Just a little showcase

Hi all,

Here are some of my pictures taken using K10D using either 18-55 lens or a Tamron 70 - 300 lens.

[IMG]http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/ocha84/LadyPhotographer.jpg[/IMG]
Candid Shot

[IMG]http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/ocha84/EdinburghCathedral.jpg[/IMG]
Edinburgh

[IMG]http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g138/ocha84/ChurchRemain.jpg[/IMG]
Edinburgh

I'd appreciate your comments and critics

Hi OC_P
Like No 1. No 3 doesn't look very sharp.

No2 cries out for transformation to remove skew and level adjustments to brighten buildings in shadow and darken blown clouds. Takes 2 minutes or less in PSE.
cheers
bb2

Hi

I love number 1 !! The angle, the subject, the look in her eye..... great shot.

I am afraid it goes downhill for me from then on. Number 2 is holiday snap-ish in my opinion. Not sharp and the Leaning tower of Pisa on the left doesn't add to the scene.

Number 3 is also unsharp (perhaps 1/90 was not fast enough at your focal length) and the cut off chimney and lamp ? at the bottom dont help either. I always find old Abbeys wonderful places to visit but find my photos of them always lacking something, dont know why.

ps. did i mention how much i liked number 1. ?

When taking buildings, one technique I sometimes use (with a suitably wide lens) is to take the picture with the camera held level (not pointed up).

This produces a lot of foreground, which needs cropping out later, but it also means that the buildings no longer lean in or back.

G

Cool, thanks for the tips.

After reading the comments I've had a look at my other pictures taken at 300mm were a little out of focus.

I use manual focus all the time because that way I can choose quicker which areas I want to focus on.

It looks like I still need a lot of practice with manual focusing. Any tips???

If you're serious about manual focus then you'll probably end up buying a Katz-Eye focus screen. At $105 (more if you start adding optional grid lines and coverings) these aren't cheap, but everyone who has one seems to swear by it. It utilises a split prism (like the old MF film cameras) which makes manual focussing a much more precise affair.

Here's a tip that's specific to the lenses you're using; both are consumer zooms which aren't at their best when used (a) wide open or (b) at the extremes of their focal range. For instance, the Tamron will give much better results at (for example) 250mm/f8 than it will at 300mm/f5.6. As a rule of thumb you'll get better results if you back off slightly on the zoom and stop down 1 or 2 stops on the aperture.

Both lenses are capable of very good results (the Pentax 18-55 is probably more forgiving than the Tamron) but you need to realise their limitations and work within them - once you do you'll find that your results will improve quite dramatically.

Thanks for that, I'll definately consider the Katz-Eye focus screen.
But, does a viewfinder magnifier help with manual focusing?

The viewfinder magnifier O-ME53 will give a 1.2x magnification. This is useful if you do a lot of close up work, but you will have to shift your eye around slightly to see all sides of the frame and wiewfinder displays.

The split prism screen is a much better option in my opinion, and I have used both.

Since you have AF lenses, you might consider using AF as follows:

- set the AF mode selection to centre spot
- half-press* to achieve focus with the camera pointing at what you want sharpest
- and then reframing to take the picture.

I find this is quicker than focusing manually, and still lets you choose what's sharp.

You can choose (in the Custom menu) to either lock the exposure with the focus or not.

Using a split-prism to focus manually still requires the camera to be pointing directly at the part of the frame that you want sharp, so reframing is still needed.

Therefore I don't see any advantage in modifying the camera, unless you start using MF-only lenses.

________
*Alternatively, again in the Custom menu, you can uncouple AF from the half-press, and use the AF button on the back to focus if you prefer.

OCPhotobug

To add to what Chris has said regarding using autofocus. I use the method he describes of centrepoint focus and then re-frame. With the Pentax lens you have (18-55), after the auto-focus has locked on(in single AF mode) you are still able to turn the focus ring to "fine tune" the focus if needed.

It might be worthwhile doing some experiments to see which is better , the AF or your eyes !

Thanks guys.

I'll try out the reframing method today.

I'll be out in Hyde Park to take some pictures. I'll definately put them up for comments. I'm learning more in 1 day in this forum than reading books.

Thanks a lot, really appreciated it.

I find doing this quite fiddly with AF coupled to the half-press, since you have to hold the button half-pressed while doing this. If you let go, then it just auto-focuses again when you reframe and take the picture.

With AF-decoupled from the half-press, this isn't the case, of course.

I found that using the focus and reframe led to out of focus shots and then I found this:

http://visual-vacations.com/Photography/focus-recompose_sucks.htm

and this

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/technical/focus_recompose.html

Why not use one of the multiple focus points? I do this on my K100D and while I may get rotten photos they are usually in focus.




If I had used focus and recompose I'm pretty certain that the oil container would have been out of focus. Incidentally pixel peeping says it's in focus but maybe at 1/20th second there may be a tad of blur.

Mike

Well, sure. The closer you are, and the wider the subject, the larger these errors.

But once you get a decent distance away, they're insignificant.

The point I was making was that using a split prism will require the same reframing - and will give rise to exactly the same errors, for the same reason.

So if focus speed is the issue, MF won't help, unless you can see the sharpness of the off-centre subject clearly enough and quickly enough, which isn't always very easy.

Using the multiple focus points is fine when you have the time.

Chris I totally agree with your point about the MF screen. I was very surprised when I had focus issues when I first got my 10-20 zoom which were resolved by using the multiple focus points. Personally I don't find them any hassle to use as I can use the thingy on the back of the K100D to set the point to use.

Sad individual that I am I took shots of a brick wall at about 12-15 feet and could just about detect a difference in focus depending on where the focus point was set. The tell tale is often revealed when you hear the focus resset as you change focus point.

Mike