Forget About High ISO On K5

[barondla]

 Ron, thanks for all the info. Always found the K10 "flat and grayish" compared to the DS and other Pentax DSLRs. Should have played with the K10 settings more. Shot it with the same settings as the DS- ISO200 & natural image setting with "sliders" centered. The DS clips like crazy on bright. Didn't even think to try the K10 there. Duh.

 Do use the Pentax Raw developer for all Pentax. Just convert to tiff and poke it into PS or Acdsee for everything else. Reversal film preset is great on overcast days. Should be able to open my K10 Raw files and select vivid. Can't fix the ISO200 part though.

 Sometimes I will set camera to multiple exposure and shoot 9 shots of static subjects. The amount of noise reduction is phenominal. You loose no sharpness either.

 Interested to see how your experiment turns out. Now I May be without an DSLR body to modify for IR.
thanks
barondla

[Ron Kruger]

I've found Natural mode to be "flat and grayish" on all cameras, and never use it. Since getting the K5 and PCDU4, I don't worry much about shooting mode or WB with any of my cameras, because it is so easy to adjust these and other aspects of RAW images in PP, and these auto-type adjustments are applied just as if the camera was set that way at time of capture. Every shot is a bit different, but it is very easy to run through the dozen or so shooting modes to compare the results and chose the mode parameters that best fit the exposure and lighting conditions.
My K10D is set to Vivid; my K20D to Landscape; and my K5 to Reversal Film. Although these three are what I settle upon most, with PCDU4, I'm not restricted to any of them and can apply any of the modes featured on the K5 to any Pentax RAW image from any camera. It's like one-stop shopping. A shooting mode is really just an in-camera JPEG processing mode designed by the manufacturers, who, believe it or not, know a lot more about all this than we. I think I like PCDU4 even more than I like the K5.
Now, it's not that I don't know much about PP. I've been at it a long time. I can take a RAW image into PS and spend a lot of time applying all the same parameters individually to get similar result, but the truth is, most of the time the end results aren't quite as good as one-click application in PCDU4, and the chance of overdoing something are great, so why spend all that time. Besides, from downloading and testing a large number of software programs, I've come to the conclusion that Adobe products are designed with Canon and Nikon in mind, with Pentax, Sony and so forth added like an afterthought. That's why you see so many posts on other sites about "designing a color profile" in PS for Pentax cameras. I tend to think the scientists at Pentax are better at that than me as well.
The longer I do this the more I tend to complicate the photography process and simplify the PP process. I get paid to take pictures, not process them, and the more time I spend in the field the better my chances of getting the composition and content that sells. Despite all the technological advances in digital technology, the main things that distinguish a good shot from the average are the same as always: exactly what you put into the frame and when you snap the shutter.
I realize a lot of people enjoy the PP process more than the photography process, and that's fine. I believe this generation could be described as the "computer game generation." Whatever you enjoy and feel most comfortable with. I'm just explaining where I'm comming from. Attached shot with K10D.

[Pacerr]

I agree with Ron on the use of the in-camera pre-sets. We discussed this at some length last year and two of the points I learned was that there are different incentives to use the pre-sets and different biases against using them that must be appreciated and overcome to use them effectively.

With no groceries at risk, my own biases fell squarely in the curmudgeon camp ( "Don't need no stinkin' icons to tell the difference between a mountain an' a flower!") and old habit patterns.

I confess to reading the equipment manuals (usually more than once) and as Ron said, the manufacture ain't so dumb as we often think. One exercise went a long way toward changing my attitude if not my habits.

After perusing the chapters on pre-sets, I wrote down those circumstances I use and set about listing everything I'd consider when setting up for a shot with, say, a Spotmatic including choice of film with all of its implications, filtering and WB, DoF, and metering and focus techniques, etc, etc.

It was interesting to discover how closely Pentax agreed with my (obviously superior!    ) opinions. Not only that, in most cases they'd even left me with more options to customize the pre-set parameters with the Function button. And, they even offered the opportunity to shoot RAW in case I wanted to change my mind later.

Now all I have to do is break the habit of shooting in Av and M modes and actually take advantage of the pre-sets. Seems odd that it takes more concentration on my part to use the auto functions than to just do it the 'old way'.

Unlike Ron, I enjoy messin' about in the "darkroom" and work flow inefficiency there doesn't affect my meal ticket. Given that experience is the best way to learn, and the digital darkroom can replicate most of the pre-shot choices after the fact, I find that I can learn a lot about exposure and filtration choices in post processing -- and much more efficiently than I used to in the field. When that post-shot experimentation contributes to the effectiveness of the pre-shot choices I make in the future, so much the better.

It's also been interesting to note how the increased capabilities of the K5 have seemed to cause Ron to (re)-explore the pre-sets for new advantages that suit his needs to be found there.

[Ron Kruger]

Thanks Hank. I still shoot most of the time in AV and M modes. Possibly I used the wrong termonology. The modes I was talking about are more processing modes, such as Bright, Natural, Portrait, Landscape, Vibrant, Muted, Bleach Bypass, Reversal Film and Monochrome, which can be set for time of capture, or changed in PCDU4. Additionally, there are 18 other picture processing modes available in PCDU4, such as Night Scene, Moving Object, Macro, Blue Sky, Surf and Snow, etc. that I have yet to utilize. I'm still learning, but so far I've found the main processing modes quite adaquate. PCDU4 is a very good software, and I recommend it to all, even if they don't buy a K5.

[Pacerr]

 The modes I was talking about are more processing modes,

Yeah, an' I'd intended to make a point of differentiating between the type of "modes" too as as an example of using the pre-set tools best suited to one's own use, but I got distracted by the dinner bell -- you know how that goes 'round here.  

But a question re DCU4 -- is it still limited to 8-bit output or have they enabled 16-bit mode now?

[Ron Kruger]

Yes, you can save to 16-bit TIFF, but the logic of it escapes me. This was once important for high-quality or very large reproductions, but the JPEG technology has advanced to a point where almost no one want's TIFFs any more, and messing with 80 MB files is an unnecessary hassle.

[Pacerr]

Well,  if you push or pull a curve in a color channel in 8-bit mode the adjustments are slotted into one of 256 steps instead of  65,536 steps and banding is more likely to occur. And if you spread the black and white points very much chasing shadow detail in Levels you begin to see gaps and spikes in the histogram when 256 steps doesn’t provide enough tonal ‘buckets’. This is an extreme example for the sake of illustration.



While I very rarely bother to use 16-bit TIFF mode today, I could see the difference in tonal quality and banding in solid colors/tones in extreme cases in JPGs.  Especially in B&W conversions

Yeah, I know. Get it right in the camera. But proper exposure doesn’t account for a lack of DR or we wouldn’t be exploring HDR today or chasin’ the ETTR rainbow.

[Ron Kruger]

I have a very good fix for anything needing that much adjustment: the trash bin.
Although your point about DR is valid, or at least it was until I got a K5. You need to get one of these, Hank, shoot it at 80 or 100 ISO and play around with the shadows. Truly amazing.