Six in the City




Full-sized pic here

I've somehow zapped all the EXIF data during the cropping and cleanup, but it's basically:

Camera: Pentax K-x
Taken: 18 July 2010 17:46:39 BST
Exposure: 1/320th sec, f5.6, ISO200

How strange. Sorry my missive didn't help... but it was worth a stab.

Just out of curiousity, do you actually get two photos recorded, in those times where it clicks twice? If so, are there any differences between the two shots recorded in the EXIFs? Another long shot, but it might shed some light.

Otherwise it does sound like something's gone haywire, doesn't it? Maybe the shutter button itself is not de-bouncing properly - as Mannesty says..."dodgy". Slack return spring? Certainly I'd be hard pushed to imagine an 'electronic' cause, but I suppose it is possible too.

Good luck with finding the solution. Please do let us know what it was, won't you? Just in case it happens to me too! LOL

Interesting thread. I recently had a conversation with someone who was switching brands, and asked him why - and I must confess, in the circumstances, I totally understood his rationale.

Here's the gist, and I hope I've got it right, but I don't think I'm far from the mark.

He found it very difficult to make contact with other Pentaxians locally. There either weren't enough, or they weren't interested in swapping tales, organising shoots, getting together - whatever. Point is, he was in a class of one.

A friend (whom he had no idea was into photography) randomly spied his Pentax, and it transpired that he too, had no idea till then, that the Pentaxian had been into photography all this time. Turns out that a whole bunch of already-connected mates were secretly (and some not-so-secretly) SLR photo hobbyists of some seriousness, and were already 'ganging together' and going on interesting trips and jollies.

Pentax man joins in the fun, but discovers they're entirely Canonistas.

The fact that they were Canonistas was not a problem - they accepted him and his Pentax - but there's a twist. A twist of the lens...

It turns out that between themselves, the Canonistas had been very careful to only buy lenses that their 'circle of friends' hadn't already bought. Thus, they had a very handy little 'lens pool' which they could pretty freely share and swap under 'mates rules' of damage/replacement, etc. Pretty smart, really. But of course, the Pentaxian was entirely self-reliant, and in the circumstances, a tad shut-out, despite still being welcomed on the jollies, etc.

Couple that with a desire to move to full-frame dSLR, and where is this 'squeezed' Pentaxian going to go? Obvious, really... liquidate his Pentax kit, buy a decent full-frame Canon, and join in the lens-swapping party that his mates had already begun.

I found it very hard to find fault with that, really. I sincerely hope that if I find a local bunch of photography nuts that I want to be with, they're not all Canonistas already, or close mates of mine already, and, if they are, that they haven't all gone 'communista cooperative' like his lot were!

It'd be damned hard to resist that kind of pressure, over time!

Hi. First, what mode are you shooting in, as far as the main dial is concerned? This may explain things (some of the SCENE modes automaticaly engage Continuous mode, for example).

Secondly, what does the main LCD display show for the top icon out of the five that make up the 'paw-print' group of icons?

This top icon shows the current 'Drive' mode, and maybe you're in 'Auto Exposure Bracketing' mode which looks a bit like:
(but is not exactly the same... the + is on a white background, and there are a couple of 'stacked' square icons behind the main one, to show that it will take multiple shots at different exposure levels).

Alternatively, you might be in 'Continuous Shooting' mode (icon is
, but has Hi or Lo in the top-right corner of the icon). Bear in mind though, as I said above, if you're in one of the main dial modes that auto-select this drive mode, you may not be able to switch it off. Just use a different main-dial mode instead!

To narrow down which setting it might be, try this: If you leave your finger on the shutter a long time, does it KEEP taking shots, or does it take just three and then stop? If the former, then you're in Continous mode, I reckon. If the latter, then you're in Auto Exposure Bracket, probably. The reason you were only seeing two shots was probably because you didn't hold the button down long enough for the third shot to fire!

Final thing to check is the photos themselves - if the second one is marked with any kind of positive or negative 'Exposure Compensation' when you view its EXIF file, or its INFO (on-camera via the LCD), then I'd say Auto Exposure Bracketing is the cause. Likewise, the EXIF data will record whether Continous mode was on or off at the time of the shot.

Either way, the solution is simple enough - simply press the corresponding top button in the 'paw-print' on the K-x's back (the one marked
and select the first icon - the green square
- Single Frame Shooting, and you should be alright. Or change the main dial to use another main mode that doesn't engage this drive mode, as mentioned above.

