Gimmee One'a Dem - Part Three - The Pentax K-70

Your mate who is buying their first DSLR as a kit camera may have heard of the Pentax name some years ago in the film era. It was hard to find a camera club, school, or group of enthusiasts in which a Pentax 35mm camera was not in use. That may have eased off a little in recent years - and I am not going to fire up speculation about why - but there is no reason why you should not set your friend out to look at the Pentax K-70 kit.

Note that the pictures of the cameras this week show the boxes they come in. Not just to make use of the designer's art - this is to give the purchaser some idea of the size of the packaging that these kits require. You'll see that the Canon and Pentax offerings come in one box while the Nikon camera is separated from the lens. Makes no difference? Well, consider how much extra trouble it would be to haul that camera box through the airport, airplane, customs, hotel, etc if you were required to take it with you everywhere on your holiday...

Hint: If you buy the camera kit here in Perth a week before you go on the airplane you DON'T have to take the blessed boxes with you. More space for duty free.

Okay, back to the camera body. It seems heavier than the Canon, though the lens is just as light. The mounting of the lens requires more force and makes more whizz-click noises but once it is on you need do no more. Remember that we encouraged you to get your mate to leave it undisturbed for the duration of the trip to avoid dust leakage into the mirror box.

The Pentax is also a swing-screen camera and as such does not put any control buttons down the left-hand side of the back. Some find this a help - some not. No southpaws are really catered for by the camera makers anyway so maybe it is just academic. The physical size of the Pentax and the shape of the hand hold mean that you do get a solid grip on the camera.

As your mate's mentor you are going to faced with a challenge - there are a lot of control options in the menu of a Pentax that are highlighted with interesting descriptions. They are tempting and will beckon to those who are attracted to bright colours. Once onto that pathway, your friend may customise their way to the point where the camera thinks that it is Salvador Dali and starts to make art instead of images. Teach them about the "reset " button that returns it to the factory formula and show them how to get out of trouble.

 Note that with the Pentax as well as any other camera, you are going to have to remind them to charge the battery and insert a memory card - and make sure that the memory card does not have the lock slider pushed down. If it does, the camera will neither format the card nor take a picture. You might think it is broken straight out of the box but the truth is it is just waiting for a sensible command from you. ( Don't ask me how I know this... ). Battery charging is about 90 minutes for these cameras so you can also do your mate a favour if you tell them to get an extra battery..

An electrical aside...the Canon, Pentax, and Nikon batteries for this week's cameras are all about the same size and weight. The casual user who looks at their images on the back screen or uses a lot of Live View might get  250-300 shots from a charge. At least all the cameras have a positive on/off switch and are unlikely to be left discharging the battery when they are put back in the case.

The other danger that the novice runs is the wonderful feature that Pentax put on the LHS of the camera - a dedicated RAW button that means you can crank in a RAW shot in the middle of a JPEG series. This is great for you but may lead to frustration for your friend if they hit it unknowingly. At the least sign of a developing photo enthusiasm, of course, you can turn them on to RAW processing, but be ready to have them change their image editing program if it cannot keep up.

Okay, be prepared to sort a lot of things out photographically when they get back from Thailand or Bali but hope that the automatic setting will have been in operation most of the time.

You have the backup of Camera Electronic and the Pentax importers if you buy it here and remember that they really do back their warranties.

Photo Live Expo 2016 - The Thing You Didn't Know...

Psssst....C'mere....Wanna see what I got...?

I'll bet you thought this weblog post was going to show you something rude. Or secret. And you kept right on reading...

You kept on reading because you are naturally curious. We all are, and unless we are cats it is a good thing. Curiosity leads us to enquiry...and enquiry leads us to knowledge. And knowledge leads us to wisdom. And wisdom sits at home a plays with the cat.

Actually, at our house, wisdom stands holding the door open while the cat decides whether to go in or out...

So what should you do when you come to Photo Live Expo 2016 at the Perth Novotel Langley on the 24th of July - what should your curiosity lead you to? Let me suggest that it leads you to three places:

1. A lecture room for a subject that you are really interested in. Pet photography? Drone photography? Go for it. And there are lots of others available for a pre booking ticket (or maybe buy one on the day...but remember they book out sometimes...). You'll get the latest gen from someone who is an expert in the field.

