Interesting thread. I reckon Smeggypants got it right on the nose with that thought. If Pentax do eventually produce a camera with a FF sensor, it'll be targetted firmly at the PRO end of the market.

I reckon that Nikon and Canon well understand that the mass market will buy just about anything with their badge on it, largely because Joe Average Punter thinks that Nikon and Canon cameras are "what the PROs use". It doesn't matter that all they want is a cheapie point & shoot - they want one with an aspirational badge on it.

If Pentax are ever to become an aspirational brand again and start to gain market share across their product range, grabbing at least some sales in the PRO market with a FF camera might be an essential part of the process.

Andrew

IrfanView is free, works well and is very simple to use for JPEGs. It will also display and save a RAW preview too.

Andrew

I'm not so sure about that. The AF point on the two images might be in a different place.

Andrew

It is an aid to focussing. It highlights edges in an image displayed in Live View that are in focus. It is particularly helpful for manual focus lenses.

Andrew

Errr .......

If you take a sentence, leave all the first and last characters of words in place but jumble the letters inbetween, you can still read the sentence at pretty much normal speed. I seem to have my own version of that ....

Sometimes I read speed read sentences - only the first and last words - and my brain fills in whatever it wants in between. It comes from being an engineer and not reading manuals, I guess.

Thanks for that. It works very well, doesn't it?

Andrew

________________________________________________________
I'm not a comlete idiot - some of the parts are missing!!

The function allowed you to place two images side by side on the LCD screen - and zoom in & pan as you please. The two images were synchronised when panning.

I tended to use it to compare consecutive shots of the same image to check which was better focussed and/or sharper. With a manual lens, especially at low shutter speeds, I found it quite useful. I also used it from time to time to compare the same image taken by different lenses.

It's no big deal, but it was convenient - saves having to carry an accurate mental picture of a zoomed version of an image in your head. On replay, you cannot switch directly from a zoomed version of one image to a zoomed image of the same part of another. If you could, there wouldn't be a need for it.

Isn't that image comparison function available on the K5 and K20 (esp as it hails from the same era as the K200D)?

(PS. I have looked for it in the camera - can't find it, hence the question. I'm an engineer - so manuals are a last resort anyway!!)

Andrew

A playback function I used a lot on the K200D allowed you to display and compare two images stored on the memory card, side by side on the LCD display. I now have a K30 and I cannot find the function either on the camera or in the User Guide.

I am beginning to believe that the K30 just doesn't support it. Can anyone confirm whether it does?

Andrew

Only one part of the mission.

There's lots I have to discover about the K30 yet. I hadn't realised until I read Algi's post that you could select values of colour temperature. Must look at that .......

Andrew

Agreed.

I think I know what it will look like - pretty much like the version you produced. I could have improved it again by using noise reduction in PP (especially the Santa shot). Maybe it would have been sharper if I'd used a tripod and locked the mirror up. I could have kept my options open and possibly improved it again by taking it as a RAW and by spending a lot of time in PP.

To do that would have been completely missing the point. I simply wanted to see whether focus peaking is a useful tool with a manual focus lens - and whether the K30's reputation of great performance at high ISO is justified. I think I've learned that the answer to both those questions is a resounding "Yes".

Andrew

What do I think?

I think you made the colours suit your personal preference - and they look fine to me. On the other hand, you didn't make the grey (in daylight) parts of his beard grey in the image - which is what I said would make the image look ghastly (way too little blue in your version).

If you do make his beard grey, it looks like this:




Pretty ghastly, don't you think?

The K30 is entirely new to me, so I want to see what it does on its own, without PP. As an aside, I tried a Pentax AF360FGZ flash on it this evening in P-TTL. For the few shots I took, P-TTL works a LOT better than it did with the K200D where it underexposed most of the time.

The K30 is definitely growing on me.

Andrew