Re: Lightroom... Darktable... what else?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2018 at 12:22 AM Ralf R Radermacher  wrote:
> Tried Darktable and find it awfuly clumsy and far too slow.
>
> What else is there, if anything? I need the database function, the RAW
> development tools, lens corrections, and the map function.
>
> Any suggestions?


Have you tried RawTherapee?

  https://rawtherapee.com/

It should work on Windows, OSX and Linux, and I find it very useful
and feature-full.  It does have file-management capabilities (although
not quite a "database function").

(I am using Linux and thus have only compared it to `darktable`, thus
my "view" is quite limited...)

Ciprian.

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Re: Which eye do you put to the viewfinder?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sun, Dec 13, 2015 at 7:40 PM, Darren Addy  wrote:
> A little informal PDML survey...
>
> Q: Are you right-handed or left-handed (or ambidextrous)
> A:
>
> Q: When you use a camera viewfinder, which eye do you put to the viewfinder?
> A:


Right-handed, but always use the left-eye for the viewfinder.

As many of you mentioned using the left-eye for the viewfinder makes a
mess of the LCD screen which is always smeared with grease.  :)

I have tried using my right-eye, but for some reason I find it so
uncomfortable that I have to force myself to use it.  I have very good
vision in both eyes, but I find something quite unergonomic with the
right-eye usage.

Another reason I think I prefer the left-eye is that by using it, the
right eye is blocked by the camera body and my hand, so I don't need
to force it close.  (For some reason I can't seem to easily close my
eyes while framing, and thus I always have a double vision while
framing with the right eye when the left one is squinting.)

(I would love to see the results summed up.  Perhaps a "automatized"
survey tool would have been better...)

Ciprian.

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Regarding Sigma 18-35 autofocus with phase-detect issues

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hy there all!

I was thinking at getting the Sigma 18-35 to replace my kit lens (DA
18-55 WR) for wide and normal focal lengths (mainly landscapes), but
after reading the Pentax Forums review [1,2] regarding the autofocus
issues (admittedly only while using phase-detect) I completely changed
my mind...  (For that amount of money, the fact I don't use live-view,
and that accurate manual focus is almost impossible on current DSLR's
without live-view and focus peaking, it makes this lens unusable for
me...)

However I thought to ask you guys, especially those that have used
such a lens, if it truly has issues at focusing with phase-detect?
(Perhaps you upgraded the firmware?  Perhaps you have newer variants
of this lens?)  To be clear by issues I mean the outcome is mainly
(and noticeably) back-/front-focused, while shot at large apertures or
with close subjects, thus opposite to situations when large
depth-of-field would mask such a problem.

Regarding the review, the issues being reported don't seem to stem out
of sample variation, as they tested about 7 of these on multiple K-3,
a K-50 and a K-30, and the outcome was the same.

Thanks,
Ciprian.

[1] 
http://www.pentaxforums.com/reviews/sigma-18-35mm-f18-dc-hsm-art/autofocus.html
[2] 
http://www.pentaxforums.com/articles/review-news/sigma-18-35mm-autofocus-a-second-look.html


P.S.:  Playing lens-roulette (that is buying one, testing it,
sending it back, and then possibly looping) is not an option for me...
:)

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Re: Flickr as backup

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 11:18 PM, Larry Colen l...@red4est.com wrote:
 One thing that I haven't figured out how to do efficiently with rsync is for
 it to track when I move a directory.

 I will upload photos into a generic (for this half of the year) directory,
 then move that shoot into a monthly directory.  So as far as I can tell
 rsync will either give me two copies, or will have to copy, delete, recopy
 at least once for every photo.


[Sorry for replying one month late, I'm shovelling through the mail queue.]  :)

rsync does know how to find moved files, if one uses **twice** the
`--fuzzy` option plus the `--copy-dest` and the `--delete-after`
options.

Basically, with your workflow, assuming you have an `inbox` folder
where you throw your current photos, all you need to specify is
`--copy-dest inbox`.

(Needless to say I haven't tested this, but according to the
documentation it does what you want.)

Ciprian.


P.S.:  If you are already using rsync, perhaps you should throw a look
at `rdiff-backup`.

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Re: Pentax remote control F

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Eric Weir eew...@bellsouth.net wrote:
 Does anyone else have problems with this remote? I find it unreliable. 
 Sometimes it actuates the shutter, sometimes it does not. It always does 
 eventually, but in the meantime it is irritating.

 Pentax has another remote, the remote control wd. Anyone have experience with 
 it. Are there any third-party remotes that are good?


Sorry to reply late, but I discovered that at least on the Pentax K-30
I can trigger the shutter with a normal TV remote.  Thus I would
assume that at least on the K-30 any infrared emitter would do the
trick.


Regarding the reliability of the Pentax F remote, like everybody was
saying, the farther you are from the camera the less reliable it
becomes.

However regarding the wired remote, I do have a generic one, but due
to the hassle of attaching it to the camera and due to the limited
length (and practicality) of the cable, I use the infrared one by
poking it in front of the camera (which although somewhat cumbersome
beats the cable attaching procedure).

Ciprian.

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Re: Question about the Pentax K-3 focusing screen pattern

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 6:31 AM, Zos Xavius zosxav...@gmail.com wrote:
 I always thought it had a slightly wavy patternmaybe I was looking
 at a fingerprint myself lol. :)

 On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 11:30 PM, John sesso...@earthlink.net wrote:
 I've seen the matte finish, but it doesn't look anything like a fingerprint.

 On 3/31/2015 3:50 PM, Zos Xavius wrote:
 If you catch the light just right you can see the matte finish that is
 etched onto the plastic.


Sorry for replying late.  Thanks Zos and John for the feedback!

Now I've looked better at my Pentax K-30 viewfinder, and a similar
pattern emerges like on the new Pentax K-3, therefore I would assume
it's not a fingerprint but the actual pattern as Zos suggested.


Regarding it's fingerprint-like shape, it's actually more like a
wavy form, similar to a moire pattern:

  https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=moire+wavetbm=isch

So I assume it stems from the grounding pattern on the focus screen,
which I thought should be without any actual pattern (i.e. grounding
with a motion in many directions, not in circular motion, or the
like.)


Regarding the spot I can see in the viewfinder, I intend to first
try to blow it away with a blower (not caned air), and not fiddle
with the focusing screen for now.  Either way it doesn't bother me
right now.

Any considerations in this regard (i.e. cleaning the focusing screen
without actually removing it, assuming the dirt is on the exterior)?

Thanks,
Ciprian.

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Question about the Pentax K-3 focusing screen pattern

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hello all!  (De-lurking for a quick technical question.)

I just got a Pentax K-3, and while toying with it and photographing a
landscape, I noticed something weird in the viewfinder, namely if I
point the camera at the sky (or a bright source light), I see in the
viewfinder a faint fingerprint-like pattern, especially on the edges
of the frame.

In fact I've noticed this only after I've noticed a small dark spot in
the upper left side of the frame, which I assume is some dirt on the
focusing screen (as it doesn't appear in the actual photos).  (I'll
closely inspect the mirror today.)

The dirt and the fact that my Pentax K-30 doesn't have this
fingerprint-like pattern, made me wonder if by any chance there is
something wrong with my K-3's focusing screen.  (Although I found some
chatter on the internet which might suggest that this pattern is
indeed to be expected.)

Anyone noticed something similar on their K-3?

Thanks,
Ciprian.

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Re: PESO: Afternoon light

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 2:52 AM, Stanley Halpin
s...@stans-photography.info wrote:
 Not that I am complaining, but it is really hard to get through dinner 
 sometimes when the storm clouds start to give way to the afternoon light on 
 the river… Fortunately my wife is very tolerant and often, as in this case, 
 she is the one who says something like “look behind you, down river - that 
 light is special.” So I leave the table, grab the camera, and go out into the 
 lingering rain.

 http://photos.stanhalpin.com/p155717848/h19a6c1e1#h19a6c1e1

This is the exact kind of photo I would want to capture this autumn
(if I had the time).  Nice work!

For some reason I can't decide which I like best out of #63 or #64.
In #63 the reflections are just wonderful, meanwhile in #64 the color
of the trees is more welcoming.  Were they taken at a large interval
in between?

My only comment is that the leafs on the left are kind of distracting,
and for some reason #63 has a yellow-green-ish cast on my monitor.

All in all, good work!
Ciprian.

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Re: PESO: Willows III - final cut

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 12:37 AM, Attila Boros attila.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 After long hours of moving rocks out of the river:

 http://1x.com/photo/722709/all:user:445106

 or

 https://500px.com/photo/84572947/willows-iii-by-attila-boros


Perfect!

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Re: PESO: Fall color is coming...

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 7:56 PM, Stan Halpin
s...@stans-photography.info wrote:
 This is the photo I had hoped to take during the 24-hour window centered on 
 the fall equinox. The weather did not cooperate.
 Taken from the dock this morning in front of our northern Michigan cabin.

 http://photos.stanhalpin.com/p155717848/h3f90e424#h3f90e424


I can't comment on this photo, as it doesn't work for me.