2. A different lecture room. Choose a subject that you have NEVER DONE BEFORE. What if you don't like it? What if you do...?  Scary stuff, eh?

Consider - if you have never pursued a topic in photography before, you have no pre-conceptions - no mis-conceptions - you may very well have the best eyes and ears in the hall to learn about the subject. If it is all new it is ALL NEW! How many times in your life have you had something all new...for the price of a pint of beer? I mean besides the pint of beer*.

You may be brilliant at it. You may have the gear already to make wonderful images in the special subject. Or you may be able to add a simple lens or accessory or lorry-load of gear to do it. You don't know yet.

Go. Go into that lecture with a cheery heart and a cup of hotel coffee and a biscuit and enjoy yourself.

3.The trade tables. The staff are there to help you entice yourself into purchasing new equipment - you might not do it on the day, but you can if you want to - there will be show specials, after all - there always are. But you can have a feel, play, shoot, think, and talk all day if you've a mind to.

Wise photographers with a specific want will be bringing their cameras down with them to try out the new lenses and accessories. Oddly enough, some very wise photographers will be doing a variation of that - they will be bringing their lenses with them to try out new bodies.

Note: If you think to do this, do the right thing and clean your lens thoroughly, front and back, before you ask to try it on a shop body. People forget that the lens mounts and back elements of their lenses may contain a great deal of dust...

And if you are really set to be analytical, you can bring some cards with you to format in the shop bodies, and then take home images that you can peer into on your home computer. Be aware that new cameras frequently have new RAW data protocols and your image-editing software may or may not be able to open the files. if you are in doubt, look it up on the net before the day and possibly update your firmware. In any case JPEGs open nearly every where and if the camera you are interested in pumps out a DNG you're fine anyway.

If you go away with new information on an old interest, or new information on a new interest, or definite information on a new purchase - you will have had a fine Sunday.

Note to Seniors: If you have a Seniors card you get free bus and train travel into the city on Sunday the 24th of July and you can spend the savings on a lecture ticket!

* Few people want pints of beer when they are used...

The Two Card Shuffle

Or " How I Learned To Save My Hide ".

Many modern cameras come with two memory card slots incorporated in the body. This is no mean feat in some cases - if you are going to use the larger CF-style card it has a certain bulk and the volume of the rack into which it slides uses up a fair bit of the inside of the camera. Were you to design a camera with two CF card slots it would need be a larger body...and by and large the ones that do, are. These can be viewed as professional devices and professionals carry heavier weights.

Then there are cameras that have a hybrid style - they have a CF slot for that size and an SD slot for the smaller -sized SD, SDHC, and SDXC cards. In some cases I think that the designers might have started with one of the larger bodies and just used what was a CF bay plugged up for SD. No real overall reduction in body size.

Finally, we have the cameras what have two SD slots - and here the rack structure can be smaller and they can fit in with smaller body sizes. This can be a real selling point if people are trying to reduce bulk and weight in what they carry or if they have smaller hands. I often think a number of cameras have succeeded or failed on their body feel without the prospective buyers really being able to say why they liked them or disliked them.

But two cards - what do you do with two cards? You confuse yourself, if you're not careful, but you save yourself grief if you are clever. Two cards can:

a. Record the exact same thing in exactly the same way. Two RAW images or two JPEG images at the same time.  If you do not trust that one card will do it, or know that you wish to put one card away physically for safe storage while the other one is re-used. Or if you know that one would be confiscated by the border police...

b. Record the image in RAW on one and JPEG on the other. This is the case where some cameras have the second slot for a much more faster card. It means that your camera might be able to cram things into the two slots - SD for JPEG and XQD or some other fast card for the RAW - and get an overall faster firing rate than trying to put both file types into one card. If you need speed you do strange things.

c. Record video on one and reserve the other for stills.

d. Record in sequence. All the previous options have been predicated upon parallel recording - if you elect to make it serial, you can carry twice the memory capacity in your camera. This is a matter for philosophical debate if you are trying to cram an entire trip onto only the memory cards in one camera, but becomes a matter of technical necessity if you have a camera that is going to be posted up somewhere to record time lapse work for a long time and need a lot of memory.

