pentax k-r Disappointed

Just a thought...if you have the colour space set to AdobeRGB turn it to sRGB. This will give you brighter colours on most devices and is essential for the web.

I think that when switching from using a camera in auto to manual setting it is best to go to full manual which is not as dificult as may think, the important thing to understand is how changing a setting affect the end result.

I would set the metering to mutli-segement for now, which will average out for the whole scene. Its worth remebering that the meter expects the scene to be a grey, so if you took picture of white wall you would need to over expose to get it to come out white and similarily a black scene would need to be underexposed.

The basic settigns can roughly be described as follows;

ISO - Sensetivity of sensor to light, lower ISO like 200 will provide more detail, raising it to higher setting like 1600 will result in less detail and more noise.

Apperture - affects how much light reaches sensor through the lens, wider apperture such as f3.5 will let in more light than a narrow apperture such as f11. Apertures also affect how much of scene is in focus wider aperture = less of scene/subject from font to back is in focus.

Shutter Speed - Shutter speed affects how long the sensor is exposed to light. A faster shutter speed 1/2000 will freeze moving subject, a slower speed such as 1/10 will render moving subjects as a blur. (Point Mr B made about keeping shutter speed above focal length when han holding is worth remembering to avod camera shake)

What seetings you can use will depend on the amount of light avaialble.

I hope I have not assumed you know less than you did this is not patronsing!

Hi Gents
As previous conversation, just arrived back from Dartmoor [ not the Prison?/] Took these with my K-r and the kit lens and "NO AUTO".it was on AV as most of you suggested,.Do not go easy on me I can take it and hope to learn.K-r was set to Raw+ Jpeg and PEF, but I cannot open the PEF files in Elements 6 or anything, Jpeg no problem. None of these photos have been altered and come straight from the camera.Finally this lens is 18-55mm but not the same on a 35mcamera , what changes???
Thank You all for your help and Kindness, you made this old mans day HI
Regards Terry

I think the expose in the second and last picture of the cogs are better than the first. Also feel that they would benefit from a little tweak of the levels in elements, especially the midtones as they seem a little flat.


If your version of elements does not open the PEF files, set the camera to save DNG raw files which it should open OK.

As the thread was started of with you saying you was disapointed with the pictures from you K-R, How do you feel about them, are they any better than you was getting before?

Many Thanks for your reply and observations much noted.This afternoon was a pleasure to use the K-r andfor me these are the best I have done so far.,still a long long way to go yet though.it is purely relaxation for me.Have changed the camera fron Pef to Dng as you suggested, but still cannot fathom out the actual focal length of the 18-55, will play with elements and try to improve them Thaks for your help Regards Terry

Re the focal length of the lens. Well it is what it says, 18-55mm !

What's different is that the sensor is roughly half the size of a 35mm film frame, so it's like putting a normal 35mm slide in a half frame mount - it gets cropped.
To get the equivalent lens in 35mm terms of your 18-55mm you have to multiply the focal length by 1.5, which makes it 27-82mm.

John K

It's possible to do more from the RAW but there's a great advantage in taking pictures without much in camera processing as you have done here and then 'developing' them later. I do like your third shot - here it is with some example work on it.

Hi Gwing thanks for your info ,could you tell me what you did to improve it please, I have PhotoScape, do I need something better ? Regards Terry

Sorry I don't know PhotoScape or what it is capable of Terry so I'll put what I did in general terms any comprehensive photo editor can replicate. Trying to put the edits in order of importance to the image:

1) I increased the sharpness quite strongly. I used highpass type sharpening but I don't think that matters too much - use whatever is available in your tool of choice.
2) I was intending to increase the colour saturation but found that the sharpening technique I used did enough on that as a side effect. If you are using a more conventional sharpener you will I think need to add some, not much, colour saturation.

That was it really for the main effect. I did play a bit further but these had increasingly subtle and less important effects.

3) I selectively softened the backgrounds showing through the cog so as to draw more attention to the strong sharpened shape of the cog itself.
4) I increased the contrast a little - probably the equivalent of applying a gentle s curve in most tools.
5) I applied something my tool (darktable) calls its 'Velvia' filter which does some subtle processing trying to mimic the saturated colours of the old Velvia film. On this particular image its effect was not strong and a simple small colour saturation boost should do much the same job.

P.S. I'm glad you consider the rework an 'improvement'. I prefer/try to think of processing like this as personal preference or portrayal rather than necessarily better - there are no absolute standards here other than perhaps your own memory of what the real life article looked like. The image is actually a bit overdramatic for my taste and if it was going on my wall I would tone back down the saturation and contrast a bit - but here I just wanted to show the type of change that can be achieved.

I had a Pentax K-r and quite miss it sometimes. I found it possible to get colourful, sharp, contrasty photos out of it with very little need for any processing other than a bit of cropping or straightening.

I sometimes find people get a bit carried away with the need to post process everything. Photography to a lot of us is just a hobby and it's more rewarding to me to not need to post process and to be able to get the jpeg looking good straight out of the camera. If you have time to shoot in raw and process everything then fair enough.

I found that by going to the custom image menu on my Kr and selecting bright or vibrant picture settings and then adjusting the contrast by +1 or +2 and the sharpness by +1 it gave very good results.

My jpegs improved even more in terms of contrast and colour by getting a used Pentax 16-45 lens to replace the kits lens, it's a lens that seemed to work very well with the Kr.

Lee

You should always sharpen as the very last adjustment including after reaizing

Very good advice for any JPEG shooters. This highlights the great versatility of our DSLRs - they can produce RAW output containing the full 12 or 14 bit picture data the sensor is capable of - but to extract all of that you need to invest time and skill on the computer.

Or, take fuller control in the field and make use of the range of fine adjustments available via the menus. It's perhaps harder to see the effects on the screen in sunlight, but I guess you get used to them and remember what works. Then you have shots ready to go out the camera.

The price is that you do throw away a lot of the image data, so ultimately the images may not be as flexible for a wider range of output choices in the future.

...which not everyone will care about...

So are we saying that a DSLR is wasted on those who shoot JPEGs ?