Is it possible that the printer machine / operator is applying automatic noise reduction to your files? In the theatre shots I imagine there would be some very dark blacks, so targeted noise reduction could easily be applied to the shadow areas without having an adverse effect on sharpness of other parts of the images.

Online printing services offer their 'Image Enhancements' procesing, by default often, and if you have carried out your own PP then you can deselect this. Maybe this occurs in the print shop as well.

I use an Epson flatbed scanner, and the software has settings to reduce grain - I think they call it 'Ice' technology. But I have generally found scans of negs to reproduce and emphasise films grain, sometimes to nice effect, if only because its different to our digital images. But the price is paid in extra softness, and then its a losing battle as compensating sharpening starts to degrade the quality.

Oh no, have I committed a cardinal sin - I used the term 'evaluative metering', and I realise thats now ingrained from years of reading EOS magazine. please forgive. I'm trying to remember the Pentax equivalant, something like 77-zone ....? In any case, whatever its called it must be much better.

Obviously it is not going to be practical all the time to take these custom readings, with or without ExpoDiscs or grey cards - its not lazy, just the reality of shooting in the real world. So its good practice then to try and choose the closest preset available, althought it sounds like we need to understand a bit about the processes the camera is applying when reading the temperature.

This custom menu C2 setting is clearly important - I understand that (as John was advocating) setting it to 'fixed' - that is no variation from the preset K value - will prevent any shifting of the range to compensate for strong tones (sunset etc).

Maybe this is the best way to use the camera, at least to gain consistency between shots. The problem we all have with these highly automated camera features is not knowing the extent of their effects and under what circumstances they are applied (like the under the trees example above). This is equivalant to the problem of using evaluative metering and not knowing what 'compensations' have already been factored in to the EV set by the camera.

My own experiment seemed to suggest that with the camera WB settings what you see is not necessarily what you get. I am thinking our human eyes are an amazing light interpretation tool - it was obvious that in the cool overcast shooting conditions (not uncommon here in England at present:cry what I saw as a pure white surface was seen by the camera as having plenty of blue tones which my eyes had apparently compensated for.

But the camera's compensation (this is when carrying out a custom white balance setting as described in the manual) was too much - I got a strong 'warm-up' filter effect, not what I wanted at all. I was trying to achieve the most realistic representation of the tones in the seen as my eyes saw it.

Interestingly, the effect I got from my custom setting was pretty much the same as another shot taken on Auto White Balance, so I guess in auto mode the camera is designed to find white tones and go from there, but thats not much good if there are radiating ambiant tones that are overiding the white object. This expo disc appears to provide the means to filter out these and give the camera the pure tone needed to accurately represent the scene.

My own issue with correcting WB in software is to do with the crossover between actual ambiant tone setting and just altering saturation levels of different parts of the 'colour wheel', which I sometimes feel is all that is actually happening.

I have been less than entirely happy with the amount of fine tuning needed to get White Balance just right, since I've starting shooting on my new K7. I guess that its a software issue as well, but I've become more commited to the pursuit of achieving perfect WB in camera.

To this end I experimented with the Manuel WB option, and then took a look at this interesting product, the ExpoDisc. link
I would love to hear anyone elses experiences with this - especially on Pentax gear. From my trials with manual settings on the camera I can see the issues and why you might need an extra helping hand. The Pentax manual instructs you to shoot at a white surface to set the manual WB - I tried this on an overcast day with a pure white windowsill in front of me. The foliage outside was a rather cool unsaturated greeny tone.

But the white windowsill looked pure white to me. After setting the WB using this surface of white, I took the shot with the newly programmed setting - imagine my surprise to see a scene of very warm tones appear, more like a shade WB setting, or a warmup filter.

Then I realised, this is what these Expo guys have been saying - the camera is detecting all the cool light around, and compensating to try and achieve pure white, in this case by adding warmer tones. The result of my attempt at manual and acurate white balence was not accurate at all!

So this ExpoDisc with its 18% grey reproduction, removing any ambiant cast, looks very intriqing. Does anyone think this could be worth the £50 or so?

