Regret I've never taken any dance photos suitable for entry into a competition and those I do have are very old, not taken on a Pentax but an 8mm Eumig and feature movement! Seemed a better medium for the subject matter at the time.

John K

Is this really a one day only competition?

John K

It's a good capture but slightly let down by a bit of back focussing. The far wing is the sharpest part of the image when ideally the dragonfly's head would be. Whether the back-focussing is a lens issue and needs adjustment or more likely a hard to photograph subject without scaring it away with a heavy lens only you will know; it might be worth checking the calibration however if other shots exhibit that too.

John K

A bit of food for thought, or some musings on this thread!... Most photographs of general scenes are compromises. There's likely to be something of interest in a bright area in a scene, likewise in the shadows. One can compress the tonal range using an HDR technique, or one can adjust the different parts of an image with a dodging and burning technique which was quite simple with a black and white negative placed in an enlarger.

When colour is added into the equation, the colour balance in a sunlit area can be quite different to a shadow area where a mostly blue sky will render the shadows bluey, a more 50-50 sky would render them more neutral. Distant objects may also be affected by UV haze - some use a filter to help eliminate this, some do not (they're not designed to be just lens protectors!)

In any event, a serious photographer will base the exposure of an image on the part he considers is most important (often skin tone) though if it is a photograph of clouds we'd expose for the sky, if of a general subject in the shadows we'd expose for that. There's nothing new there.

Early digital photographs (often scans) were held back by the available colour palate of computers at the time. Early computers of the 1980's could only use 4, 16 or 256 colours depending on the make and model. Each graphic squares being limited to a small selection of pixel colours rather than being able to have any pixel colour placed in the grid. How would this discussion have fared back then? Clearly the technology back then could not produce a natural image. Even now different sensors use different techniques to achieve satisfactory results. We've progressed a long way but doubt we have reached the destination yet. New technologies will continue to provide for better representations of a scene as we've found that each generation of digital camera improves on the previous one. We've had 8-bit sensors, 12-bit and now even 14-bit. What would the ultimate number of bits be and would that produce the perfect, natural image?

So given the compromises, how can anyone say that a photograph can look natural? The subject itself changes its appearance depending on the current lighting and if the subject is placed near an object of a different colour it might reflect that too. I feel there are too many variables to render something as looking natural given the original object/scene's looks itself is not constant.

Sometimes an HDR approach might render a contrasty scene as looking more natural (given our eye's ability to balance the lighting in the original scene.) Some of John R's church interiors demonstrate this admirably. Yet an HDR of another scene produced in exactly the same way might look awful!

As I said, these were just musings while wondering what a 'natural' looking photograph is really supposed to look like!

John K

There is a clear white line around the edge of the castle and trees making the join pretty obvious so looks like a cardboard cut out! Also there are a couple of areas where the cutting out has skipped across the turrets leaving an obvious blank area that doesn't fit in with the rest of the sky.

John K

Quite an unusual lens. There's a bit on another forum about it here: link

There's mention of the extra Ricoh pin, so be warned if you get it to remove that or it might become permanent!

My thoughts are that if you have the standard Pentax 18-55 you're not going to gain much. But don't let that put you off.

John K

Not irrelevant because we all get to see them on our vastly different setups. An image on my monitor is unlikely to look exactly the same on yours.
We do adjust however. A slide show of old slides where all the colours have gone off does start to appear natural as one gets used to it.

John K

This fella chose to take up residence in the greenhouse one morning. Not quite sure how the 'rules' would apply to that!



John K

Yep, some animals are extinct in the wild!

John K

I'm pretty sure increasing the saturation has helped your views quite a bit and they do not look 'overcooked' to me. Without your input I suspect the scenes would be very drab.

What your PP has done is what an 'idiot proof' camera would do with its scene selector dial if set appropriately, or suitable digital filter setting dialled into a DSLR!

John K