On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Boris Liberman <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello and welcome. If my memory does not fail me (which it might), you're a
> new poster, at least in de-lurked sense of the word.
:) Thanks for the welcome! Yes I'm quite new (1 moth since I
bought my K-30).
> Few points:
>
> 1. It seems this article is targeted at the people who're willing to spend
> their time tinkering with the gear. Without any disrespect to you and to the
> author of the article - do you really think this will make your picture so
> much better that it is worth all the hassle?
As I've previously said, I'm aware that composition (and all the
other techniques from the artistic realm) is more important, and I'll
have to master that also.
If it is worth the hassle: if I shoot RAW, I'm already committed
to some "pain" in post-processing, thus the only extra hassle is to
get UniWB right (or something "close" to it).
> 2. With Pentax DSLRs (at least up to K-5 it would seem true, and I don't
> have newer models to ascertain that any further) it would seem that the
> camera is optimized to extract more usable information from the shadows. Yet
> it is more prone to saturation in bright areas. Thus, even if you achieve
> this UniWB, you probably wouldn't be to gain much by ETTR because you would
> actually risk saturation.
But here you're speaking of JPEG shooting in-camera? Thus indeed
ETTR would do more harm than good.
> If, as you mentioned in the thread, you're after the review histogram being
> as close to that of the actual RAW image, I suggest you simply play with
> contrast and other in-camera JPG settings and by experiment find the
> settings that suit you. Notably, contrast may need to be dialed down a bit,
> because by default the JPGs are optimized for extra punch which is so
> popular nowadays.
Indeed this is the "closer" solution, as I've managed to get the
histogram more "linear" and get the WB red and blue coefficients close
to 1.5.
> I should point that dialing contrast all the way to the left may be still
> sub-optimal. In fact, you could simply shoot several RAW+JPG pictures in
> environment (light+color) controlled by you and arrive to the optimal
> settings like this.
I've done exactly this:
* I've shot one RAW at some scene with both shadows and highlights
(i.e. from inside the room out the window, in a not very sunny day);
* then I've played with various contrast and "high/low key adj"
settings and saved a JPEG from **exactly** the same RAW (about 20 of
them); (thus I cheat on the controlled environment);
* then I've assessed the "similarity" between the RAW's histogram
and the multiple JPEG's I've gotten out of that with various settings;
(although I hand to visually compensate for the WB, thus I was
interested more in the "linearity" of the histogram;)
> But most of all - I do think that even by setting camera to AWB, Hyper
> Program Mode and Matrix metering you would be 99% covered and rather enjoy
> picture taking and then looking at your photographs afterwards...
Yup, you're right, I would still be pleased with the outcome even
with fully automatic point-and-shoot mode. Actually this is what I've
mostly done since 2006 with my Fuji FinePix S5600 (although I've used
manual mode, and presetted WB), and gotten out about 8000 pictures so
far.
However I want something more challenging than photos to show my
parents. :) I want smaller quantities, but of better "value".
Thanks for the feedback,
Ciprian.
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