No I didn't, I had it in 'about me', and as you can see its now there on display in all its glory. Thanks very much, sorry didn't notice that signature box.

Hello, I'm not totally new here, just a little bit new. I have seen that many members have a list of their camera gear, or maybe a little quote, displayed underneath their posts blow a line. I want to do this also, but can't see how to. I've entered the info into 'my profile' but it doesn't appear beneath any of my posts. Can any of the team help please?

OK, so what you see on the LCD would be what you get when you copy it over to a computer or print it directly from the card. Then our beginners would be well advised to try out the various parameters, choosing settings they like for each different subject - although I'm getting back onto shaky terrain here when we think about preconceived ideas as to what should be set for 'landscape', 'portrait' etc.

Interestingly, even with my K7 set to DNG only, the adjustment parameters still give their effects on the LCD display following the shot, or during a digital preview (more on this later). I think this is being applied only to the JPEG preview used to produce the LCD image - these settings wouldn't transfer over to the RAW file directly.

I think its actually very hard to know exactly what an unprocessed RAW image really looks like - most RAW converters I've used have a number of presets for each key setting (contrast, brightness, black / white point etc) that is specific to each cameras RAW output. Most like ACR apply this arbitrarily, then its up to the user to further adjust each slider for each specific image.

Another approach is adopted by my favourite RAW converterr, Sagelight 4, in that it doesn't contain actual camera-specific presets, but rather actually analyses every photo individually and provides an initial default setting. I must say I find that it does a remarkably good job at this. For every shot it opens it provedes a very acceptable starting point for further adjustment. So with all this pre adjustment going on it would be hard for a beginner to know what the shot really looked like originally anyway!

Finally - I know this has gone on - lets remember that our wonderful Pentax DSLRs have a great 'Digital Preview' function. This will make the camera do everything in taking the shot except actually writing it to the card, so you can see exactly what all the settings will do to your picture. To do this you use the third position on the on/off switch, it looks like a lenses aperture blades. You need to make a change in the menu first - the default is for this third position on the switch to activate DOF preview (lets leave that), but once set to 'digital preview' moving the on/off switch to this position will take the shot and 'Preview' it on the rear LCD. It'll say there until you activate the shutter button or press menu or something else.

Nigel

Yes, exactly, its all about the extent you are actually going to go to. It may not be the right frame of mind to adopt when pursuing a creative activity, but I suspect a lot of new users of DSLRs will be rather cautious when playing around, worrying about messing things up and making 'mistakes', so they will be unlikely to end up at the extremes of anything.

This is proably a human characteristac (failing)?, being cautious when faced with new technology. My earlier advice to the OP was specifically about how to get his Pentax camera to help him. I talked about using the dark / bright area warnings for example - I felt histograms again might be 'a bit too fast too soon'. I wonder if others have any thoughts on these ideas for using a Pentax specifically?

I was wondering about your ideas of making adjustments using the contrast / brightness / vibrant parameters etc. Sorry, I'm still in Canon woorld with this - they call these 'picture styles' I think - whats the Pentax term? But thinking about ou beginner again - these parameters are only applied to JPEGs I think. I'm wondering what the default setup is on a new Pentax DSLR - I can't remember on mine, I just set it to DNG straight away. But if it defaults to RAW would our beginner see any effect from making these parameter changes?

I would also say that I appreciate the points on artistic matters being made, but as far as learning camera control and achieving your desired specific effects, I don't believe for most people this will just come from no knowledge whatsover simple by shooting and changing things and shooting again.

For example, smeggypants mentioned experimenting with aperture and letting in more light. But the reality for most beginners is that the camera would be set to an automatic exposure mode, and their changes to aperture would only result in corresponding shutter speed adjustments, so they would see no difference at all on their LCDs and probably just end up wondering whats the point of all those dials and buttons.

To take the necessary control they would have to be prompted into manual mode, and for this most of us proably got the ideas from a book, or technical advice from another photographer. Most standard kit zooms won't show much difference in depth of field even at the extremes, so again the effects would often be lost on a beginner.Again, they would need some guidance and prompting on the value of trying a longer lense or one with wider apertures to appreciate the value of it.