It will pay any photographer who gets a new camera with dual slots to sit down and read the factory manual about the numbering and distribution of the files. Indeed, if there is an aftermarket book - like the Rocky Nook series by Rico Pfirstinger who deals with Fujifilm cameras - that can also be a wise purchase. There are lots of options in what you do to the files that can make a difference to how easy they are to work with in the future.

I recently opted to do the wrong thing, after years of doing the right thing, and ended up shooting a fresh job with image numbers that duplicated earlier numbers - I must have poked the wrong setting while camera fiddling. It means that unless I renumber the new job I encounter occasions when the computer can't decide which of the two identical numbers I want and stops until I decide.

Note: the new Pentax K-1 has dual slots for SD-size cards as does the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and the designers have in both cases been wise enough to put the compartment for these around on the right side of the camera. In practical terms this means that if the cameras are locked onto tripods and need a card change, you can do it without unbolting the whole darn thing. This is no small advantage  - I wish I had it.

Hold High The Multiple Standards, They Must Not Suffer Loss...

I am always amazed when I note that the manufacturers of regular flash-light batteries  managed to make AAA, AA, C, and D cells and by and large the products of any particular maker are fairly similar to the same class from another factory. Of course there can be a variation in the supplies - some have lots of electricity and some don't - also some leak and some don't. But generally an AA cell will fit in an AA holder no matter who made it.

Not so for Li-ion batteries. Each maker seems to have a different shape or size, and not just different from other firms - different from themslves. It is a rare and welcome thing for the developing line of new cameras to contain the same battery three years in a row.

A nightmare for the user? For the stockist? Wait until you consider what those batteries do inside the cameras...

The jpeg is pretty universal for most cameras. Take a jpeg and everything can read it from the storage device and show it on a screen. But there are limitations - even with the best jpeg cameras in the world, you can sometimes exceed the capabilities. RAW files are what you need. And then away you go on the chicken chase again as you try to get your new camera's files to open in your old computer program. Or find an update. Or find a new program. Or take to drink.

Some manufacturers have tried to institute a DNG file that will be universal but then lots of their competitors have not taken them up on it. Indeed sometimes there are computer crashes and problems but then that is one of the  mysteries of the occident.

Occidents will happen...

Ya Not Wrong, Narelle...

Do you suppose that whenever someone browses onto the Arnott's, Unibic, or General Foods websites they get cookies? Something to chew over...

Likewise when we go to the rumours ( or rumors) sites that deal with the different camera makers or onto the innumerable forums that deal with angry photographers abusing each other over internet rumours...are we marked for all time in the great register of the JCII? And will we remove our JCII stickers or leave them on*.

You can tell it's Friday again and the blog writer is casting about for a topic. He's avoiding thinking about the pile of computer work that is sitting on the Drobo at home - material from the latest hot rod car shows that needs to be attended to.

Fortunately he took advantage of the Fujifilm Rumors site to read up a number of pieces of advice from Rico Pfirstinger - he's the Fujifilm X-pert for their X-series cameras. The things he writes are short, but he illustrates the concepts with examples from his Fujifilm cameras and if you follow the series they can be quite enlightening.

Intrigued with his style of writing, i went o Boffins Book Stor in Willaims stret last year and purchased one of his books on getting the best out of the X=Pro1 and X-E1 camera. Then I got an older issue from Amazon that he had written on the X-100 camera. And not to miss out on the electronic revolution, I managed to purchase and download one of his E-books of hits and tips for the X-E2. ( Note that I did this all by myself without needing guidance from the family computer experts. It was successful and only started one small fire...)

This plethora of advice obviously contains some duplication - as the X-series cameras share many features and some ideas have developed onwards from the early models. Also each of the X cameras has had some form of firmware upgrade and I have applied these as they became available - a practise that I firmly endorse. But each book has had specific advice for the model featured, and I have benefitted downstream from it.

Specifically, Pfirstinger has convinced me to record many of the events that I cover with a small 2:3 jpeg as well as the raw RAF. file. This is necessary when using the X-E2 and the X-pro1 as their RAF. configuration does not open in my Aperture or Photoshop Elements programs directly. For these I use the jpegs as sighting rifles for the Silkypix Studio Developer 6 program. The X-100 RAF. files do open in ACR Raw and Aperture but that is just a bonus.

