Advice on SR

This is intended for those members who now have experience of using one (or more) of the K-5 family, and who have knowledge from the evidence of taking many thousands of photos.

For hand-held photos, would you advise leaving SR switched on all the time? Or would you advise switching SR on only when the exposure needs the shutter speed to be dropped down to, or below, the threshold value of the inverse of the lens focal length x 1.5 (e.g. 1/60s for the DA 40mm Ltd) ?

Thanks in advance.

Philip

I leave it on all of the time: it's such a brilliant development and, of course, still works with the cheap old manual lenses I use. I suppose in good light with wide lenses it wouldn't make any difference but together with the K5 sensor's low light ability, it's amazing what slow shutter speeds one can get away with.

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Best wishes,

Andrew

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Just leave it on all the time - the setting is in the menus so far too messy switching it on and off. You'd miss too many shots.

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Best regards, John

Leave it on. Good for up to three stops extra when you need it in my experience. It'll turn itself off when you use the delay timer functions.

As with all such things though go play and come to your own conclusions.

I also leave it on regardless of shutter speed / focal length. I have not seen any testing to suggest that the effect is limited to any particular maximum focal length (unlike the new AA Filter Simulator, which I believe is only effective up to 1/1000sec?).

I recently shot loads of telephoto images (the details of London architecture), mostly between 100 - 150mm, and with shutter speeds between 200 - 500th sec, and I could only see positive effect from the SR, which I was delighted with in terms of the clarity and sharpness, often in rather awkward upwards shooting positions where I was aware of slight movement at the time of shooting, but the shots came out very sharp.

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The only issue I've ever had with SR is with panning shots, where the SR doesn't have chance to stabilise. Apart from those types of shots, I leave it on all the time.

The K3 allows the SR to be toggled with one click of the Info button followed by one notch on the rear wheel - for which I had reason to be grateful only yesterday.

Exactly the same on the K5 as long as you left the selection on the info screen when you last used it. I agree about the panning comment as I usually forget.

You can also assign SR to the RAW/Fx button on the K-3, which is the quickest way to turn it on and off.

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Pentax K-3, Pentax K-5.
Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6, Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8, Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8
Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 WR, Pentax DA 55-300mm f/4.0-5.8
Pentax-A 50mm f/1.7, Pentax DA 50mm f/1.8, Pentax D-FA 100MM f/2.8 Macro WR, Pentax DA*300mm f/4.0

But my knuckle keeps hitting it accidentally so mine is assigned to do the only thing it can which is of no consequence. It illuminates the LCD. The option to switch on the level indicator has gone from the K3.