However the previous photo, number 61 (see the link below), just
made my day!  I won't spoil the surprise for anyone (I was certainly
surprised myself), but you've caught a nice moment!

  http://photos.stanhalpin.com/p155717848/h3f90e424#h25412f09

Thanks,
Ciprian.

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Re: PESO: Willows II

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 12:26 AM, Attila Boros attila.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 Here it is in wide format, and rockless:

 http://1x.com/photo/719720/all:user:445106

 or

 http://500px.com/photo/84269105/willows-ii-by-attila-boros


Much better with the new crop.  The only drawback is that the
willow on the left isn't completely reflected in the watter (i.e.
symmetrical).  However, as Ann was saying, the rocks are indeed
distracting.

But if I were to be picky, I would say that the lack of contrast
in the sky kind of bothers me...  I mean there is a lot of contrast in
the tree-tops, and almost none in the sky.

Good work though,
Ciprian.

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Re: PESO -- Monarch III

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 4:43 AM, P.J. Alling webstertwenty...@gmail.com wrote:
 Same as the last two more or less, slightly different crop.

 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1604247/PESO/PESO%20---%20monarchiii.html

 Equipment: Pentax K-5II w/vmc Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm f2.8~4.0 (Komine)

 As usual comments are welcome but may be totally ignored.


Out of the three in the Monarch series, I personally like this one
(III) better especially for its background.  In the other two there
are some thorns which bother me.

However in number I, the backlighting pops the orange in the
butterfly and it would have been lovely to have it on number III as
well.

What if you crop number III to a square format, dropping the bottom?

Ciprian.


P.S.:  A minor nitpick about the HTML of your PESO:  on my laptop
display (900px in height), even with the browser in full screen mode,
none of the pictures fit into the screen.  A simple solution to that
is to simply add a style=max-height:80vh; to the `img` element in
your HTML, and now the image will be at most 80% the height of the
browser window (actually the viewport, which is the inside of the
panel where the HTML is displayed.)

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PESO riverbank night-scape (and Pentax DA 50mm f/1.8 considerations)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hello all!  [At the end of the email there is a short detour about
the Pentax DA 50mm f/1.8, and providing some context for the PESO.]


The PESO...  After the dark set over the riverbank, while
stumbling in the dark (the lights on my side weren't working), I've
looked to the other side and found the restaurant so welcoming, luring
me with it's warm light.  The outcome is below (~200 KiB):

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/395c04795f9e801b/variant-a--x800.jpg


However I'm uncertain about a few things and wanted to get your feedback:

* The lights are blown out --- although only the lamps and not the
resulting starbusts --- and if I wanted to retain some detail I'm
afraid the surrounding would have been pushed to shadows.  Moreover
one of the lamps was almost embedded in a tree, making the leafs glow.
How would you proceed in such a situation?  One thought would be
multiple exposures and then layers in post-processing, but I would
like to get all in one exposure...

* I decided to pull-up the shadows and have some visible details
on the riverbank.  However this diminishes the warm light of the
restaurant, and the scene looks more like in the evening than after
the sun set...  Should I have went for a more contrasting processing?

* I preferred to keep the saturation low enough to have the trees
green-ish, and only pull-up on the reds (for the lights).  However
this makes the picture look a little bit washed, but on the other
hand I find it does make it seem more peaceful.

* I have a faint feeling that the resulting picture looks HDR-ish,
which was not my intention.


For those interested in comparing it with the original, I put
below the links to the exports from both RawTherapee and `dcraw`
without any additional processing except the auto-magic settings
(less than 200 KiB each):

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/395c04795f9e801b/export-rawtherapee--x800.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/395c04795f9e801b/export-dcraw--x800.jpg

For the the raw (~ 13 MiB) and other files you can look in:
  http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/395c04795f9e801b


Thanks for your time and I welcome any feedback,
Ciprian.


P.S.:  About the Pentax DA 50mm f/1.8 lens...  So, Friday I've
just received my first non-kit lens, a Pentax DA 50mm f/1.8, which
although quite cheap I hope will prove of better optical quality (i.e.
sharpness at over f/3.2-4) than the kit ones.  Especially than the
Pentax DA 50-200mm WR, which although I've found I was using it (at
~50mm) more than the corresponding 18-55 one, is quite soft (including
at f/8) for far subjects (i.e. more than 5m maybe).

Anyway...  Because I've got home only late, I didn't manage to try
it out while there actually light, I've decided to try a couple
low-light and some long exposure exposures.  My first impression is
that this could be my all-around lens:
* the focal length is almost just right to exclude all the city
clutter from the photo;  (maybe a little bit longer would have been
better;)
* light and small (and cheap) enough;
* fast enough (but kind of softer) when you need it;
* sharp enough (especially at f/4 or f/8);

I two words: good enough!

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Re: PESO riverbank night-scape (and Pentax DA 50mm f/1.8 considerations)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 11:28 PM, John sesso...@earthlink.net wrote:
 Combining exposures in an HDR program may be the tool you need to get
 the results you want. But that doesn't mean it has to LOOK like an HDR
 image when you're finished.

 I'm not sure what camera you're using (other than it's one that can
 mount Pentax lenses), but I'm pretty sure that all Pentax DSLRs since
 the K-7 have had a built in HDR function that you might want to
 experiment with. It's not exactly all in one exposure, but it's about
 as close as I think you can get in camera.

Indeed my camera, a K-30, does have built-in HDR;  however I don't
think HDR would suite me too much, mainly because:
* if done in the camera I have almost zero control over it (except
the base exposure and the amount of HDR-ness);
* if done in post-processing (if I bracket RAW's) I'm afraid I
don't have enough experience to do it right;  (I'm still struggling
with RAW conversion);
* maybe the biggest factor, working exclusively on Linux, I think
I lack the proper (i.e. quality) tooling for HDR;
* plus, I have a feeling that HDR is like cheating:  if I can't
get the picture right in one exposure then either my technique is
lacking, or perhaps I should come back another day when the light is
more forgiving;

Thanks,
Ciprian.


 I think the DA 50/1.8 is an beautiful lens. It'll probably vignette if
 Pentax ever does deliver a FF DSLR, but if it vignettes too much I've
 got a FA50/1.4 as plan B.

P.S.:  I don't plan on upgrading to FF (at least not in the next
five years);  or if this would have been a buying decision factor I
think I would have went with Nikon.  I think that APS-C is, just like
the DA 50mm, good enough for me:  not too heavy and not too
expensive, acceptable ISO quality and dynamic range.

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Re: PESO: Willows

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 12:48 AM, Attila Boros attila.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 Further down the river, but showing the whole thing this time;) We had
 heavy overcast for weeks now, the sun just came out for a few minutes
 before sunset when I took the photo.

 http://1x.com/photo/717472/all:user:445106


Indeed nice lighting, and I hope you are lucky enough to have the
same light when the leaves turn yellow, as the tree-tops in the
background look so warm in this light.  Or another thought, if maybe
the willows stay green a little bit more than the other trees in the
background (as it seems the case), you'll have a layer of green
between the brown-ish of the other trees and the blue sky, all
symmetrically reflected into the water.

Regarding the composition, I wonder how a wider shot looks like,
as you could get the entire smaller round tree (or how it's called)
on the left and the shore-line on the right.

Ciprian.

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Re: PESO riverbank night-scape (and Pentax DA 50mm f/1.8 considerations)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Alan C c...@lantic.net wrote:
 A splendid image. The crane adds something
 to the scene.

About the crane I also find it intriguing, especially at sunset or
twilight, as it's been sitting there for at least two years now, and
every time I'm out there and the dark sets in I try to find a way to
better capture it.  I haven't found the picture yet.


 No need to analyse it to death.

Yes, I know.  Everything is subjective and you have to go with
your gut feeling, as you can't get it right for everyone.  But on the
other hand the analysis is part of the learning process, and I'm still
learning.

Thanks,
Ciprian.

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Re: OT: Recovering Olympus OM-D RAW files from corrupt card

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 10:32 PM, Charles Robinson charl...@visi.com wrote:
 A friend of mine has run into an issue where he plugged in his 
 write-protected SDXC card to a card reader (on his iPad) and it glitched out.

 He has no idea how that happened.  He always specifically puts the 
 write-protect on before dumping a card, just to be safe

A similar thing happened to me on a Lenovo with Linux a few months
ago.  I've described this incident on the thread with the subject
`Card failure due to (laptop) card reader [Was: Re: K3 card failure]`
on 30th March.

Other strange card failures have also been reported by others in
threads like: `K3 card failure` on March 3rd.

The common outcome of most:  nobody knows exactly what went wrong;
 the positive side was that it was an isolated incident, and that some
photos were recovered...


 He is able to use some 'recovery' utilities to pull some not-very-swell JPEGS 
 off of the card (not sure if he was shooting some JPG+RAW modes... maybe?) 
 but so far nobody and nothing has been able to allow him to recover any 
 semblance of the RAW files ( *.ORF ) that are on there.

 Does anyone have experience with any sort of recovery utility (he's not 
 really concerned with the cost at this point) that could analyze the card 
 contents and make any sense of the RAW files that are lost on there somewhere?