Readers who use different software on their different hardware may point out that all this seeming confusion could be resolved with a newer computer and new programs - I shall be glad to do this as soon as they send me the money required. I promise to be suitable grateful. Until then the Silkypix DS6 route is actually quite a lot of fun...if a little slower.

One big advantage for the little jpeg/RAF. settings - occasionally the lighting, atmospherics, paint jobs, and people are just perfect in the small jpeg. This is particularly noticeable with Fujifilm X cameras with the way the X-Trans sensor renders colour. If this is the case, I can use the jpegs directly for my purposes and save them to the Drobo - and remove the much larger RAF. files. Of course, if I got it wrong or changed my mind as to the rendition I wished to make, the RAF. is the great saver.

So - there's Friday. Pfirstinger is a good writer and you can follow his train of thought readily. Recommended.

* Older photographers will know exactly what the JCII sticker is...

Kodachrome III At The Car Show

Those of you who are feeling the chill of winter settling into your bones would be well advised to visit the Swan Valley on any Sunday in January. The open areas, the reflective grass, and he lack of wind will serve to concentrate the heat for you. Should you be out in the direct rays of the sun at 12:00 you will get the full benefit. As it was, yesterday the mad dogs and the Englishmen were sitting in the shade with cold drinks while the rest of us - the car enthusiasts - strode manfully round the paddocks and fried.

In my case it was all science - I was trying out the new Classic Chrome jpeg setting in my Fujifilm X-E2 camera and seeing if I could get the camera and the Fujifilm EF 42 flash to adequately cope with the contrast glare. Those of you who follow this  shop blog or my own " Here All Week" blog at hrhoa.wordpress.com will know that the Fujifilm X-100 cameras and the EF 42 flash are well able to do the mid-day shoots, but this time it was the turn of the X-E2.

The Classic Chrome was a gift from Fujifilm in a Cristmas-time firmware upgrade. Together with interval shooting and control from my iPad ( Which works quite well.) it is an addition to the insides that you can put in yourself.

Classic Chrome? Well, they already have some film-simulation settings in all their cameras that replicate Fujifilm transparency films pretty well - Provia, Velvia, and Astia are in there if you look for them. I don't think they are going to say the K word for legal reasons, but quite frankly that is the look that is coming out of this setting - and I am prepared to cheer them on.

I have decades of Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides in my library - as well as Ansco, Ward, Sears, Agfa, Ferrania, and Perutz films. Some started out well but have gone all manky - the Agfa are worst for fugitive dies. Some started out horrible and have stayed that way - Ansco and Ferrania come to mind. Some have started out well and remain so to this day - The Kodachrome slides are still colourful and accurate. Surprisingly, so are the cheapies I got from Montgomery Ward in the 1960's - Pure luck, I suppose.

Point is, I have direct examples to compare the new files to. I think that Fujifilm have done us a signal service in this upgrade as it means that we can recreate the 60's look digitally.

I am not saying it is the most accurate look at colour - it never was. It deals with contrast differently than standard digital outputs. Colours can be muted in some segments of the spectrum, and intense in others. Shadows can be well handled but some highlights can blow - well, that is what what Kodachrome did and what everything does in the Swan Valley on a summer Sunday. No cloud + white car tops + chrome bumpers = blowout. Boom. If you want to avoid this bring your own cumulo nimbus and park it over Midland.

Into retro? Try Classic Chrome. I love it - I love it a lot.

The Panic Button

We've all seen the cat that sits on the curb as you round the corner - and waits until you drive halfway down the street - then darts out in front of you, heading for the other side. This is fun for Tabby in the middle of the day but gets serious at dusk. Cats are gamblers.

So are people - the elderly woman who did precisely the same thing as I drove to work this morning is a case in point. She stood at the edge of the road watching me approach, braced herself, then gently jogged across in front of my Suzuki as drove by. Fortunately I dodged and missed her. I did not wind the window down and scream imprecations at her. Not that I did not want to - but it would have been pointless - I don't speak Cantonese and I doubt if she understands Canadian.

Well...I have seen photographers indulge in the digital form of this behaviour. At a party I watched one dear lady change the settings for her Nikon camera and flash so many times that the internal computers of the two devices had no idea what to do. As she didn't either, the resulting images reflected the fact. She slipped rapidly from party mode to panic mode - in the end she would have been better to put the camera down and pick up a wine glass.

