the best way to have control of your shot.
For landscaping I use ISO 200 and F/11 aperture, always the camera in a tripod
Do not be intimidated by the work of others, I was a very active member in a reputable critique forum and that have help me to improve my work.
Cheers
Cheers

Quote:

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Originally Posted by p38arover

Interesting point. I have a 50mm F2 prime but, regrettably, it's not AF and doesn't interface to the electronics. It would be purely manual mode.

I haven't worked out how to use it on the camera and get consistent results.

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Well there is a lens test for you. I suspect if you put it on it will kinda work. Most likely if you select aperture priority, even if it is old & crusty from my memory. You may not need fully manual mode if you've never used it before. Set it to f5.6, iso 100 and expect a shutter speed to 125-500 on a bright day. If the shutter speed is showing miles away from that you will need full manual.

My thought is that shots of the cottage are in different light, as you took one from the opposite side and have different shadows. Yet the cottage looks exactly the same shade of colour & brightness. This points to a working light meter which correctly handled the difficult situation.

The tunnel of plants is a nightmare. You won't get an image in such extreme contrast which doesn't look like yours. If you shot in raw and used some post processing you could recover more shadow detail. But in reality there is just too much difference between the light & dark bits for that one to work.

I'm thinking that you have the settings on the camera set to "bland". If you want to keep it simple in jpeg change to higher contrast & saturation. You could boost the sharpening in camera as well.

Ideally you would shoot in raw and perform the same processing in software, such as photoshop. For a free option Google Picasa likely handles the raw files which wouldn't be a bad experiment. Note that RAW images will often look bland until you massage them - that is just how they are captured. Most cameras take this and boost it a bit when they store in jpeg. So if you took the same shot in jpeg & raw it is quite possible that the jpeg will look better straight from the camera, but the raw will look better after 30 seconds of tweaking.

The one which deano edited shows that your camera & lens is capable of sharp as a tack images with good contrast, etc.

I suspect that all the images you see posted and think are better than yours have been post processed a little (or a lot).

Cheers, Steve

as said by others shoot in raw [jpegs disregard a heap of information ---just compare the file size between raw and jpeg], there is a proprietory pentax raw procesing program if you dont have lightroom or photoshop[think u can get it free].
personaly i have little time for zoom lenses although i have one pentax item as i can easily pick it from my pentax primes [very sharp lenses]
imho the lack of sharpnes is part camera shake part iso related .
grab youre 50mm pop the camera on m[100 iso] stick it on a tripod or sand bag and take a few shots [ 1/2 stop under ,as read by camera and 1/2 stop over].Grab youre sigma and step back tll you get a smilar image in the frame and do the same,i recon the 50 will be noticably sharper and have better contrast.
if you cant find the pentax software i might be able to dig it up here
but even on jpeg you should be able to see if theres a lens or camera problem
mark
ps whats the camera model?