Does anyone use silkypics?

Hi,
Got my shiny new k20D yesterday, very pleased spent many hours yesterday reading the manual. Question is does anyone use the supplied software?.
I have Elements 6 so the Raw Conversion will open automatically.
Another one is the remote camera disc, does anyone use this ? and if you do what for?
Cheers
Dave.

Several users her use the full blown Silkypix Developer studio. There are a number of other RAW converter options that are arguably better than the supplied software.

I assume that by "remote camera disc" you actually mean Pentax Remote Assistant. This software allows you to control, operate, and capture using a PC connected via USB cable to your camera. The procedure is commonly referred to as "tethered shooting".

I recommend the proper Silkypix program (Developer Studio) rather than Pentax Photo Lab that comes with the camera. It's much much better.

There aren't many settings you can adjust with PPL, and its user interface is fiddly.

Another vote for the seperate Silkypix program.

You can get it here http://www.shortcutinc.com/cms/index.php

How good is the Pentax Remote Assistant software that comes with the K20D. On what situations would it come handy to use it for tethered shooting? I haven't tried it yet so suggestions and opinions on where and when it comes handy would be greatly appreciated.

I am assuming one of the uses would be for studio photography if i am not mistaken, when the instant display of the shot would be very helpful, to be used instead of the display on the camera itself.

thanks

Amin

The Remote Assistant in a total pain in the **se device to allow clients, art directors, make up artists, models and their mothers to have a say in matters they know nothing about. Another victory for technology over common sense.

I use it for the K10D. I would assume the only difference is the added camera option. I have not read of any additional features for the version that comes with the K20D.

In general I love it for studio work, where I can immediately show the client the result. Once case I had to photography a woman's paintings for printing. I would not have a chance to come back and re-do the shot so being able to see each image right away was invaluable.

You can even set up software such as Lightroom to detect new images being dumped into a specific folder then view and edit immediately without having to import a batch from the card.



Sadly, beyond that, Remote assistant is only a nice toy.
It has settings for time lapse style photography, but it is not stable enough to handle that sort of workload.

I tried setting it up to automatically photograph skies for capturing lightning. Clicking 15 second exposures for two hours by hand gets painful and tedious.
Remote Assistant crashed four times, froze six times, cause my K10D to lock up twice, failed to complete downloads of all but two photos.
I spent almost all of my time fixing and debugging problems.
I tried all different timings to make sure I didn't overlap images, tried to space them out, tried shorter times, longer times, etc...
The software in this area is just crap.

Again, for single shots it seems to work well. Just be sure to play with it and see if it will do what you need before you risk making a fool of yourself in front of a client.


One side note, no there is no way to view the image larger within the RemoteAssiatant. OK, there is a hack but it simply enlarges the image. It does not increase resolution... i.e. you get larger pixels, not more
pixels. Therefore if you have software light LightRoom that can view the images in proper dimensions, that makes things so much nicer.

How good it is entirely depends on the software you are using to view the captured image. I had problems with it using Lightroom, but I think the latest version of PRA sorts out the issues I had.

You're not mistaken, and I can't think of another use for it, other than studio work.

The system should be simple enough. You set-up PRA to capture it's images into a folder which is then 'watched' by your choice of image editing software for the arrival of new files. These are then immediately imported into said software and are ready for viewing/editing. Sounds simple enough, but versions prior to 3.51 did not work for me.

If you do use Remote Assistant, the Pentax USB lead isn't very
long so make sure you use it with either a USB hub (sometimes
needed so that you can take more than 1 shot without it locking up)
or with a USB extension otherwise you may pull the camera or the
laptop over.

Also see this thread.

shim

Thank you so much for the clarification with the PRA.

I wasn't very far then regarding the trouble that it is to use PRA and its usage. I agree also that to go through all that hassle and risk the things freezing and jamming and just creating more work unnecessarily, unless its really drastically needed I dont see any use for the PRA.

As it is anyway I dont do much studio work so the application is condemned to remain dormant as it is .

Thank you everyone for your help

Amin