Pentax-Specific Landscape Shooters Checklist

I'm still half lost for words, but it's worth remembering that NASA's 1960s moon missions weren't planned as meticulously as Nigel's photography.

Look at how Neil Armstrong had to 'wing it' when landing the Lunar Module.

I can empathise with Nigel's current mindset as 20 years ago I was exactly the same. I'd be obsessed with planning and developing things to the minutest detail. I'd spend hours mulling over the most efficient way of approaching the task at hand.

For a while I felt good about this approach. Confident that I'd covered all angles and because of that I'd come out with a result that was as close to perfect as possible.

But eventually I realised that all it was doing was dumbing down my soul. My creative spark was atrophied. My almost perfect results weren't exciting anyone and neither and more importantly they weren't exciting me.

Believe me it was hard letting go of being dominated by this obsessive left brain thinking but once I had did was like a breath of fresh air. the spontaneity, the creativity, the spark all returned and most importantly my pursuits were fun again. And not only that I was getting results that excited myself and others.

And excusing this type of left brain meticulous thinking with the excuse that it's beneficial to noobies doesn't wash. On the contrary it's a handicap to noobies. IMO Noobies need to get out there and use their cameras, make mistakes, be spontaneous, be photographically carefree, snap lots of rubbish, forget to take spare batteries out, shoot with the wrong settings, etc, etc

Sometimes using the wrong setting turns out a great picture and all of a sudden what you thought was the wrong setting then becomes another choice of setting in your repertoire

There's nothing worse to damp your creativity or your photographic eye than criticising or analysing while your doing it, or worse before you even start doing it.

Save the criticism and analysis for afterwards. It's better to have 10% of your shots great and 80% of them rubbish or with the wrong settings, than come home with 100% mediocrity.

I said I was lost for words or half lost for words, but that's becuase I was pre-analysing my response to this thread and it was stifling me. Once I'd rid myself of those shackles I just let rip

Forget your lists, just F**king do it

Smeggy, perhaps it was your disciplined approach at the start that gave you the fundamental skills and knowledge to enable your creativity to fly. That does seem to be how it works for many people in many different fields of human activity, including Neil Armstrong. Some others do seem to be able to dive straight in and make progress that way. Different individuals respond in different ways to different approaches - Nigel's suggestions will probably benefit some photographers and inhibit others. In photography as a hobby, we have the freedom to select or experiment with methods of working, learning, and trying to progress.

Philip

I agree with this sentiment. The usefulness or even necessity of the steps outlined isn't disputed, but (and I suppose this depends on temperament) lists can deaden the experience of learning. Advice I'd have been grateful for at an earlier stage would have been more along the lines of 'when should I select other than AWB in landscape shooting?'; 'will I find myself using hard- or soft-edge grads most of the time, and how do I prejudge the strength needed?' etc etc. This sort of thing is not of course marque-specific. I am sure some of the things on the list I learnt eventually, and more securely, by getting them wrong often enough to annoy myself.

lol this is good fun

That's always the intention But not too much please, don't forget the serious study and complete commitment to memorising that checklist!


The space flight analogies are entertaining for sure, but entirely apt? I have a private pilot licence, which I worked hard for years ago, and navigating a plane around the UK airspace is a demanding and disciplined business, but it does also require improvisation and flexible thinking as things change around you ... but, I'd never have got that licence or ever been let loose hiring a plane if I didn't have those checklists nailed, both in the bag and in the brain.

Hey, those space missions were flown on less computational processing power than goes on in my Pentax K7!

Sure, those astronauts had to improvise when things went wrong, but you can be absolutely sure they weren't let anywhere near the outer atmosphere before those checklists were nailed as well !

...and after all that planning you arrive at the location and the weather kills the lighting, unfortunately the most critical thing in landscape photography is the one you can't do anything about

Simon

Shoot B+W when it's chucking it down!

Yes but feel some items could have been expanded

I'm all for expansions, but as I said at the start, I deliberately made the checklist prescriptive and single focussed, ie just for landscapes on a tripod with remote control.

This specifically is to help me quickly get the camera ready before setting out, but I thought it might be helpful to others by triggering some 'expanded' thinking on how these specific settings relate to differing photographic needs when shooting.

To go back to an earlier example I made .... take the menu item 'Memory - Drive Mode'. As the checklist is for Remote Control operation, the drive mode is set to this. Now, we might want to change lenses during our shoot, so the camera gets turned off. When the camera is turned on again, if the 'Memory - Drive Mode' item was activated, then there you are, straight away the remote light is flashing and your camera is ready to go.

If you had not activated this menu item, then the camera would default back to single shot with shutter button. You would have to go into Drive Mode again and reset 'Remote' every time. Now, that is going to be a pain surely, and delay us getting on with all the artistic vision and inspired creating that many of our colleagues here keep telling us is what its really all about.

Nope, I was far more creative before I entered that obsessive, meticulous phase.

All the "obsessive meticulous phase" taught me was to not be obsessive and meticulous.

Rather than be obsessed with camera settings etc., what really matters is seeing the photograph and capturing it. Understanding the basic rules of composition (and when to break them) may help to this effect. Technique will come with experience. Masterpieces have been produced by some who have no photographic experience with a very basic camera that doesn't have any settings to worry about. Conversely, many boring images have been produced by others who have the most expensive cameras, whose main interest is pixel peeping but have never developed the seeing eye.

John K

It's possible to make things complicated where they can be very simple. My cameras are all set the same and stay set the same. Av, JPEG Premium, Daylight WB, Natural Custom Image. As I manually change the ISO to suit, the only thing to regularly check is that I'm not shooting a sunny landscape at ISO 51200!

User modes are very useful on the K30... I can launch straight into my typical settings (WB, file format, ISO, exposure mode, custom image etc) without worrying about having forgotten something.. like the ISO! I have a user mode set up for flash, and one for 'f5.6 and be there' daylight photography.

John its refreshing to see a post that is mostly on topic - ie it is actually about some Pentax dslr settings! But like some other posts I feel it misses the point.

Almost none of the items on my checklist will have any direct bearing on the creative or interpretative aspects of the picture taking. To view the checklist as in someway contradictory to Good creative image making is to misunderstand its scope and intent.

The checklist in fact will assist in and enable the free flow of creative juices precisely because The technical fine points in efficient camera operation will be established and stable,and wont get in the way while out in the field.

John,your list is a very different beast. If you were going out with a tripod and remote control, do you think that presetting the camera as per my list would be helpful? Do you feel i've covered everything?