Heya :)

Hiya

I'm Claire, I'm 22 years old...I first started photography a year and a half ago ...
i started of not knowing much about photography and went out and bought a Nikon D3100!(bad mistake)... I then met someone who was into photography and he was going on about Pentax all the time, I tried using his camera, and it was alot easier than the nikon, it felt a lot better when I was using it too... He told me I should just get rid of my Nikon and get a pentax... so in October/November I bought a Pentax K10D for less than £200!... I started to learn about HDR and often used the bracketed exposures on the pentax ... I also was in my final year of university doing forensic science so I had to think of a project.. I wanted to do photography... so as I got more and more interested in HDR I decided to do my dissertation on "Using HDR and Tonemapping in Crime scene photography"... I only have 2 lenses... an 18-55mm WR and a 70-300mm Sigma lens.

Hi Claire, I was looking at the D3100 when looking at my first DSLR and decided to go for the Pentax K-x instead. I'm sorry you had the bad experience and hope you now enjoy your K10D.

Look forward to seeing your images. My Wife wanted to do forensic science but never went for it. Strangely though her friend is at college just now doing photography and one of the lecturers does forensic photography as a job.

Will

Hi Claire and welcome,

I returned to SLR cameras a couple of years back with the KX and now the KR and i'm still learning new things, especially from people on here.

You've certainly jumped wih both feet into a technical area with HDR. In lansdcapes it can pull together skies and the land but often with very odd looking colours. For technical and forensic work it must be very useful for picking up detail otherwise lost so do tell us more as you go along.

Hi Claire .. well the Kx absolutely blows the 3100 away in virtually every important aspect so you have definitely taken a big step up

I'd like to know how HDR and Tonemapping in Crime scene photography can be used to good effect. Care to explain ?

HDR and Tonemapping creates more detail and more depth within a photo.
I basically did 0.0EV shots... and compared it with the HDR image.
I found that there were significant more detail and found that with the HDR image you could see everything within the image rather than haveing shadows etc. I saw that the definition was a lot higher within the HDR image than the 0.0EV shot.

Welcome Clare.

Years ago (1975 - 1983 approx time frame) the British Journal of
Photography published a series about photography for scientific
purposes under street lighting etc. You might find it of interest
if you can track it down. About the only thing that I remember
from it was that the B&W photographs were quite useless as a
record of how good or bad the lighting was over the area.
In other words it wouldn't be acceptable for a lighting
contractor to show before and after pics in their advertising.
Opening or closing the lens by as much as half a stop made a
big difference to how the scene appeared.

Hi Claire.

Enjoy the K10.

Take care.

Hello and welcome Claire.

Welcome to the forum Claire, enjoy your stay!

Welcome to the Forum Claire. Please keep us updated on how your dissertation goes.

Your dissertation sounds as mad as mine (unfortunately mine is non-photography related)!

Welcome to the forum!!

Welcome Claire and good luck with your studies.

Thanks guys
Finished my dissertation now!... just waiting on results...
Off to photograph some flies today at uni for a piece of coursework should be fun lol xx

Hello and Welcome from another K10 user