My first suggestion (and in general best practice) is to first
create a byte-by-byte clone of the card and try any recovery on that
clone.  In fact I would clone the problematic card, then safely store
it for later;  then clone the clone once more and do any recovery on
that second clone, thus you can always retry the recovery without
touching the original problematic card, which could be damaged further
with any access.

I can't suggest any tools on Windows (there were mentioned some in
the cited threads), but on Linux I suggest (see my thread for
details):
* `ddrescue` for the initial cloning;
* `dd` for subsequent clones;
* `fsck.fat` for first recovery try;
* `testdisk` for more problematic cards;

Hope it helps,
Ciprian.

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Re: which crop do you prefer?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 12:41 AM, Christine Aguila
christ...@caguila.com wrote:
 Well, we made it home from our 2,267 mile road trip!  I’ve been working on 
 photos this morning and wondered which crop you might prefer?  I caught these 
 cuties during recess outside their grammar school.  The shot was a bit 
 rushed; I didn’t get as close as I would have liked given I had the 21mm on 
 the camera.  Still, I got some good looks and poses.  But I would very much 
 like to know which crop you prefer.  There’s something wonderful about all 
 that brick and those trees, but the kids expressions really pop on the other 
 crop.

 http://www.caguila.com/bostonkids/index.html


Because, in this particular case, I'm not a people photography
person (i.e. I prefer photos without people in them), and moreover a
beginner in photography, I prefer not express opinions about photos,
but instead to sit and learn from others on this list.

However in this case my gut feeling goes with number 1, i.e. the
wider shot, although in opposition with the majority of the votes
(only Bruce liked #1 best);  therefore I've said to add +1 to it, and
state my reasons.  :)


My primary attraction in the wider shot, as Christine said, is the
surrounding:
* except for the children the entire photo has the same color
tone, i.e. reddish from the bricks, with some contrasting green;  only
the children break this rule;
* I find the photo to be nicely layered: children, two trees,
brick wall, brick building;
* then I like the mood of the surrounding, calm, old and silent,
contrasting with the youth and energy of the children;

The only things that bothered me were:
* the lamp-post to the left, although cropping it out gets too
close to the girl on the left;
* the large trunk on the right, or at least the space between it
and the right margin;  now I've tried to crop the tree out with my
hand, but the photo looses its touch for me;  however cropping only
half of the tree keeps some of its magic;
* too much empty space at the bottom left, and it feels like the
children fall down;  I would try to put the children lower in the
frame, thus emphasize on the background;

As said, I'm not a people's person, thus my notes go towards the
surrounding.


Either way, nice shots,
Ciprian.


P.S.:  I wonder how the picture would have looked and felt without
the children in it?

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Card failure due to (laptop) card reader [Was: Re: K3 card failure]

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

I'm reviving this old thread because something similar happened to
me today, similar to what Bruce reported.  (Rob's case --- the initial
email of the old thread --- is different I guess, because his card
wasn't read even by his camera.)

Although I didn't loose any photos (I think), I hope this email
helps to shed some light into the problem, and help others to solve
similar issues.  (Hopefully this won't happen to often...)


[Below is Bruce's reply to give the context, and then follow my
observations.]

On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 2:22 AM, Bruce Walker bruce.wal...@gmail.com wrote:
 [...] I shot some stuff and returning
 home I couldn't unload my card because it couldn't be read in my Mac.
 The Mac unmounted the card shortly after insertion saying it had
 damaged formating. And I couldn't convince the Disk Utility to repair
 it either.

 Can you see the card content when inserted into the K-3?
 [...]
 BTW, sadly I lost the content of that damaged formating card. I
 could see the images when the card was in the K-3 but nothing I did
 allowed me to extract that data, even over a USB cable. I was sorely
 pissed off.


For me however it was even more strange --- I have a Pentax K-30,
SanDisk Extreme 16 GiB:

* I've locked the card for read-only;  (I always do this for
precaution, and as a habit because of OS X, which insists in creating
hidden files and folders even when though I just open a disk / card to
read it;)

* I've put the card in the laptop's card reader;  (this was
extremely dumb of me, because I know that my card reader has issues
due to the Linux driver (or maybe the hardware?);  usually I use an
external one...)

* mounted it in Linux, and successfully copied the files on my laptop;
* unmounted it, mounted another card, did the same as above;
* now, part of my paranoid workflow, I've mounted the card again
to make an MD5 sum of all the files;

* kaboom!  the contents of the `dcim/yyy_` folders can't be
read, specifically the `yyy_` folders are seen as invalid file
types, thus I can't even list their contents;  (below is the error for
the sake of completion;  previously to that I also received some I/O
error, but this was normal for my laptop's card reader;)
  FAT-fs (sdb1): error, fat_get_cluster: invalid cluster chain (i_pos 0)

* unmounted it, and tried it with a card reader (not the camera),
in an OS X laptop, the same...
* however as Bruce observed, all the photos were readable in the camera;


I didn't have enough space to make a full disk image (with `dd`),
thus I've decided to do a file system check (`fsck.vfat -f
/dev/sdb1`), which recovered some files.  I say some files
because:
* the number does match the number of files I was expecting;
* none of the recovered files hashes matches the hashes of the
files I actually have;  (the card contains photos that have
accumulated since last winter;)
* visually the photos do look alright;  (they are DNG;)


Thus I can only conclude that the card reader damaged the card,
thus it's not the camera's fault.  (Probably this happened to Bruce.)
Moreover it seems that the card lock feature is indeed just a hint
for the software, and that some readers (hardware or software?) don't
care about it, just report it to the upper layer...

I also can conclude that the Pentax K-30 camera uses an
alternative way to access the file-system, or at least it accepts
invalid file-system meta-data without complaining...


 What I determined was that I had failed to reformat the SD card
 immediately after purchase.

My card was formated in camera a couple of times, thus I can
remove this as a probable cause.


Hope it helps someone,
Ciprian.

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Re: K-30 AF-Assist Lamp?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 5:37 PM, Glen Berry g...@glenvision.com wrote:
 I just got a new K-30 and I was wondering if there is any way to force the
 built-in AF Assist lamp to function when I want it to?

To my knowledge there is no way to force the AF assist lamp on.
Although I've forced it off, because in case it activates and you're
photographing someone you'll blind them. :)


 Several times, while
 trying to take photos in very low light, the AF Assist lamp SHOULD have
 turned on, but it didn't. It almost seems to activate at random when I'm in
 a dim environment. Any suggestions?

There is an interesting article about Pentax K-5 low-light
focusing, especially section 4.1 which touches exactly this issue of
AF lamp activation:

  http://www.falklumo.com/lumolabs/articles/k5focus


 Should I just duct tape an LED flashlight to my camera?  :)

But then how do you turn it off when taking the picture?  :)

Seriously, I've done something similar last winter when I've
photographed the Christmas tree:  I've put the camera o a tripod (the
exposure was about 20 seconds long), focus activates only on the AF-L
button, and used a strong LED flashlight for auto-focusing.

Hope it helps,
Ciprian.

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Re: K-30 AF-Assist Lamp?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 7:20 PM, Glen Berry g...@glenvision.com wrote:
 I was kidding about taping a flashlight to my camera

:) I know.


 , but I am definitely
 considering engineering my own LED focus-assist light.

But then again I wonder how difficult it is to create something
that mounts in the flash hot-shoe (without damaging it or the
contacts);  thus one could easily attach there a flashlight.  The
other issue then, which I've hinted at in my previous email, is how to
switch the light on and off without changing the camera position.
(Usually the flashlight switches have to be pressed or pulled quite
hard.)

Good luck,
Ciprian.

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Re: OT:Linux

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 3:03 AM, Mark C pdml-m...@charter.net wrote:
 This weekend I installed Ubuntu on my scanning PC - tonight I finally fired
 up the scanner running the linux version of VueScan and it is churning away,
 batch scanning 12 35mm exposures. Great!

Huray!  Welcome to the Linux world!

However I would love to hear your feedback on your experience with
Linux for photography, thus keep us (or at least me :) ) posted on
this topic.


 After installing Unbuntu I learned that there are several other linux builds
 out there. Is there one better suited for photo processing?

To directly answer your question of which Linux distribution is
better suited for photo processing, I don't think there is such a
distribution out there, although I guess Ubuntu fits the bill.


A distribution mainly boils down to the following:
* the selection of packages --- how many are available, and how
old are the versions;  (in essence they all run the same software;)
* the choice of desktop environment --- KDE vs. Gnome mainly;  (in
essence you can choose one or another on any distribution;)
* the choice of management tools (saving you the trouble of
getting your hands dirty in the configuration files) --- my guess is
that Ubuntu / OpenSUSE win here;
* the size of the community, which is proportional to the amount
of available documentation and support;
* the bling, i.e., default colors, fonts, logos, backgrounds, etc.;


Out of all the Linux distributions, the most popular and stress
free for the end-user would be the following (or at least to my
opinion):

* Ubuntu;  (use the LTS edition 14.04 when it appears, if you
don't intend to upgrade / reinstall it every two years or so;)  out of
all I think it offers the most stream-line experience for
non-technical people, it features quite a lot of software, although
not at the latest version;  (however there is the thing called PPA
repositories which tends to solve this issue;)

* Debian (which Ubuntu is based on);  however although it has in
its repositories almost all the software you can get running on Linux,
the versions tend to be quite old especially in the stable version;
(I would recommend this for more experienced people with Linux;)

* OpenSUSE  (use the latest 13.x variant), which could be as
streamline in experience as Ubuntu for the end-user, although I have
the feeling they have less software ready available than Ubuntu;

* ArchLinux (the one I use), which has the advantage of having
always the bleeding-edge software versions, although probably in
lesser numbers than Ubuntu;  (and I guess you'll have more hassle in
installing and managing it than the others, thus I'll recommend it to
more experienced users;)

* of course there is http://distrowatch.com/ which provides a lot
of information (statistics, overviews, etc.) of various Linux and BSD
distributions;

(Please note that when I say software available I actually mean
precompiled ready to be installed software from their repositories,
because you can certainly compile software yourself even if it's not
in their repositories, but this can be a daunting task sometimes.)


