LittleSkink

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Join Date: 13th March 2010
Last Login: 8th April 2021 - 14:46
Real Name: Adrian
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Topic / Forum	Comment
K5II and K3II for sale. Both under 1000 shutter actuations; both with Pentax grips Posted in Classified Adverts	I am interesgted in the K3 - could you pm some images please
K3iii - getting closer? Posted in Pentax Digital SLRs	Agreed, guess it depends on down to where? I only dip in the buying stuff every few years, came pondering a new DSLR (KP / K70, didnt excite K1 too heavy) cant see a K3 iii in my near future, especially if its much over £1k In the last few weeks have decided to stick with Pentax a while longer (over swapping to Fujifilm) bought a couple of lenses, pricey tripod head and a bunch of other stuff, so thats my "new DSLR" spending money gone, for a while. Am probably not Ricohs target demographic :)
K3iii - getting closer? Posted in Pentax Digital SLRs	The launch price sounds pretty high, hearing >$2000 near EU2000, which would be a deal breaker for me
HD PENTAX-DA FISH-EYE 10-17mm F3.5-4.5 ED Posted in Leads to Deals	Just a heads up, missed this deal myself and eventually went for the new HD version at £399 a few weeks ago - The HD version can now be found at a couple of retailers for £349 (dropped a few days ago) which seems a decent deal
Bees in flight ? Posted in Flash Photography	Thanks folks, food for thought. My observation, patience and hit ratio are decent enough its my technique that needs to change - will go will hope for another wind free day and try some different approaches
Bees in flight ? Posted in Flash Photography	So heres the thing, I have been trying to do some high speed Macro - just to see what is possible We have a load of Sea Holly in the garden that is awash with bees and I have a variety of flash kit but so far no luck - looking for some top tips to dial in my technique - lots of fun, luck and patience already expended, in a good way :) Outdoors, full sun, I have a white diffuser over the work area to keep some usable light. Pentax AF280 is on full manual power getting some light into background via a 90cm reflecting umbrella (hate black background macros). Metz AF52, also full manual power has a 20cm Metz octabox thingy on it and is approx 25cm from targets. Tried 35mm Macro as well as 58mm Nokton on extension tubes. Got a 100mm M f2.8 but figure its too long focal length for extension tube use. I can catch the "right moment" but things are still not sharp enough, running f11 and 1/125 - hoping the power of the flash would freeze things. If I go to lower power for shorter duration flash it needs wider aperture and depth of field makes it almost hopeless I suspect I need to go faster shutter speed but dont really know how the high speed sync thing works, esp with extension tubes - being a bit "old school" I have pretty much always used flashes on manual. FWIW using cheap chinese radio triggers (they work fine for portraits) but have an off camera lead for the Metz, so might need to change my approach here.
Flash gels? Posted in Flash Photography	Asked a simiIar question on another forum but not got much back, hoping you folks have a few opnions to share :) Been building up my mobile flash kit and skills and want some colour, maybe with a gel set? I currently have Pentax AF280 and Metz 52 flashguns and need something that attaches to the flash (unless there is a better approach) for use with reflective and shoot through umbrellas, nothing fancy Seen a Rogue kit for £25, nice quality, tabbed gel ends so they go on/off the flash easily - but you can get a bunch of gels and a fat rubber band from China for £2 - thoughts?
Country File Posted in General Photographic Chat	Saw that too, nice one Bill the prize (£1000) seemed a bit stingey given they made over £1.3m from the calendar last year - or is it just me ?
HUGIN software is doing my head IN!!!! Posted in Troubleshooter	I have moved to ICE from Photoshop as it often does a better job is there a Hugin help or forum space?
Adobe hacked Posted in General Photographic Chat	This link below is quite enlightening looks like they didn't actually get passwords themselves but may have some info about cards - who knows
Photoshop - extraction tutorials? Posted in Troubleshooter	I was taught to do all the work in capturing a good photo and not fix things in the darkroom, so when it comes to Photoshop my skills are still developing Anyhow, got a lot of the basic controls ok from books and playing (and guidance from folks here) but I am now bumping in to my own limitations - it may be that you want to stop reading now and just point me to some good on-line tutorials (believe me I have looked and wasted plenty of time searching) Lets suppose I have a colour portrait going to high key black and white. Already took it to b&w via channel mixer layer to background copy, added a curves layer, did some burning - all okay so far. In capture the background wasn't quite blown out and I am struggling to select it to do this as there is a graduation across the image Worse case would be to erase it by pixels or something but I have several to do and want to learn how to do this "properly". So how to extract the background quickly and easily?
How to use flash with analog body Posted in Flash Photography	I too am learning my way round flash, even with a DSLR it is worth taking lots of notes of exact readings and settings - at least for me for what its worth I have found the AF280T sensor incredibly predicable / reliable even with bounce - remember it takes an average reading and wants to make everything 18% grey
Best way to remove out of focus distraction Posted in Troubleshooter	Nicely done David my skills with photoshop arent a patch on this (I was taught to capture a decent picture in the first place, so only have myself to blame on this one), can you share any info of your clone settings Having rarely cloned anything I tend to use 'Normal', 100% opacity, soft edge brush in quite a big size (60 pixel here) The image was taken in front of glass and there are subtle reflections that also make the cloning I have tried really obvious
Best way to remove out of focus distraction Posted in Troubleshooter	Dont want to get client permission to share photo, but here is extract. The proximity of hair etc adds to the complexity a little but my usual fixes dont seem to work well on bokeh like this
Best way to remove out of focus distraction Posted in Troubleshooter	Did a portrait shoot today and one of the better shots was a really early one, when I was setting up lighting/exposure and not paying enough attention to background - everything is good, except in the bokeh I have a shiny lamppost running down through my subject It is well out of focus but really distracting. Clone and Heal are both leaving a mess when I try to clean things up, as the oof seems very unforgiving Am I missing something? I thought cleaning an oof background would be easier than a crisp one
FS: Ricoh R1 30mm f3.5 Compact (24mm Panorama lens) Posted in Classified Adverts	A wonderful piece of kit that simply isnt getting any use any more. Uses 35mm film for standard format images using 30mm f3.5 lens or creates panoramic images at 24mm Mostly in great condition. Three cosmetic marks: fingernail scratch next to on/off button, small paint rub on bottom corner and small (c4mm) indentation to front cover on the side - without those it would be near mint (I think) Will get some pictures up if there is interest
Bowens 2 in 1 90cm Umbrella - great kit and price Posted in Flash Photography	Sorry kanpan - your link looks like spam to me
over exposure using fill in flash Posted in Flash Photography	One thing I do in bright situations like these is use a polariser if I want shallow d-o-f thanks for all the comments folks - learnt a bit about outdoor flash from here :)
over exposure using fill in flash Posted in Flash Photography	Ok, taking a simplistic "sunny 16" view of exposure f6.3 is too wide I tend to agree with mongoose, if you want to stick to the camera doing the work the Tv and 1/180 is a good place to start. ISO 100 in bright sun might help
over exposure using fill in flash Posted in Flash Photography	Highlights look blown to me be good to know the Aperture, Shutter, ISO but I think the camera is running out of adjustments
over exposure using fill in flash Posted in Flash Photography	Can we see some pics please the comments make sense and I can see how this might be about the camera running out of adjustment options, but we don't really have enough information to be more definitive