Wow, gonna have to get me a Pentax 2x tele. The one I have leaves everything soft as a feather pillow!
Hand held at 600mm! Wow again! Wish I had hands that steady. Can't do it at 300mm with 1/1000 sec shutter speed.

Nice photo, but would crop to leave a bit more space to the right side. He seems a bit cramped in the frame.
But with the specs, I'd be thrilled to get the shot regardless!

Its an off-the-wall idea, but what are you using to unzip the file?
WinZip for Windows, by default, will often corrupt binary files. Be sure to turn off Smart LF/CR Conversion and try unzipping the original file again.
Or re-download. It could be a simple matter of a corrupted file.

I do not think it looks that bad. It looks like sunlight was perhaps yellow from the side and the flash causes a conflicting blue light from straight on.

Take out the flash spots form the eyes and maybe bring down the blues in the head a bit to make it not look so 6500K from the flash.

But I think anything more than that might be very difficult in PP because the flash appears to have come form straight on and gives it a flat look as well. Either a more diffuse flash, or better yet use the flash off-camera to make the light look more natural and give some depth.

Also, darken the background a bit.
Dunno if this makes much difference, but a quick two minute touchup.

In short it allows you to decrease ambient light using less flash power. It also helps reduce blur seen from ambient light tat might otherwise be frozen by flash.

More explanation...
It helps to understand a bit how the shutter works in these conditions... hopefully I do the expatiation some justice...
Basically the shutter has two "curtains". One opens to allow the sensor to be exposed. A second "curtain" closes to stop exposure. At the maximum sync speed the entire sensor is exposed.
On Pentax this maximum is 1/180 second. Anything faster requires that the second curtain starts closing BEFORE the first curtain is fully opened. This results, at the highest speed, only a small sliver of the sensor being exposed at any given time.

When you use flash, the flash is much faster than most shutter speeds. So Shutter speed will not affect the exposure from the flash. You need to control that with aperture (or with flash power, but lets assume flash power is consistent for now - to make things easier).

If the higest sync speed is 1/180, recall this means the smallest amount of time possible to fully expose the sensor at one time, the flash will therefore affect the entire sensor.

Go any higher than 1/180 on a Pentax and only a small portion of the sensor will see the flash. So you will start getting a dark band on one end of the frame. The fast the shutter speed, the larger the dark band becomes.

This can be used to great effect on other camera brands, but unfortunately Pentax has crippled the camera to not allow normal flash above 1/180 second. ARGH!!!

To work around the issue of getting a dark band, you need to use High Speed flash. This pulses the flash so that the sensor sees some amount of flash throughout the exposure. Of course this means the final flash power is much lower such that multiple flashes can be produced from a single charge.


Higher end cameras will allow the sensor to be exposed down to 1/250 or even lower periods of time.
This is really nice for photographing where you want to bring down the ambient light, for example the sun.
When using flash, ambient light is controlled by the shutter. So you can decrease the sunlight to near darkness and your flash will still properly illuminate the subject .

The difference between 1/180 and 1/250 is pretty minor (1/3 stop??) and I wouldn't worry much about it, but a camera with 1/500 or 1/1000 sync speed can create some interesting images using significantly less flash power.

Even though flash may be as fast as 1/20000, the ambient light may cause the subject to expose enough to leave blur and trails. A faster sync speed helps eliminate some of the blur visible from ambient light.

I just really wish Pentax would allow the hotshoe to fire a flash with higher sync speeds. Sometimes that dark band can be used for creative control and be a desired effect!

Don't actually know if this applies outside the US -- software sometimes seems to have minor tweaks so behavior might differ, but hopefully this is helpful if needed anyway.

For anyone having issues with PhotoShop CS4 crashing while saving under Snow Leopard,
try the following:

* Remove the font named Menlo from the fonts Folder. Spotlight should find the proper folder. (Move Menlo.ttc to Trash)
* Remove the adobe photoshop .plist file (users//library/preferences/com. adobe.Photoshop.plist)
* Make sure when you EMPTY the trash.
* Repair permissions (from Disk Utility)
* Reboot

I could not save the most simple of documents and this fixed my problem.
From what I've read, some people have not had 100% luck with this fix.

The very top level. i.e. Not within the DCIM, PENTAX or any other directory, but at the very top available level after you open the drive on your computer.

"root" is a common unix term used for the top level, like the root of a tree. Where it all begins.

If you simply drag the file onto the card/drive, it should work just as well.
Be sure to delete the file from the card when you are done.

Sadly, they do not honor people who have switched from PC to Mac. So I would need to buy a new license anyway. If they had a Mac version and allowed an upgrade path from my PC license I'd jump on it.

Unfortunately, I now use other software and although perhaps not as good as SilkyPix, I find little desire to further fund a company that has no interest in retaining its existing customer base.

Well, that is cool. I have yet to see any use in the older sensor shaker method. Sometimes dust would move but never I've never seen where it would actually fall off. I always bring a rocket blower to do any cleaning. (luckily the coating is nice enough to have needed a wet cleaning only once in two years)

I am close to wanting an K7 and that adds to the list of benefits.

Although I am just not sure if I will be able to live with forced dark frame subtraction on bulb mode exposures and no more tethered capability.

I followed some of the links to see the biography of some of their pro photographers...
Although a nice web page, and I suppose with impressive information... why do they dhow a guy hanging from a mountain on ropes with a huge-arse silver lens, then show his gear as consisting of the latest all black lenses?

I don't know about anyone else, but it just feels of sleezy sales guys putting together a bunch of pretty photos with no cohesiveness. Basically I feel lied to. So the guy is using an old legacy prime lens (I hope, and it is not another brand again). Why not use that as an advantage to the marketing rather than hide it and try to pawn off new lenses (well obviously only the new lenses make Pentax any money.)

Sorry... still waiting for the K7 to get in the shop near me.
Pentax slurped up all the bodies allocated for local shops at the last moment and sent them all off to Amazon (well, at least they didn't tell the shop owners they were doing that... they just left them high and dry waiting for shipments). I still have no idea when actual bodies will come to the little guys so I can actually try one out. It all is just starting to piss me off.

Ahhh, I feel much better now.

Anyone else get this email?

http://links.mkt1716.com/servlet/MailView?ms=MzM2ODM4NDUS1&r=Mjk0MjY4OTcxNAS2&j=NTM2OTM3MTQS1&mt=1&rt=0

Looks pretty cool, but you gotta wonder why the famous Pentaxian, pictured near the bottom, is using a Canon lens... OK, maybe not him, but that was my first impression. Still, could Pentax not find someone with a less prominent competing lens to paste on their brochure? Or perhaps, oh, I don't know... perhaps a PENTX lens?

ergh!