These are great - excellent sharp focusing and depth of field effect. I'd agree with Fletcher8 above about a different background - something without a texture or pattern would be better. Also, whilst the exposures are good, there's quite a bit of reflective glare on the shiny parts which prevent the detail coming through (like on the small stones on the 2nd one). Maybe a diffused light source (like through a reflector) would soften this.

But they're very effective, especially with that pin-sharp focus .

I like them all ... Very well observed and exposures and processing all most effective. The security camera one will reward a lot of different angles. I'd play a bit with the white balance on the arcade ... Maybe its accurate, but the greeny hue doesn't work too well on a photo I feel.

Look forward to seeing many more like this Alan.

Very good Jules, love the light and viewpoints here. The grad has certainly done its stuff there. I think the balance is right on the first one - but on the the other two it looks like the filter has covered the whole lot ... They look a bit underexposed to me, even 0.5 to 0.7 of a stop more on the ground would do it.

You're right, this can be a bit of a minefield, but its fun to get into and experiment. Our k3 user manual has come in for some stick as to its level of detail and coverage, so I'm not surprised there are plenty of questions to ask.

DVD or bluray are great ways to display videos ... There are two methods available for DVD player use ... 1. Use a DVD creation programme to burn a formatted disc with menus and titles like a commercial dvd,or ... 2. Burn the files,like your avc one, directly to the disc. This 2nd option will only play on a limited range of machines, but if its a bluray player then you can see it in full hd ... You can't with standard DVD players.

Good luck with your video work ... Would be great to hear how it goes and what settings, formats etc you find work best.

Its the reason I've always found the k7 video files a breeze to work with, as they are largely uncompressed .AVI

But your system and software has an impact as well ... I've recently upgraded Sony movie studio to the latest version 13, which works in 64bit. Now its able to use the full 8gb ram on my computer and wow, what a difference! Working and scrolling around a project is super smooth now. So this will benefit k3 users significantly ... If you can try and get a 64bit version of your software if your os is also 64bit.

Its very effective Alistair The technique works well with this subject - I can't see and significant distortions - perhaps a bit of barreling across the middle. I would try and even out the sky exposure a bit left to right using some sort of graduated filter effect.

There you go cambuff92 - just check ya manual and do a few tests to figure it out - job sorted But that does your question some disservice I feel ... Its a good question, and very relevant here for us Pentax people - and it applies equally to all our other video shooting models. I like to widen up the discussion as things can then apply to other people and situations.

My main point about choice in shooting and editing software settings is that what is optimum depends on the various factors I've been talking about - display device size, the bitrate and file size relationship (which is dependent on your intended use, say internet upload, DVD player or high quality archiving). It makes sense when starting an editing project to try a match your project properties (the settings that the final output will be) as close as possible to your camera video files - so again, the output templates of your software will be a factor in the shooting settings choices.

You're right, the sky does have a kind of 'ND Filtered' look to it, but it doesn't really work well IMO - the issue is that the brightness has been reduced equally on all tonal ranges on the sky, bringing the shadows under the clouds down too much. And the bright cloud highlights are still blown.

Is this a camera applied effect MrB? Its interesting to see how it works on a 'stock' image like this - but I think ultimately separate PP work on a selected sky, bringing down the whitepoint and reducing the DR general in the sky generally, would be the best approach here, ie with just a single exposure to work with.

That's a valid definition - but like all definitions, for it to have practical meaning there has to be a common understanding of both the 'dimensions' & scope involved, as well as the actual purpose & application for each option.

It would be interesting to see the specs for the K3 video outputs, or for the OP to shoot some clips at each setting and look at the file properties to see the dimensions. He asked about respective quality, which is display-dependent really - I mean, higher is better for larger screens. But other factors are involved also such as the bitrate - usually expressed in magabits per second (mbps). The K7 rattles off about 41,000 of these which contributes to its very large video file sizes in the low-compression .avi format. But the K3 addresses this with the .mov AVC format (higher compression). It would be interesting to know the bit rates at each quality setting.

The higher bitrates translate into smoother motion and flow with a file size price to pay - its a smoothness/size equation.

So to answer the original question - choose the larger dimensions option for large screen display, the smaller if its just for computer screens or internet maybe, and the bitrate (if they vary) depending on the file size you can tolerate and smoothness needed.

It is a tricky one these definitions. I believe that 'HD' such as 1080x720 is best known as 'HD Lite' as shot by many consumer camcorders in the AVCHD format - these would have smaller sensors than your K3. 'Full HD', or better still 'HD' would be 1440x1080 or 1920x1440 - the difference is in the pixel ratios, not the effective resolution ... the former is with rectangular pixels and the latter square. Quality-wise they are equivilent all else being equal - I think the rectangular ratio was tradionally for PAL tvs, square NTSC.

The 'native' dimenions of your K3 files probably won't match up to these figures exactly - the K7 doesn't, shooting at 1556x1280 I think (which is 'Full HD' ), but the exact figures depend on the individual sensor size.

Anyway, with HD widescreen TVs today, 'HD Lite' will not fill the screen 'natively' - but systems these day stretch it out anyway with minimal distortion. But if you intend to output your video into a format that will be viewed on a large modern flatpanel TV, then I would definately shoot in 'FULL HD' mode (the higher number you have available), and use a video editor that can match the dimensions of the clips as closely as possible with its output files.

For computer monitor applications then my 'HD Lite' will be adequate.