 Are there any good LInux Photo Editors out there?  I am scanning BW and
 need something that support 16 bit gray scale, which I think excludes Gimp.

To my knowledge there is no stable (and open-source) 16 bit
image editor for Linux.  There is however CinePaint which is a GIMP
fork (?) to support 16 bit image manipulation:
http://www.cinepaint.org/ , however I haven't used it thus I can't say
much about it.

For RAW processing --- which you could try to use with your 16 bit
TIFF --- I can recommend RawTherapee (the one I use, although there
are others like Darktable), and there was discussion about this in
July 2013 with the subject: `Linux RAW editor/manager? (was Re: OT -
Lightzone Open Source Photo Editor (Windows, Linux))`.  The following
is my reply regarding Darktable and RawTherapee:

  http://pdml.net/pipermail/pdml_pdml.net/2013-July/351722.html


Related to this topic, I've made a list of software related to
photography (which run on Linux, that I have used, and that I can
recommend):

  
http://wiki.volution.ro/CiprianDorinCraciun/Notes/Public/Photography/Software

Looking at ArchLinux's wiki it seems they have an even more
comprehensive list:

  https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/List_of_applications/Multimedia#Image


 Can anyone recommend a primer on Linux?

I think the best place to start is the distribution's tutorial /
documentation / wiki, and any of the previously mentioned
distributions have good documentation (or wiki).  Unfortunately in the
Linux world things move very fast, especially when it comes to desktop
environments and tools, thus books tend to stay behind.


Good luck,
Ciprian.

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Re: OT:Linux

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 2:25 PM, Mark C pdml-m...@charter.net wrote:
 On 3/27/2014 2:48 AM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote:
  To directly answer your question of which Linux distribution is
 better suited for photo processing, I don't think there is such a
 distribution out there, although I guess Ubuntu fits the bill. ...


 I will probably stick with this one... I noticed that there were versions
 Ubuntu and Kubuntu (?) that were tweak very specifically - e.g. a Bioscience
 version, a multimedia version (video editing, I think) etc... I was hoping
 there might be a photographers version!

There seems to be an Ubuntu Studio distribution, which is geared
towards Audio, Graphics, Photography, etc.  However I have the feeling
that the only difference between this and the classical Ubuntu is
the default packages that come installed, maybe some menus, and the
bling;  else they (and the others like Kubuntu, etc.) share the same
software packages.

  http://ubuntustudio.org/

Ciprian.

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Re: A Few K-30 Questions

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 8:57 PM, Glen Berry g...@glenvision.com wrote:
 2) Is it possible to control the camera's aperture and shutter speed
 remotely?

I've researched a little bit into this and I didn't find any way
to control the camera settings remotely.


 3) Is it possible to shoot tethered at all?

Just triggering the shutter is possible either through the
infrared remote, or through a standard cable release.  (The cable
release is compatible with some Nikon, if you want I can search my old
thread on the list about this.)

Regarding the infrared remote, the receiver is available only in
the front, but the range isn't that good (the range of the remote).
(I once tried to trigger it from 10 meters and failed...)


 4) It's not a deal breaker for me, if the K-30 can't do those first 3
 things, but it would be a huge bonus. If the K-30 can't do those things, is
 there a Pentax DSLR that can?

The K3 through the Flu-Card (or how it is called) is controllable
from various devices.


For the other questions unfortunately I have no idea.
Ciprian.


P.S.: I think you will not be disappointed by the K-30 (especially
if photography is a hobby and not a profession).  (Moreover I quite
like the angular look.)

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Re: K-100D vs K-30 -- Noise at high ISO?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 4:16 AM, Glen Berry g...@glenvision.com wrote:
 So, how good is the K-30 with regards to high ISO noise, and try to compare
 it to an older model like the K-100D if you can. I'm hoping the K-30 will
 let me shoot a few stops higher ISO without sacrificing quality. Would that
 likely be correct?

I own a K-30, but unfortunately I can't compare it with anything
else, however I can tell you the following from my own year experience
with it:

* I don't see much difference between ISO 100, 200 or 400 in good
light;  (i.e. noiseless, thus no noise reduction;)
* for ISO 400 sometimes I need mild noise reduction, depending on the light;
* for ISO 800 I certainly need noise reduction, and the resulting
image looks clean;

* for ISO 1600 if the light is good, the case is similar with ISO 800;
* for ISO 1600 if I shoot at night, there is visible noise, and I
haven't yet mastered the RAW processing to eliminate it without making
the photo look plastic-y;

Higher than that I didn't need (I photograph mostly in daylight),
thus I can't say...


However take those above only as a data-point, maybe even an
outlier, because I'm a beginner, and I didn't manage to sort more
than 10% of my photos, of which I've post-processed only a fraction...

Hope it helps,
Ciprian.


P.S.:  If you buy a K-30 and get it with the 18-55 (WR) kit lens,
depending on how much you pay extra I would buy the body only, because
either way you need a better lens.  The 18-55 (WR) is quite soft in
the corners (regardless of aperture), and my estimation is that it
performs better only between 24 and 45...

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PESO Misty days

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

It seems that for the last few days my town was shrouded in a
thick mist, especially in the afternoon...  (A phenomenon which isn't
that usual so many days in a row...)

However, because I kind of like the overall atmosphere, I've tried
to catch it with my camera (a larger variant is available in the same
folder):

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/0cb3ba63549b8029/variant-a--x800.jpg


But I'm uncertain of my choices and I would love some feedback:

* Does the large tree trunk on the left work as a foreground?
I've tried to use it both to show how the visibility degrades as you
go deeper into the scene;  plus together with the next tree on the
right, to frame the narrow path.

* Then I've chosen to reduce the saturation, so that only hints of
green and brown (from the leaves) remain visible.


Thanks for the comments,
Ciprian.


P.S.: The picture was taken with my old Fuji S5200 at ISO 100,
thus please ignore the noise and lack of sharpness.

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Re: Regarding the assessment of raw image technical qualities (i.e. correct exposure, focus, sharpness, etc.)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

For those curios about what I'm speaking about --- although I have
the feeling that I'm alone in this boat :) --- I'll highlight bellow
some outputs of my prototype.

All the outputs are available at the link below, one folder per
RAW image, and for each resulting image one JPEG (several hundred KiB)
and the uncompressed `PPM` / `PGM` (multiple MiB's in size).  (All the
images linked in this email are JPEG's, although they contain in the
name `ppm` or `pgm`.)

(Please don't judge these images aesthetically because they are
mostly experiments.)  :)

  http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/


For exposure assessment one could look at the following image.
White is overexposure (the value in any of the channels is larger than
99% of the maximum possible value), and black underexposure (less than
1%).  The other 12 gray shades are obtained by combining 4 levels for
each channel.

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/dsc_2401/exposure-z.pgm.jpg

The original can be seen at:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/dsc_2401/preview-rgb.ppm.jpg

The same over- and under-exposure is also overlaid on a color
sketch of the image, at the following link:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/dsc_2401/blinkers-rgb.ppm.jpg

The main information I get out of this --- except the obvious
over-exposure in the sun and its reflection --- is that the tree
branches and the other side of the river are under-exposed, thus I
won't be able to get out any color for those parts.  (Obviously the
scene latitude is larger than the exposure latitude of this camera,
Nikon D3100.)


Another example is the following:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp6196/exposure-z.pgm.jpg

The original being:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp6196/preview-rgb.ppm.jpg

Although it is obvious from the original that the light-bulb is
completely over-exposed (and a small part of the bow), it's harder to
notice with the naked eye that almost all specular highlights are
overexposed.

Interesting to see in this image is also the sharpest parts of the image:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp6196/sharpness-rgb.ppm.jpg


Thus switching to the sharpness evaluation, see bellow two small
variations of the same scene in which I've played with manual focus
(trying to guess the hyper-focal value on my lens, because I wanted
to include the forground in focus also).

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp6226/sharpness-rgb.ppm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp6229/sharpness-rgb.ppm.jpg

Looking at the two originals (linked below), even at 100% it's
harder to decide which is sharper.  However on closer inspection of
the previous two helper images I could conclude that 6226 has better
focus of the foreground, while 6229 has better focus of the distant
shore.

