On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 01:12:29AM -0700, Larry Colen wrote: > What photos are you losing because your gear isn't performing well enough, or > because it doesn't have a feature that you need? And in what situations does > this present itself? If there is a work around, what do you need to do to > get the shot?
Playing my own game: I hardly ever shoot with my K-x any more. As mind bogglingly good as its performance was for the cost, especially at the time, the only things it does better than my K-5 is look cool and fit in my pocket. I don't lose a lot of photos to poor exposure, but that is because I almost always take test shots, look at the histogram and if it isn't spot on, will go to manual exposure without hesitancy. I had to go to manual exposure less frequently before I put the inexpensive split prism screen in my camera. Most of the photos that I lose, I lose due to focusing issues. Manual focus is kind of like using a manual transmission, sometimes you have to do it yourself to get it happen at the right place, and we like to think that we're better at it than a dumb machine, but usually the machine does a better job. Unfortunately, what I find my camera very bad at is focusing on what I tell it to. It's much better at focusing on something perfectly, it just tends to focus perfectly on the wrong thing. Usually a microphone in front of a musician. This may be a front focus issue, or it may just be that the focus points are more like focus counties. Focus lag can be an issue, but what I tend to do is to prefocus, then use the AF button to disable autofocus, so I get instant shutter release. When I can't do this, I occasionally lose shots due to the camer not locking on or taking too long to lock on. It would be interesting to see what difference it would make if I were to use a K-5 II rather than a K-5. There are a lot of photos that I would be able to get if I had a usable live view mode. Live View is great for macro shots, even in low light. But not for action shots. Live view makes manual focusing feasible in low light, but not with a 2 second shutter lag. A friends u4/3 camera doesn't have nearly as good of low light response, but he does as well or better, because he can actually focus on the dancers. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
