A well known spot here in the hills near Dorking. Got a few from the top a couple of weeks ago and tried a few different approaches.

All with the K7 and Pentax 'M' 75-150 f4.



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Thanks for checking them out and for all thoughts.

Well I've no idea what it might be that would divert you with that for any time at all - , two bored looking women and the room looks more like a funeral directors than a cafe! Most of it looks OOF as well, and the glaring blown out window is just ... well, ... its blown out!

Apart from that one I do like the compositions and framings of the others, but apart from the first stranger portrait the rest all exceed the available DR and there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to sieze some control over the ends of the histogram.

Alastair, didn't you read the new digital rule that you have to shoot HDR inside churches now?

Michael, yes I'm sure there are ways to improve the initial view of the gallery. One problem is the way that images quickly vanish onto the 'underneath' pages, and you have to click through to see them, so for someone just having a quick glance you just see the current most recent selection.

Perhaps a few larger windows with a slideshow each of different categories, going back through the whole day. So you'd have one landscape, one wildlife, one architecture window etc, each cycling (say 7 seconds each) the days photos from that category. You could sit back and watch for a while - see one you like and a click on it could open it full-size on a new tab. You can look at it more closely, comment, close the tab and go back to the slideshow overview page again.

At least this way everyones images would get a fair crack at it and be seen a better size initially.

One of the biggest Pentax things to get excited about lately has been the new digital 645, an amazing new camera which successfully integrates medium format aspects with some of the latest and greatest DSLR developments as found on the K3. This creates a more all-round usable camera (perhaps not quite truely 'hand-holdable' but easier to handle and more responsive) and all with the large sensor quality.

Sadly though it seems to have mostly passed us by here - not much talking about it, and I don't recall seeing anyones images either? Is it the case that it is unmarketable to enthusiests? I presume those professional users who have them are far too busy making money out of it to get involved in forum discussions?

Thanks for that info Fletcher8. I was thinking of trying one just as a normal flashgun to start with, with a view to adding another 1 or 2 to start a little system and learn about studio-type lighting more. It looks like they can attach to a stand easily.

But would I be losing much without P-TTL? Would I be right in assuming the Cactus gun would have a sensor for determining correct flash exposure, similar to the older Pentax types before TTL was introduced? I like manual flash working but I'd like the gun to help me. I wonder if it will give you correct distance and/or power settings if you input aperture & iso? The online info I've seen doesn't offer any detail about this sort of standard flash control - mostly it talks about the radio transmitter and slave control features. I'll have to find a manual online.

Also I'm assuming there's no data link to the camera, only flash triggering,so you'd need to dial in the settings presumably. .... update - just found the PDF manual online, so a bit of reading to do!

Its a very good job Andrew, well balanced but with plenty of deep shadow retained, and of course I would agree that the HDR was the right approach! (Don't you think my K7 could have done it in one shot? )

The brightness on the glass is ideal for full detail - if anything the result is almost too 'perfect' ... i'd expect in reality to see a few brighter almost burnt out whites there (assuming daylight outside), so I'd nudge the whitepoint upwards a bit just on the glass areas, just to add a little reality.

The stonework brightness tone is great, very true to life. I would prefer a little less red/yellow saturation there, just to bring back more grey, it looks a bit tungsten but there's no light source apparent for that. And finally I think it could do with some more sharpening or other micro-detailing work to give a little more sizzle.

How did we ever reproduce church interiors before HDR?

The gallery suffers from its thumbnail-style presentation. Only a certain type of image will stand out and attract instant attention at the thumbnail size - this tends to be simpler, graphic type images with bold colours, or mono. Highly detailed images that might look superb large, and in proper viewing software, may not have much impact as they sit on the gallery page and get quickly scanned by viewers.

I am guilty of not spending much time in the gallery, and I often feel bad for missing images by people I know. I have limited time for it though, and I prioritise the forum because I like the debate, technical & artistic discussions on images and especially talk of Pentax camera operations and image processing matters - thats all my sort of thing!

I think theres a bit of a plateau been reached at the moment for Pentax -over the 2-3 years I've been around the big things have been the K5II / s and all the debate about the aa filter, then the K3 and talk of sensor resolutions, and of course all the time in the background the constant resurfacing of the full-frame desires. This seems to have settled as we have to accept the situation for now. The cycle of development will pick up again and that will kickstart more discussion as people make their wishlists again.

The K7 keeps going strong - its metering has always been good and the model is a great performer in so many ways

The kids provide the K7 with a good workout most weekends and more so on holidays - keeping them still for those formal shots is the real challenge

As has been noted by others, the fill-flash exposure on the subjects is quite good, it has given me what I call correct exposure of the 'key tones'. Without it then the subjects would have been in the shadow zones.

I don't think it matters what software we use, Adobe or any other - it is not ideal to be pulling key-tones in a shot around much, that is the area of the image that you want to expose for most accurately.

I agree with you that, in an ideal scenario it would have been preferable to have got the bright sky exposed less (ie with a faster shutter speed), but I don't agree that the price to pay should be an underexposed subject & key tone. My ideal would have been to have had a flashgun and used HSS, but I didn't have one.

The 'effects' caused by the flash and the processing on the background seem to have been well liked, and I find it different and gives the shot an extra element.

There are good alternatives to Adobe products, and uses of Adobe are missing out just as much There will always be pros & cons to each programme. The interface and controllability can be just as important as the actual processing algorithms, in that well designed adjustment operations will allow users to get more out of their images with less effort.

My prefered RAW 'developer' now is Sagelight 4.0, quite an extraordinary piece of code, designed very much with the user in mind. We all like to promote those things we use and enjoy, but in many ways the success and ultimate potential of each competing software is mainly down to each users personal level of skill and experience.

Just send me another one of your RAW files David, then lets see if my software arsenal can make it less blue! That should kick start things!