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp6226/preview-rgb.ppm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp6229/preview-rgb.ppm.jpg


For other three tough decisions see the following siblings
bracketed in a hurry at 0.7 EV:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5653/preview-rgb.ppm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5654/preview-rgb.ppm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5655/preview-rgb.ppm.jpg

Their exposure (seems the meter was dead-on):

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5653/exposure-z.pgm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5654/exposure-z.pgm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5655/exposure-z.pgm.jpg

Their sharpness (seems the second one is less fuzzy, however not by much):

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5653/sharpness-rgb.ppm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5654/sharpness-rgb.ppm.jpg
  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/6d20367506baa6fb/_igp5655/sharpness-rgb.ppm.jpg


As you can see I'm not searching for a magical decision device,
just something to help me assess the alternatives, pointing me to the
parts of the picture that need my attention (especially in the case of
focusing errors or camera shake.)

Hope I was able to exemplify what I was after.  :)


Happy new year!
Ciprian.

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Regarding the assessment of raw image technical qualities (i.e. correct exposure, focus, sharpness, etc.)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hello all!

Before describing the problem, please let me stress that I know
very well that the quality of a photograph lies more in its
aesthetic properties than in its technical ones.  However in this
thread I don't discuss about photographs, but images, i.e. the raw
data (pixel values) that are totally decoupled with what they
represent.  (Thus I hope I won't start a flame-war regarding
aesthetics vs. technical qualities.)

(If you want to skip the context and go directly to the problem,
just go to the section titled `The questions`.)


  == The context ==

So the problem, I always capture images --- note how I didn't
say photographs :) --- in RAW format.  And, while working in fully
manual mode, very often I obtain multiple images of the same scene,
where the main variable is the exposure time.  Also while in low
light, either interior or at night, I strive to use a low ISO like
200-400 thus with an exposure time of about 1/10 of a second, and
although the SR is enabled, I always use continuous drive (in low
mode) to take about three exposures, in the hope that one of them is
sharper.

The problem?  During the editing process, after I select which
scenes are the ones I like the best, I end up with a lot of images
of the same scene (with almost identical composition).  And thus my
problem is which of the two or three images is the most suitable
one, in terms of technical properties, to be used as input for
processing (thus obtaining in the end my photograph).


  == The questions ==

Thus my questions are the following:

(A) Which are the technical qualities I should look for in the image?

(B) What software tools exist out there that would help in the
assessment of these technical qualities?


  == My answers ==

For (A), the technical qualities, I've identified the following:

* Is the subject properly focused?  I.e. since I use auto-focus,
sometimes with slim subjects it might happen that the camera focuses
on the background.

* Is the image sharp enough?  I.e. not blurry due to shake,
miss-focus (back or front), subject movement, etc.

* Is the exposure correct / optimal?  I.e. especially since I
use ETTR (expose-to-the-right):
  * did I overexposed something, and if so which channels, which
parts of the picture, where are the next shadows relative to the
highlights, etc.;
  * do I have underexposed areas, and like above how much, etc.

Did I miss other technical properties?

I've purposely dismissed the following:
* noise -- which by its nature is a property of the sensor and
constant in effect for a given ISO value;
* depth-of-field -- which manifests itself as a lack of sharpness
for the objects outside the DOF;  (although it would be nice to be
able to estimate how far a given pixel is outside the DOF;)
* flare -- they are easily discerned in the image;
* bokeh, vignetting, distortion, acutance, etc. -- which are
invariable properties of the lens (for a given aperture and focal
length);  (and bokeh is a highly subjective quality;)
* chromatic aberrations -- like above, although would be nice to
highlight them;


Unfortunately for (B), how to asses these qualities, I have a few
theories (see the next section titled `The science-fiction`) and less
ready-to-use solutions...

First the solutions.  Currently I'm using Geeqie (an Linux-based
image manager) to find the scenes I like, and for each scene which are
the obvious failed images, i.e. those with clear over- or
under-exposure or blur, and I end up with a few candidates.  However
even if I zoom 100% I don't see the raw image, but the embedded JPEG,
which was already processed by the camera, thus I can't correctly
assess the sharpness nor the exact exposure optimality (due to white
balance).

Thus I then switch to RawTherapee --- which I've configured so
that by default it doesn't apply any settings at all, just neutral or
disabled values --- to look at the raw channels histogram, the exact
image without added sharpening, and the focus mask.  However I can't
use the blinkers (i.e. underexposure / overexposure masks) to see
which parts of the image are burned, because they work after white
balance.  The focus mask shows me which points are in focus, but give
no quantitative feedback of the sharpness.  Moreover switching from
one image to another takes for ever.

I know there are a few applications like Rawshack, which give me a
numerical analysis of the raw data, thus helping me assess the
optimality of the exposure.  However there is no visual feedback, and
no solution for the other qualities like focus or sharpness.

Did I miss some other tool?


  == The science-fiction ==

However, because by trade I'm a developer, I've started pondering
about a do-it-yourself solution.  My theories --- which I've started
to put into practice with a small prototype --- revolve around:

* For assessing exposure it is clear:  I take the raw image, 

Re: Regarding the assessment of raw image technical qualities (i.e. correct exposure, focus, sharpness, etc.)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Bob W p...@web-options.com wrote:
 Unfortunately you can't separate the technical and aesthetic properties. For 
 example, you ask
 [...]

 And I ask in return what does properly focused mean? It depends on what you 
 intend for the picture, so it cannot have a single once-and-for-all answer - 
 you have to make a subjective, aesthetic judgement.
 [...]

Unfortunately there was a misunderstanding / miscommunication in
my purpose.  Thus I'll want to make some clarifications (which maybe I
didn't properly make in the context section):

I very well understand that all technical decisions must match the
subject at hand.  That's why I've stated that for the same scene (by
which I mean subject) I have multiple, almost identical, exposures,
which vary slightly especially in exposure (at most 1 stop),
auto-focus error, or possibly blur due to improper hand-held camera.

Thus I don't want to find a mathematical answer to which
technical setting is the best for a particular subject, but to the
answer to the question from a set of almost identical images which is
the 'optimal' in terms of technical qualities.


 Sharp enough for what?

I'll give a small example:  with my old PS Fuji S5600, without
any image stabilization, at night I had to resort to 1/4 seconds
exposure (the sensor is quite small, 1/2.3 inch, thus the sake is less
than in APS-C).  After a few time I've observed that if I shot in a
burst of three pictures, one of them (usually the middle or last one)
were less fuzzy than the other.

Thus sharp enough in this context means the one in which lines
(or edges) are contrasty enough to obtain something useful after
sharping.


 What is correct exposure?

In this case it is more simple.  Given that I've already chosen
what to prioritize in exposures (highlights, shadows, or mid-tones),
which of the few exposures best represents my choice.


 These questions have no meaning on their own, divorced from the subject 
 matter of the photograph, and the intentions of the photographer.

As seen I'm not trying find an auto-magic AI
(artificial-intelligence) that can discern aesthetically what settings
to use, but instead given a set of options which ones are the
cleanest.

Thanks all for replying,
Ciprian.

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Re: Regarding the assessment of raw image technical qualities (i.e. correct exposure, focus, sharpness, etc.)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Bob W p...@web-options.com wrote:
 Consider the following pictures, for example, which all show a Frenchman 
 riding a bicycle, but which are very different technically. Which one is the 
 best? Why?

This is a trick question...  :D

 B) 
 http://metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/286639?rpp=20pg=1rndkey=20131214ao=onft=*where=Francewho=Henri+Cartier-Bressonpos=7#fullscreen

Because the answer is most likely (B), made by HCB.  :)  (I know
the fable about Flickr group that dismissed this photo as unsharp.)


However indeed it proves a point:  for some photos correctness
doesn't matter, it's all in the moment or look-and-feel.  (Even I
have a few failures that I find better when compared with their
correct equivalents.)

But still, for landscape or macro photography (which seems to be
my main interest), I still find sharpness and correct exposure very
important.

Ciprian.

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Re: Regarding the assessment of raw image technical qualities (i.e. correct exposure, focus, sharpness, etc.)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 7:16 PM, Paul Stenquist pnstenqu...@comcast.net wrote:
Does it sounds crazy? :)

 It's a bit over the edge. In my opinion, a  trained eye can probably do a 
 better job of image evaluation than can any software.

Indeed a trained eye (and brain) would be able to make a more
informed decision than a simple-minded algorithm.  However even the
eye must use some tools in its assessment.  For example a person uses
eye-glasses to aid sight, and this is exactly what I'm trying to find:
 a special pair of eye-glasses that highlight which parts of the
image are in focus, etc.

I don't necessarily want a solution that spits out a number and
says photo (A) is 10% better than photo (B).  I'm just looking for a
solution that prepares photo (A) and (B) to ease my evaluation.

Ciprian.

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Re: Regarding the assessment of raw image technical qualities (i.e. correct exposure, focus, sharpness, etc.)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 8:43 PM, Bill anotherdrunken...@gmail.com wrote:

 The best you can do is go through your work, first removing the obvious junk
 first. The out of focus, the very badly exposed, the ones that won't make a
 good print for purely technical reasons.
 After that, you can start culling based purely on aesthetics, culling out
 the ones that fail for non technical reasons, and this is where training in
 the arts comes in.