She needn't have despaired, and neither should you, if you are using a Nikon or Canon outfit. Both companies have realised that with the proliferation of settings and controls on digital SLR cameras that people can take far more control than they can handle. Both companies have put panic switch set somewhere in or on the camera. You'll see the Nikon D7100 buttons in the illustrations. Canon have put a reset into the menus setting on the LCD screen.

To recover from wherever you have mistakenly gotten with your fiddling, just press both of the green buttons simultaneously and hold them down for a couple of seconds. The camera goes back to a good general purpose factory reset:

100ISO
jpeg
Large normal file
Auto white balance
Matrix metering

If you slip your Nikon flash to TTL BL you can cheerfully launch out and snap away with the assurance that something decent will obtain. It might not be perfect, but you will not finish under the wheels of my Suzuki.

I thoroughly endorse this idea, but I would go one further - two clicks on the rear control wheel will bring the quality setting to RAW - and this will give even greater safety in recovering images later on.

Of course, if the aspiring photographer would set the damn thing correctly for the job in hand....then NOT change the settings every time they chimp the screen...none of the panic would arise. And they could devote more time to the chardonnay and the cheese balls.

Settin' By The Roadside...With Fuji

Settin' by the roadside on a summer's day.
Chattin' with my daughter, passin' time away.
 Lyin' in the shadows underneath the trees.
Goodness how delicious - jpegs are for me!

Apologies the Georgia militia - and the peanut industry. But I am really pleased to be able to report that the humble jpeg has come back into fashion - at least with the right camera and the right situation.

I went to the Hot Rod Show this year but as it was in Melbourne, I didn't fancy taking the entire Nikon D300 outfit with the extra Sigma lens and the flash unit - it is great gear and I have used it at our local shows with entire satisfaction but it has a weight and size penalty. As a traveller I want to go light and easy.

So I took the Fuji X-10 with me. I was new to the camera but not so new to photography that I made the mistake of trying to buy it duty free and learn how to use it on the plane. I got it a couple of weeks prior to the trip and figured out which settings I needed. At the time, there was no RAW support for this camera with the Photoshop Elements program I favoured - so I decided to set it on the largest fine jpeg setting available and resigned myself to just taking "record snaps" of the trip.

The operation of the camera seemed to be very easy and the screen displays at the back looked good, but it was not until I got home and whacked it onto the iMac that I could see that they were very good indeed. Even fresh on the plate with no extra fiddling, they looked like what I had seen on the ground, and more important, what I wanted to see. I had planned the finished results as my standard 9" x 6" print on A4 paper and the Fuji files are perfect for this.

Note to anyone wishing to use this camera or the fancier Fuji X-Pro1 or X-E1- Adobe and Apple now can decode the RAW information so if you want to go that route, by all means try it. I am willing to bet that the RAW and the jpeg results from the X-10 will be just about the same. On that basis, I am going to continue to set the X-10 on large fine jpeg for future trips.

Please also note that I generally don't advise people to use jpeg for some purposes here in Perth - specifically if asked about wedding shoots. I always advise people who have RAW on their cameras to resort to it - and then to make sure that they have the downstream processing power in their program of choice to break it open and present it for adjustment. In most cases the camera systems and computer systems will deal with a lot of the things better when the images have that one extra step.

Not to let too many cats out of the bag, RAW can cover a multitude of sins. I am not advocating sinning as a general sport, but occasionally I find myself making regrettable errors and it is nice to have a safety net. Yesterday I covered a wedding and as it was a bright morning the white balance on the camera could be safely set to "daylight". Then clouds came over and the wedding party moved under trees and the white balance was a bit better in the "shade " setting. All well and good, but when the guests and the sun came out again guess who forgot to re-set the white balance...Fortunately only for a dozen shots, and later on the recovery of that white balance was easily done in the RAW section of the computer program. Had I been shooting in jpeg there I would still have tried to recover the white balance but it would have been death to the skin tones and textures.

Please continue to use RAW with studio portraits and product shots. Also please continue to do custom white balances and shoot Macbeth cards and look at your results on a calibrated monitor when you haven't been drinking. But when you can afford to be light and cheerful, try jpeg.

PS: I figured out what pictograms mean on the camera. See the picture at the top of the blog - that's a 2011 Ford with the "retro" button pushed in hard.