Mnemonics and checklists

I think I have said elsewhere that another of my hobbies is flying radio controlled model aircraft. I believe K10 does as well. If I were to say to him "SMART" I would guess he would know what I am talking about. Basically these are a series of pre take-off checks that I run through. The first letter of each is added to the mnemonic to make an aide memoir, so Switch, Meter, Aerial, Rates, Trims becomes "SMART".

It goes through my mind that some sort of aide memoir like this might work when taking a photo, or am I the only one who occasionally gets back home to find that all the pictures I have taken have a strange colour cast because I have forgotten to set the WB for example?

Shooting with RAW mostly and change the WB in PP when not happy so not really so much a problem for me although ISO is another story...

I wished you could make a start-up preset so to say.
When you turn on your camera it will take those presets instead of the last used valued, WB would be one those values together with ISO, EV balance (also for flash), sharpness, Saturation, contrast and probably some more I can't think of right now.
It would also be nice to let you choice which one he must reset.
If Pentax could do that then that would be awesome!

IIRC you can already do something like this Stefan, by unchecking the boxes of the items that are memorised when the camera is witched off.

In this way they revert to the default settings instead of the setting last used.

Frankly that would really annoy me. To give an example with an all manual camera it would be as though someone had changed all the camera settings every time you switched it off. I never had an MX that did that!

John is that the option Memory in the Rec. Mode menu?

The thing is I always leave my camera on since it goes in sleep automaticly, only when it goes into the bag I will turn it off so when i turn on the camera again it's mostly in a completely different situation.
I for example always have it on AWB except when shooting indoors so wouldn't mind that goes to AWB automaticly.

See page 236 of the K20D manual. I can't find my K10D manual just now, but I think it's the same. Select and uncheck white balance and the job is done.

All you have to do is to switch off your camera rather than letting it go to sleep. Your battery may last longer as well.

Thank you John.
Don't know the page for that in the K10D manual but simply tried it out and it worked, I can sleep happy now

About the battery life, I'm quite astonish how long it last on sleep mode, forgot to turn it off many times after shooting and after a a week or so picked it out of the bag and saw I forgot to turn it off but the battery still is very lively after a week of standby.
Taking photos and the LCD screen requires a lot of energy, the rest doesn't need so much when they have nothing they need to do.

ps. about the Pentax day thread in the my photo section, sorry for the mess I made, if you want to clean it up I would appreciate that.
Although it seems to have stop now.

Oooh, please sir, me sir! It may be a mnemonic device, but it's actually an acronym.

Ray

Good idea, If it works for you then why not use it?, I still remember my Glider pre-flight checks from 1974!-CB SIT CB. Controls, Ballast, Straps, Instruments, Trim, Cable and Brakes. Though i have forgotten my powered Aircraft Pre flight checks from 1975!

Trouble is all this would go out of the window when you are rushing to get a grab shot and your Camera is in its bag!

Best Regards - Pete

Ahem, I have launched an R/C glider from Blakey Ridge to comments of "wow, smooth circuit". I didn't mention that just after I let go, I realised that the receiver was switched off! Fortunately it landed close by, undamaged.

I tend to set my camera before I leave the house. The only things I adjust in the field are aperture and exp comp. Normally shoot at largest jpg setting and may, very rarely adjust metering. I hate desk time, so the better the jpg, the happier I am.

Regards

When I got there in 1975, it was CB SIFT CB (flaps added) Now it's CB SWIFT CBE. Happy days

I've got one

LIWID

"Little Idea What I'm Doing" hope this helps

I find "MESS" works for me. The idea being if you don't run through this check list your photos with be a MESS.

M = Memory, check the card is in the camera, not the lap top !
E= Exposure , Av, program, what ever
S= Speed, ISO
S = Shake, on / off

Cheers,

/Ian

That's the sort of thing I was thinking off.

The one that always works for me is more related to composition, I'm not sure where I picked it up from - but it does make me think and very often re-compose images is K.I.S.S.

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

My usual mistake is to put the Camera away after a night shoot and leave the 2 sec timer on and the camera set to 30 seconds at f22 then try to take a grab shot straight from the bag the next day!( At least with the K7 i don`t have to wait another 30 second for the camera to write to the card like the K10D)

Regards - Pete.