 A good strategy for teaching yourself composition (after doing some reading)
 is to take the images from a shoot, take out the good ones and don't look at
 them again. They have done their job, they have shown you that there is
 hope.

 Study the failures, ask yourself why the image failed. By doing this, you
 determine what doesn't work. Eliminate what doesn't work from what you are
 doing, and eventually, you will find that more of what you are doing works.
 Keep putting the images that work into a folder, either real or digital for
 a year. After a year, open that folder, arrange the images by date and watch
 how your photography has progressed.

I have to admit that out of all the replies so far, the section
quoted above is the most useful.  I guess it provides a brief and
adapted description of your edit workflow.  In general it matches how
I would approach this, and what I want to accomplish in the long term.
 (I've yet to reach the one year milestone.)  :)


 You have yet to separate the aesthetic from the technical, and you think
 that you can wrap aesthetics up into a formulaic approach that will allow
 you to make judgement calls regarding your images, but until you have the
 ability to judge the final image for what it is, separate from the technical
 elements that make it what it is, you are going to find this to be a
 disappointing avocation.

I agree with your statement, and as said in previous replies to
other posters, I do try to edit my images first based on what I think
is aesthetically pleasing to me, and then on the technical qualities
when alternatives are available.  I was just debating the approach for
the second part.


(Beyond this point in my reply, I go off-topic, especially since I
know that some of the mailing list members love to argue, myself
included. Thus one can easily skip the rest.)  :)


 One of the things I have noted over the past decade is that the very geeky
 avocation of photography has attracted geeks from other interest groups,
 especially computer geeks.

At least, by the above observation, we are all geeks in one way or
another, thus we all have crazy ideas from time-to-time.  :)


 The new photographer who has cut his teeth on
 computers is used to success via formulaic approach.

On the contrary, a good computer geek (or as we call them
hackers in the good sense), is far from formulaic approaches.  It
involves a lot more creativity that what people usually think.
(Indeed perhaps a lot of the industry has morphed into software
assembly factories, but there are some original codes are works of
art in their own right.)


 I want this as an end result, and to get there I plug in this line of code,

If this were true we would have by now programmed programs to
program our programs.  (And SkyNet would be up-and-running.)  :D


 You would do better to read some books on composition than to try to make
 what you are wanting into a numbers game.

But to get back to photography and formulaic approaches.  Like
all crafts, even photography has its own so-called magic-formulas
that are preached in most materials, especially when it comes to
composition.  But in the end I understand that the author has to
address both the beginner and the advanced;  plus he can't describe
into words the creative process without sounding too formulaic.

(Don't take the above as me dismissing those materials.)


 As technical a craft as photography is, the successful photographer masters
 the mechanical parts to the point of not having to think about them any
 more, and then concentrates on the aesthetic, in much the same way that the
 person learning to drive masters using the controls on the vehicle to the
 point that driving is more or less automatic, allowing the person to enjoy
 the drive.

To keep the analogy with driving, I guess that the equivalent of
artists in the automobile world are the Formula 1 drivers (or
similar).  However I bet that they master their controls well beyond
driving more or less automatic, up-to taking highly informed
decisions almost subconsciously.  Thus I guess that at least some of
the artists in the photography world have done similarly, i.e.
mastered the technical details beyond automatic.

(As a small case-study, looking at what books are published by
Ansel Adams --- according to http://www.anseladamsbooks.com/ --- three
are technical, the rest are albums, none(?) are about technique.
Although I most concede two things:  (1) I clearly see that the
albums are technique manuals 

Re: Regarding the assessment of raw image technical qualities (i.e. correct exposure, focus, sharpness, etc.)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 10:39 PM, Bill anotherdrunken...@gmail.com wrote:
  To keep the analogy with driving, I guess that the equivalent of
 artists in the automobile world are the Formula 1 drivers (or
 similar).  However I bet that they master their controls well beyond
 driving more or less automatic, up-to taking highly informed
 decisions almost subconsciously.  Thus I guess that at least some of
 the artists in the photography world have done similarly, i.e.
 mastered the technical details beyond automatic.


 No, they are just very good technicians who have truly mastered their craft.
 The artists are the soccer moms who can maneuver a sport utility vehicle
 with half a dozen screaming kids in the back over icy roads and get home
 safely.

Hoping that you were not kidding with the above :), I must say
this is the best definition I've read for artists, i.e. very good
technicians who have truly mastered their craft.  (The soccer moms
I would call them heroes.)  :)


 Look at pictures, lots of pictures, especially those of other photographers.
 Ask yourself why they made the compositional decisions that they made.

And this is one of the reasons I like PDML:  there is a good
balance between photographs (PESO, GESO, etc.) and technical debates.


 BTW, welcome to the PDML.

Thanks!  Although I haven't contributed much (only a few posts so
far), I've been stealthily enjoying its membership since this April.

Ciprian.

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Re: SD Formatter

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 11:28 PM, Brian Walters
apathy...@lyons-ryan.org wrote:
 I've never had any problem formatting my SD cards in camera but the SD
 Association (they maintain the SD Card standards) suggest that you can get
 better performance using the SD Formatter 4.0 software for SD/SDHC/SDXC
 cards.

 It's a free download for Windows  Mac.

 https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/


I would be most curious to find out what exactly this formatter
does.  (I.e. how it actually partitions the card, and what FAT tuning
parameters it uses.)  Maybe there is a document about it somewhere...
(I'll have to search when I have the time.)


Because I've tried to manually partition and format an SD card on
my Linux laptop and my Pentax K-30 refused to read it (saying it
wasn't formatted).

By manually I understand the following fine-tunings (I don't
remember all the exact tries, but they are on the following lines):
* make the FAT partition start at exactly 4MiB (i.e. 8192 x 512
byte sectors);  (although I've tried other variations like 16 MiB or 1
MiB as are the current best practices for hard-drives;)
* `mkdosfs -v -F 32 -f 2 -s 128 -S 512`  (i.e. maximize the sector
size, reduce the number of clusters);

Ciprian.

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Re: I have to scream now... techno-trouble here

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Attila Boros attila.p...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 7:11 PM, Ann Sanfedele ann...@nyc.rr.com wrote:

 through a series of hitting keys in error and then hitting one wrong
 intentionally but wrongly I basically deleted most of the photos I
 took with the Ist-d and K-5 ..

 snip

 been told that even though I deleted the files they are really still there
 (hear that a lot - after all I watch Bones and NCIS)

 Correct, the data is still there, but the clusters containing the data
 are now marked as free, meaning they can be overwritten any time if
 you write on the drive. As a rule DO NOT write anything on that drive
 until all your data is recovered. Not even as part of the recovery
 process, choose to recover your data on another drive. This way you
 can try multiple tools and see what works for you without doing
 further damage.


I second Attila on this, don't try to write anything, and if asked
for recovery in Windows don't accept it.  (I.e. if you've just
removed it from the USB port instead of removing it safely.)

If possible I would suggest to not even connect the disk to the
computer, and ask for someone very tech-savy to help you.  (See the
right procedure later in the email.)


About the possibility of the files being in Recycled Bin I would
say the following:
* to my knowledge Windows XP doesn't use recycle for removable
drives, which is the case with your external drive;
* if the deletion was not instantaneous (i.e. under a second)
then most certainly it wasn't moved there;


The right procedure in such cases is the following:
* make a byte-to-byte image of the disk (or partition);  (this is
done with specialized tools, not through Explorer;)
* do any recovery attempts on the clone, thus allowing you to
try other alternatives;


I can't suggest any Windows application -- only for Linux, as I'm
a Linux user for a lot of time -- but I could ask tomorrow my
colleagues.


Bottom-line: don't touch the drive unless you're certain about
what you are doing (i.e. including consequences), and only after
you've cooled-down.

Unfortunately I'm of not much help,
Ciprian.


P.S.: Most recovery applications would write to the disk, thus
I'm not sure it's a good idea to run them on the direct disk;

P.P.S.:  Do you remember the file-system type (i.e. NTFS / FAT)?
 Did you reformat the drive after buying?

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Re: I have to scream now... techno-trouble here

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 8:54 PM, CollinB coll...@brendemuehl.net wrote:
This seems to be a common misconception. For details:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en
 -us/recycle_bin.mspx?mfr=true

On short, deleted files from local hard drives (even external ones)
will be placed in the Recycle Bin _unless_ you specify otherwise. The
Recycle Bin can be configured independently for every hard drive.

 So the deleted files *may* be on her main system?


I'm quoting and annotating the document that Attila was referring to:


The Recycle Bin provides a safety net when deleting files or folders.
When you delete any of these items from your hard disk, Windows places
it in the Recycle Bin and the Recycle Bin icon changes from empty to
full. Items deleted from a floppy disk or a network drive are
permanently deleted and are not sent to the Recycle Bin.


The key words are floppy disk or a network drive, which if I'm
not mistake are what Windows XP thinks about removable drives (even if
their underlaying technology is a rotating disk, flash drive, SSD, or
plain old floppy).


Fortunately the permanently deleted phrase is not almost always
true, as the data still lingers on the drive for a while (i.e. until
something else over-writes it.)