Hope this helps. Please let me know if it does.

Signed - thanks Pentaxophile.

If I could email Ned Bunnell without signing up to Google and joining the accursed Blogosphere, I would! I'll find another way, don't 'ee worry!

Thanks Hefty1, I intend to follow up on that. I looked at Ned's blog, but found I could only post to it if I had a Blog Account, and I don't, so I guess I'll try Japan instead! Time for me to dig out my 'how to be polite in Japanese' book...

Side note - I'm feeling regret at having dangled the taunt out there, in return for my subscribing to PU Magazine. I've just received an email that says it's all over on the printed magazine front - which is a big shame! Just my flippin' luck, though. Buy a new Pentax, get pointed at the 'official' (but independent) Pentax magazine, and wallop, watch it vanish. All in the same month. I feel sad for the team on the mag, though. I hope they're all able to get work elsewhere very soon.

Thanks John - I'll sit tight, then.

Alas, my only thought beyond pretty girls, was pretty locations, but it's my first stab at a compo (or even uploading anything to PU), so I'm happy just to get this far.

However, I noticed a slight problem - the EXIF data is missing. I had to manually input a bunch of it by hand into the Gallery tool, but of course, the "date taken" field is locked (presumably to prevent spoofing), so it shows up as blank.

Why would this be? I created the JPEG image from Photoshop CS4 Extended, via 'Save for Web & Devices' and told it to export all the metadata - all of which is visible if I load the resulting JPEG back into Photoshop and view the 'File Info'.

Did I do something wrong, and/or should I delete/reupload the image?
The date taken was actually 19/07/2010 13:20:42, if that helps!

And I will come clean right off the bat and say that I've Photoshopped out the girl's mother from the bottom right, and some random bloke who was also in the shot to her left, facing backwards, and a waiter.

I did study the rules to see whether anything Photoshoppy was allowed, and found nowt to say it wasn't... so I hope that's ok. I've not gone mad (and I am quite happy to provide folks with the originals and a walkthru tutorial to compare notes by, if wanted later).

Fun this, innit? First time I've ever done anything 'competitive' with my photos, and it's inspiring me to try a lot harder!

Hi Simon - sorry for the delay. Dozed off! D'oh! PM received, and replied to - hopefully you'll get that, but if not, please let me know here or on the email address mentioned above. Deal happily accepted, with thanks.

Cheers

Ok, I can see a smidge of noise now, around her chin and neck particularly - mainly in the dark areas. But considering this is an f4, 1/100th sec at ISO6400, we've got to consider that it must've been pretty gloomy! The detail in her blouse is fine, by comparison, so it's only really struggling with the really lowlight dark-area stuff, I think.

And of course, it's worth bearing in mind that given the focal length (30mm - 45mm effective - which ain't far from a 'normal' SLR's 50mm 'standard' portrait kit-lens of old days), it's not a particularly tight close-up on the subject. There's a lot of (rather interesting) background in there, isn't there! I'd be surprised if an old-school ISO6400 negative would zoom up as well as the 100% crop above, at the size it's being displayed here in the forum! I remember even ISO400 being pretty grainy!

What I'm getting at, is if you'd framed *just* the girl, at 30mm, then I figure you'd have a tough job picking out the noise at all. It'd be lost in her buttons, or the folds of cloth here and there, maybe - and virtually invisible. You only see it now, because it's on her face (and we're conditioned to process faces more acutely). I think the noise is over-emphasised because she's really probably less than 10% of the shot and you're zooming in to look at her in portrait mode, practically. Such is the wonderment of a 12 megapixel image, we can even consider doing such a thing!

We still don't know whether we're looking at a RAW image above, or a JPEG (well, obviously we on the forum are looking at a JPEG, cos you can't post the RAW here natively)... but what I mean is, we don't know what level of JPEG compression has been used. Was it one, two or three stars, in the K-x? Or did you start with a RAW and use Pixel Peeper directly on it (in which case, what level of JPEG compression was used at that stage?) It all has a bearing, potentially.

Gut feeling is, it's ok. In fact, it's ace, all things considered. I really don't think you'd even have been able to *get* that shot with your Fuji, to be honest. But - to put your mind at rest - why not do some straight side-by-side comparisons with your Fuji, in testing conditions, and see what you get. I'd be very interested to know the results too!

Regards