Thanks for the advice/comments folks.

I'll come clean here and admit that my question is a bit of perfectionism on my part, not a real need to produce colour-perfect images. It's something I've wondered about for some time and thought that now is perhaps the time to try to get an answer on the back of wanting to do a good job on the life's work of an old and talented friend . The family are definitely not wanting perfect images, I offered to produce them and they are just grateful for whatever they get.

Peter - your suggestion of working in Adobe RGB and soft proofing to simulate sRGB is interesting. I'll see what Affinity Photo can do (I currently have no idea what most of the options, buttons and sliders do!).

John, Rob - Normally, I would agree with taking photos of paintings in the environment in which they will hang so lighting etc. is correct. But in this case, the paintings are not mounted and will not be hanging anywhere. The family actually run an art/craft shop, 3rd generation (the deceased was 2nd generation), and already have more than enough art hanging on their domestic walls (trade price etc.!). The paintings will be kept in a cupboard in the shop for safekeeping and as 'family history'. Digitising the paintings means that they will be able to see them at home whenever they want to. And if anyone ever wants to make a full size print of any of the paintings, the TIFFs should be adequate.

Rob - Natural light - yes, always. Reflector - didn't think of that for the first batch, but what I thought was uniform illumination turned out to be not quite so thanks for the suggestion for the second batch! Lens is F 50mm f1.7 @ f5.6 (on K3), not enough space for anything longer, but I've used it for a painting or two in the past and it seems to do a good job. Once everything is set up and checked out, it's quick and easy to change the picture, check alignment through viewfinder, fire shutter from remote, repeat ad nauseam. Average about 2 mins per picture. As for post-processing, again a couple of minutes per picture unless something odd has happened, but with the right music playing the time passes quite quickly .

600 pictures sounds (and is!) a lot, but I'm looking at this as a project for the colder, wetter days ahead when the lure of the great outdoors isn't so strong!

Steve

Not at the time, but I didn't download the file when asked. It happened for a short while on 2 computers, one W8.1 the other W10, then stopped. All working OK since then, routine scans have been run (including ADWCleaner) and no sign of malware.

Steve

I was encountering it with some other websites, too, so it isn't a specific Pentaxuser issue. As far as I could tell from the filename in the Firefox 'What do you want to do with this file?' request, the files seem to be something to do with Google ads. Perhaps something was going wrong at their end?

Steve

A bit of background before a question...

An old friend and amateur watercolour artist died a while ago. He left hundreds of paintings in drawers and cupboards. His family are keeping them but, realistically, they are likely to stay packed up in a cupboard once they have been put away. I am therefore photographing at least some of the paintings so the family can see and appreciate the pictures at their convenience on their computers/tablets/phones/whatever.

As a matter of policy, I am trying to be as faithful to the originals as reasonably possible (so no tweaks to make the images look 'better'!). And that raises the issue of colour space. I am using sRGB for two good reasons, first because that's what the recipients will have on their monitors, second because my own monitor is sRGB (99.99% and calibrated). However, an artist is not restricted to sRGB and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the colours in some of the paintings are out of gamut (subtle greens in landscapes etc.). Colour matching is so far pretty good (visual comparison between painting and what's on the monitor). But there are lots of paintings to go (about 600 if I go the full distance!).

So now to the question. How can I tell whether colours that are not quite matched are out of sRGB gamut, so cannot be matched by tweaking, or within gamut, so could in principle be tweaked to match? I am well aware of websites that show sRGB triangles and other colour spaces on a notional 'full scope' colour gamut, but that's no use because all the colours display on the monitor as sRGB. If it's relevant, the starting point for post-processing is a DNG file from a K3, Affinity Photo is used for processing, processed image saved as both 16-bit TIF for archive and JPG for normal viewing

Hopefully, there won't be a painting where non-sRGB colours are a significant problem, but you never know...

Steve

A masterful set . Wonderfully well seen and superb execution. However good the lens and camera, it's the photographer who makes the picture. With a bit of help from nature, of course .

Steve

Vic, I think your comment should be aimed at John, not me. I've never been a member of anything that involved marching.

Steve

Neither the K3 nor K3ii has an anti-aliasing (AA) filter. That filter seems to be a thing of the past for modern cameras.

The K3 does not have pixel-shift, the K3ii does have it. It featured big in the initial marketing of the K3ii. Who actually uses it now, though??

Steve

I use a K3, not a K3ii, because the K3ii didn't exist when I bought the K3. When the K3ii came out, the only major functional difference was built-in GPS instead of built-in flash. There were tweaks/improvements in other areas but no big changes, certainly not enough to make me think I would take better photos. As John says above, the K3 is capable of taking superb images. Ultimately, the choice between K3 and K3ii comes down to whether you want built-in flash of GPS. Of course, if someone else in the family also wants a new camera, it's always possible to follow John's example and get both...

Would I swap the K3 for a KP? No, lack of top LCD and second SD card slot overcomes gain in low light performance and flippy screen for me, but others may (and do) go the other way. And the promised flagship? At the moment, I can't think of what changes/improvements it might have that would be sufficient to wean me off the K3. However, different people have different photographic needs. And shiny new things can be a powerful lure that overcomes mere reason...

Steve

Very good.

Interesting (to me at least!) is that with the first I see trees as the subject with sky in a supporting role, with the second it's sky as the subject with trees in a supporting role. Not sure why. Is there a psychologist in the house???

Steve

Prison uniform appears to have changed a lot since the days of 'Porridge'...

Steve