Small detour: for SSD drives, or other types of hardware,
supporting the `TRIM` (or was it `DISCARD`?) operation, and for those
file-systems that support that operation (I know some only on Linux),
this deletion becomes quite permanent for the usual user.  (I.e.
I'm certain that specialized people could get back the data, but only
through specialized hardware and software.)



Windows allocates one Recycle Bin for each partition or hard disk. If
your hard disk is partitioned, or if you have more than one hard disk
in your computer, you can specify a different size for each Recycle
Bin.


This means that for the deletion to `Recycle Bin`, Windows won't
move your files from one disk to another.  (I.e. if you delete your
files and then format the disk, the `Recycle Bin` and its files on
that disk also disappear.)

Ciprian.

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Pentax K-01 follow-up? (or other Pentax K-mount mirrorless)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

(For the meat of the subject you could skip directly to the
paragraph THE DILEMMA.  Below I add some context to it.)


As I've mentioned yesterday in the thread Which camera brand
would you choose, if you started from scratch? I currently own a
new-ish Pentax K-30 and an old FujiFilm FinePix S5600 / S5200.

Although the K-30 serves me well, it fails to completely replace
my Fuji S5600 for a simple reason:  it's too large and heavy to easily
fit into my laptop backpack (especially when I travel without
photography in mind).  (Even the Fuji is at the limit, however I
managed to log it with me almost every day in the last few years, and
everywhere I traveled.)

Thus I'm looking for a portable replacement for the Fuji.  I've
looked at m4:3 (Olympus and Panasonic), Pentax Q, the Ricoh GR / GXR,
Fuji, both fixed and interchangeable lenses, etc.  I've even looked at
point-and-shoot from various manufacturers, (including Pentax,
Olympus, Nikon and Cannon) which I've disregarded due either lack of
manual control or too small sensors.

All (except the PS) were nice and compact replacements, however
they all failed to beat the Pentax-K01 in two respects:  they are more
costly (at least in my country), and they don't take K-mount lenses of
which I already have two.


== THE DILEMMA ==

Therefore my question (or questions) is:  is there any chance that
a K-mount mirrorless will appear in the near future (i.e. 6 months
till it hits the shelf)?  Or should I buy the K-01 while it's still
available in stock (I know it's out of production)?

Or have I missed something which advises against the K-01?  (I
must note that I haven't read too many reviews...)


Feedback is much appreciated,
Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-01 follow-up? (or other Pentax K-mount mirrorless)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 6:42 AM, Boris Liberman bori...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 10/21/2013 9:28 PM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote:

  == THE DILEMMA ==

  Therefore my question (or questions) is:  is there any chance that
 a K-mount mirrorless will appear in the near future (i.e. 6 months
 till it hits the shelf)?  Or should I buy the K-01 while it's still
 available in stock (I know it's out of production)?

  Or have I missed something which advises against the K-01?  (I
 must note that I haven't read too many reviews...)


 The only thing that I don't like about K-01 is that you cannot attach a EVF
 to it - you absolutely have to focus/compose by the screen. In the bright
 light this may prove an issue.

The lack of an EVF was also a concern to me.  However even though
my old Fuji had one, I've seldom used it (mainly due to low resolution
and small size), thus my feelings are mixed about this...


 I don't grok though why you have so much trouble with using your Pentax
 lenses on other cameras. All mirrorless (or most of them) cameras can be
 used with Pentax lenses via adapter. I have one such adapter for Leica
 M-mount, so that I can use my A50/1.2 on Ricoh GXR. You still get focus
 peaking and semi-auto mode (you set aperture on the lens, camera sets the
 rest - shutter speed and ISO). It works really well.

I don't think that an adapter would be the best approach, mainly
because I own only two digital lenses (and if I'm to buy new ones it
would be of this sort).  Thus no aperture ring.  Besides that I'm not
sure that manual focus is that accurate on these lenses...


 As for your original question - I couldn't possibly tell whether a follow up
 to K-01 will come. I would say that it is possible but with rather low
 probability but it is just a guess.

That was my feeling also...

Thanks for the feedback!
Ciprian.

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Re: Which camera brand would you choose, if you started from scratch?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 6:32 PM, Jens p...@planfoto.dk wrote:
 When I wanted somthing better than my first slr
 [...]
 the guy in the shop really had no difficulties in convincing me to buy the MX 
 (still got one).
 This happened in 1981. I have been using Pentax cameras ever since.

 But if this happended today, I don't know what would happen.
 The guy in the shop would probably tell me to get a Canon, Nikon or Sony, 
 like almost everybody else...

 How would you convince a beginner to get a Pentax?

 What would you buy, if you were a beginner?


Because I really qualify as a beginner in photography, I wanted to
contribute my view on the topic, especially since I've recently went
through such a decision.  Although I must note that most of my reasons
were already covered by other posters.

To give you some context:  I've bought my first camera, a bridge
or super-zoom as they're called, a FujiFilm FinePix S5200 / S5600,
around 2005 after being recommended by friend-of-a-friend, which I've
used (around 15k casual snapshots) until this spring (2013).  However
later in 2006 I pondered on buying a Pentax K100D / K110D but decided
against (mainly due to costs).

Since last autumn (2012) (after I've played a little bit with a
Nikon D3100) I decided it was about time to get a new camera, a DSLR
this time, and maybe get a new hobby -- photography.  (I've checked
the first item off the list, but not so sure about the second.)  :)


So how my decision process went?

(A) Brands:  in late 2012 only Canon, Nikon and Pentax were making
DSLR's (or at least available in my country).  I've excluded Canon
just because, thus it was Nikon or Pentax.

(B) Price limit:  the upper limit was D5100 / D3200 for Nikon, and
K-30 (and later K-50) for Pentax, although the lower the better.
(Didn't even bother to look for Canon.)

(C) Features:  because even with my Fuji S5600 I've shot mainly in
manual mode (JPEG's with non-auto white-balance, but sometimes RAW),
and I've never used any other features except the 3-shot burst (as a
poor-man's image stabilization), it all boiled down to:
* good manual support (i.e. easy access to speed, aperture and ISO);
* good RAW support (i.e. usable from software running on Linux);
* the more customization is available the better;
* support for AA batteries; (very important;)
Clear winner Pentax.  Two dials for a smaller price, DNG which
promissed to be more open than NEF.

(D) Lenses:  all I knew about lenses was this:  Nikon had two
flavors with stabilization (more expensive) and without (cheaper);
Pentax had stabilization in body and allegedly a larger pool of used
lenses.
Clear winner Pentax.

(E) What I choose to ignore (i.e. don't care category):
* live-view;  (I was tired of composing via an LCD like on my Fuji;)
* video capabilities;  (i.e. use each tool for what it was designed;)
* HDR, filters, and other in-camera processing;  (I have a
computer for that;)
* built-in flash;  (I don't use it that much;)
* battery capacity;  (anyway you'll need two of those, or even
better standard AA batteries;)
* image quality; (although I've stared at RAW crops between
various cameras, for minutes on DPReview and other sites, I still
didn't notice anything definitive, thus I've concluded it's all the
same;)

Final winner --- obviously since I'm on this list :) --- Pentax
K-30 (the K-50 wasn't out yet) with 18-55 and 50-200 kit lenses,
mainly due to smaller price and more features.


Looking in retrospective, some features I now know are important:
* viewfinder coverage, size, and brightness;  (except for coverage
I still don't see a difference between K-30 and D3100;)
* the two custom modes on the K-30 which I now use exclusively;
(I get my fingers in a twist on D3100;)
* weather sealing, which I've used once in the rain and I liked
the mood of the photos;
* support for AA batteries; (I re-list it again because it's quite
important to me;)

Some serious drawbacks which I now start to feel:
* Pentax bodies, lens and accessory availability in my country
which is quite poor (only two on-line stores have it, and no
brick-and-mortar store that I know of);
* second-hand lens availability, which again doesn't live up to
the expectations (again especially in my country);  (and on the
subject second hand Pentax market;)
* (although a small nuisance for me) lack of on-line tutorials /
tips-and-tricks for Pentax hardware;  I mean the same Internet
visibility as Nikon has through people like Thom Hogan, Ken Rockwell,
etc.  (Although I must mention Dale Cotton with his Daystar Visions
site which makes a wonderful Pentax (and general photography)
introductory material.)


Overall I still think I made a good choice especially in terms of
cost / quality / features trade offs.  But there are some important
drawbacks.

Hope it helps,
Ciprian.

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PESO: Autumn-scapes :)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hello all!

Half of the autumn has already passed, and yet I've not seen many
pastel pictures on the list.  Thus I'm biting the bullet and bellow
I put two links (one 2.9 MiB and 400 KiB variants) of an
autumn-scape I've captured today while on the road.

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/27a43bb4cc3bcb9c/variant-a--x1080.jpg

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/27a43bb4cc3bcb9c/variant-a--x800.jpg

Hope you enjoy it, and comments are very much appreciated,
Ciprian.


P.S.:  I hope I didn't over-process it again...  :)

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Re: PESO: Autumn-scapes :)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 10:12 PM,  kwal...@peoplepc.com wrote:
 Hi  Ciprian

 I have a couple of comments that should improve this image -

Comments are always welcomed, especially those critical, thus let's see...


