K3...new thread...is it just me?...looks like..

Gents,

Thanks for all the comments on the other thread, but it has completely went off topic, onto subjects I have no understanding of...
I took´all the advice switched off pretty much everything and have went to manual WB, and it seems my K3 is ok but needs an extra 2 or 3 stops on WB to provide good results.
I posted some new images on here, they are a fair bit better than previous, so just need to keep playing and learning.
Last weekend we ahd two extremely contrasting days, saturday the sun was splitting the paveys...Sunday it was basically black all day with only quick moving openings in the clouds providing any daylight, so it taught me how one setting doesn´t work for everything if nothing else.
Any comments/suggestions more than welcome & appreciated.....

Hi,

You can post a reduced size image directly into your post via the image button.
Might help with conveying concepts a bit more.

Glad it's all looking a bit better now.

1st image taken at F18 for dof... same subject as earlier pictures which did not show same detail at 100%

3rd attempt at adding progressively smaller jpg´ss....

file is now 220kb from 8.5 mb but won´t load on this page....

This file is 1000 pixels wide and under 400K in size.

I think you would be better off with a Point & Shoot Camera

--

I do think you've set yourself quite a challenge Bruce ... the K3 is a difficult choice of machine if you want to learn about the fundamentals of photography shooting techniques. But then again, it does give every possiblility you might want to explore ....

I appreciate that the discussion on exif data was very detailed, and that is why I specificially deverted it off onto a different thread. But it was not 'off-topic' to your question .... we were trying to understand what custom image settings you were using in the absense of any input from yourself.

You didn't respond previously to my points about metering, so I'll say it again .... most of the images you've posted are very challenging in terms of their contrast and dynamic range. They mostly all have large areas of great brightness. If the camera light meter is seeing a lot of this very bright light (for example if you were pointing the camera upwards a little so that a lot of that light was being seen driectly by the camera) then this will result in the underexposure you're having.

In order to eliminate this possibility, I'd try to shoot a few frames of the exact same scene, firstly pointing the camera upwards to the brightness, then pointing it downwards to the darker areas for the next shot. The exposures should be quite different for each. Tell us what you did and post the results here. (When you press and hold the shutter button halfway to focus its probable that the exposure is being held as well).

Its great that you're keeping on trying ... we all here want people to get great results from their Pentax cameras. You've made the odd few comments, like this one which suggest you are misunderstanding some fundamental aspects of the camera operations, and my advice would be to get a good book on digital / DSLR photography and get stuck into it .... the time spent doing that will be extremely rewarding.

WB is to do with how warm/cold the light is.

I assume you actually mean exposure? Setting the exposure manually is a good idea in challenging situations, such as shooting into the light. But you can also dial in exposure compensation, or use the exposure lock to fix your exposure when the camera is pointing at the ground, then recompose to include the sky before shooting.

I was meaning I had switched off the NR etc as advised, by WB I was meaning the sliding scale on the right of the display, which is probably really exposure compensation....
Thanks again for all the advice (excepting Algaron), I will keep working at this, have a Michael Freeman book I am using on exposure/light essentials that is interesting, hopefully will get there eventually....

Bruce

As was suggested in the original thread - it may be worth experimenting with the 'auto bracketing' function. This allows you to record up to 5 versions of the same shot with different exposure values - you can set the difference to up to 2 stops variance between each shot - you can read about it in the manual - page 51 I think.

If you do this for a number of different shots in different lighting conditions - you should be able to work out whether there is a 'constant' under exposure and by how much and then simply compensate for it.

In my experience - Pentax DSLRs do tend to under expose - and in all probability - this is a deliberate design 'feature' to minimise the chance of blowing out highlights.

One question for you - when you first bought the camera - you posted this comment:

"I plumped for the K-3, first impressions are that it a fantastic camera, build quality and first 4 or 5 images all superb "

So - have you inadvertently changed a setting somewhere that you are not aware of? Maybe worth doing a re-set back to all original settings and starting again.

Carl

There is a wealth of info and knowledge available to you here Bruce, so stay with it.

If you are having issues posting pictures to the thread then contact the site mods for assistance. You will need to post examples and report back with your experiences often to get the most from the contributors.

I'd suggest posting a detailed list of what you have been trying, and some photos / descriptions of what you would like your pictures to look like, so that we all have a clear idea of the goal posts.