 I'd crop out the blank sky as it doesn't add anything to the image.

The initial image is an APS-C format (3:2 aspect ratio), which
I've already cropped to a 2:1 aspect ration while keeping the full
width.  Thus I was quite afraid of cutting even more of the sky.


 And
 while I wasn't there the red cast, especially in the sky doesn't seem real
 in this case.

The issue is twofold: I'm using my uncalibrated laptop monitor
which is quite awful thus the colors could be off...  (Actually I'm
using a profile I've found on the net that matches the laptop and
display panel.)

The more plausible cause could be that I've dialed `0.9` for the
tint value in white-balance, thus towards red.  I've done that because
the neutral value seemed to greenish to me.

I'll try both suggestions and see what I get out.


 Other than the colors, I'm not sure what I should be looking at -  ie I
 don't see any compositional elements - line, shape, form etc

Unfortunately I agree about the lack of composition in my picture.
 It's more a snapshot of the autumn colors while on the road, made
from the single vantage point I've had access to (although this
doesn't make a good excuse).

(In fact since I've got the K-30 this spring I've been
photographing mostly city-scapes and mid-day landscapes, thus the
first change I got to catch something more colorful I was itching to
put it out.)


 Colors in my area - Michigan - are muted in comparison to previous years

As both Bob and Jack observed, indeed the colors are quite muted
because of the haze.  That and the fact that the trees have just
started to change color.


Thanks for the observations,
Ciprian.

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Re: PESO: Autumn-scapes :)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun
ciprian.crac...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 10:12 PM,  kwal...@peoplepc.com wrote:

 I have a couple of comments that should improve this image -

 Comments are always welcomed, especially those critical, thus let's see...


 I'd crop out the blank sky as it doesn't add anything to the image.

 The initial image is an APS-C format (3:2 aspect ratio), which
 I've already cropped to a 2:1 aspect ration while keeping the full
 width.  Thus I was quite afraid of cutting even more of the sky.


 And
 while I wasn't there the red cast, especially in the sky doesn't seem real
 in this case.

 The more plausible cause could be that I've dialed `0.9` for the
 tint value in white-balance, thus towards red.  I've done that because
 the neutral value seemed to greenish to me.

 I'll try both suggestions and see what I get out.


OK, I've tried to correct some of the mentioned flaws (i.e. remove
the red cast, crop the sky tighter) and the result is:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/27a43bb4cc3bcb9c/variant-b--x800.jpg


I've also tried to enhance the saturation in a third try:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/27a43bb4cc3bcb9c/variant-c--x800.jpg


And the larger variants (~3.5 MiB) are:

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/27a43bb4cc3bcb9c/variant-b--x1080.jpg

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/27a43bb4cc3bcb9c/variant-c--x1080.jpg


Ciprian.

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Re: PESO: Autumn-scapes :)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 11:15 PM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun
ciprian.crac...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 10:12 PM,  kwal...@peoplepc.com wrote:

 Other than the colors, I'm not sure what I should be looking at -  ie I
 don't see any compositional elements - line, shape, form etc

 Unfortunately I agree about the lack of composition in my picture.
  It's more a snapshot of the autumn colors while on the road, made
 from the single vantage point I've had access to (although this
 doesn't make a good excuse).

 (In fact since I've got the K-30 this spring I've been
 photographing mostly city-scapes and mid-day landscapes, thus the
 first change I got to catch something more colorful I was itching to
 put it out.)


Let's see if the other snapshot taken from the same vantage point
is better from a composition point of view.

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/44ff10a8138027c8/variant-a--x800.jpg

And the larger variant (~3.5 MiB)

  
http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/44ff10a8138027c8/variant-a--x1080.jpg

Ciprian.

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Re: PESO: Autumn-scapes :)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 7:03 AM,  kwal...@peoplepc.com wrote:
 The third try seems more realistic to me.


I can assure you that the colors weren't so saturated in reality.
In fact I think that even `variant-b` is more saturated than in
reality.  Or it could be that my monitor pumps the colors too much,
and thus it tricks me.

But if it works like that and doesn't seem overdone, then it's perfect. :)

Ciprian.

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Re: PESO: Too much post-processing?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

First thanks to all those that answered!

Before commenting a little on the replies, I'd like to make a few
observations:

(A) Indeed I've overdone the saturation (or chromacity how
it's named in RawTherapee's LAB panel), but not by too much,
because...

(B) Because I think I've stumbled upon an out-of-gammut
nightmare...  After soft-profing the pictures in Gimp (by using the
monitor, from a Lenovo X1, profile as a printer profile) I've
concluded that all the red roses are way out of the monitor's gamut,
for both variants.  Thus one potential source for wrong colors could
be the monitor capabilities...  (Initially I've processed the images
on an full sRGB gammut Dell monitor...)

(C) However the nightmare then morphs into a color-managed
madness, because it seems that looking at the variant `a` without a
color-managed application the water drops are nice and sparkly;
however once you enable color management (especially on a monitor with
a smaller gammut than sRGB) the roses start to turn purple, and the
water drops lose blend into the petals.  However variant `b` is a
little purple-ish with or without color management (due to the
mentioned oversaturation).  (The embedded profiles are sRGB standard
for `a` and sRGB-with-black-scaling for `b`.)

BTW, image `a` was the `dcraw` one, and `b` was the over-processed one.

Now some comments below.


On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:42 AM, Darren Addy pixelsmi...@gmail.com wrote:
 Well, I very much prefer version -a.
 Look at the water droplets on the in-focus rose (front petals). On -a
 you can see the highlights from the sky. In -b they just turn into
 pink (almost single color) blobs.

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 2:04 AM, Bruce Walker bruce.wal...@gmail.com wrote:
 I agree with Darren: -a version is better. The reds look oversaturated
 and blown out in -b.

I'm guessing that your observations are mainly caused by the
points expressed above.

However you are both right and I should have payed more attention
to the water drops (which I've completely ignored during
post-processing) as they are an important element in the image.


On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 2:38 AM, Eric Weir eew...@bellsouth.net wrote:

 Thus I would like some help in this matter:  do you think I've
 overdone the fine touches?

 http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/747077f330c992ad-a.jpg

 I like this one. In the other the subject seems isolated, just hanging in the 
 air.

In fact, making the rose pop-out of the monitor is exactly what
I've wanted to obtain, by lowering the saturation and brightness of
the background and raising that of the foreground.

However it seems I've overdone in this respect also.  :)


On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 4:29 AM, Rick Womer rwomer1...@yahoo.com wrote:

 I surmise that the first one had the adjustments made.  I like it better, 
 though both are beautiful.

 Both files are very large, though, and almost completely fill my 
 1200-pixel-high 24in monitor.  For the sake of people using laptops (and 
 phones!), it's good to keep pix to about 700 pixels high, 120 pixels/inch, 
 and about 250K overall.

I'll take the image size comment into consideration for the next time.

Thanks all,
Ciprian.

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PESO: Too much post-processing?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hello there!  (I hope to keep this mail short...)

Two weekends ago during a rainy day I was out photographing.
Unfortunately I didn't got too many photos, and none that I'm too glad
of.  However I found one that during post-processing made me wonder
about how visible or heavy my retouches are...

Thus I would like some help in this matter:  do you think I've
overdone the fine touches?

http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/747077f330c992ad-a.jpg

http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/bdf753de58c560bc/747077f330c992ad-b.jpg

For comparison I've included the two variants of the same photo
above:  one obtained with a simple `dcraw` from the RAW (auto
white-balance, etc. plus resize), and the second one my retouched
variant in RawTherapee.  However I won't say which is which just to
keep the experiment unbiased.  (But just don't peek into the Exif
info.) :)

Thanks,
Ciprian.


P.S.:  I must note that by post-processing I mean just raw
conversion in RawTherapee with LAB touches, sharpening and noise
reduction.  No tone-mapping and other color madness.

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Re: Linux RAW editor/manager? (was Re: OT - Lightzone Open Source Photo Editor (Windows, Linux))

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 5:02 AM, Aahz Maruch a...@pobox.com wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 04, 2013, Ciprian Dorin Craciun wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 6:14 PM, Aahz Maruch a...@pobox.com wrote:

 Anyone have other suggestions for a Linux RAW editor/manager?

 Although I've looked through all the replies, I didn't see some of
 the Linux solutions out there.  Thus I'll try to list them here (in
 order of my preference):

 * http://www.rawtherapee.com/ -- Raw Therapee;  (I've only used this 
 one;)
 * http://www.darktable.org/ -- darktable;  (second runner,
 although not that many knobs and switches;)

 * http://geeqie.sourceforge.net/ -- Geeqie;  (I use it to browse
 through all my photos, and to pre-select them; is able to read RAW;)

 Thanks!  I've been poking at the various options, originally I tried and
 discarded Geeqie but gave it a second chance when someone else
 recommended it (on the Darktable list, actually).  I like that it's fast
 and provides a nice histogram overlay.  I wish it did some really really
 basic photo editing (mostly just exposure compensation) to get a rough
 sense for how much detail is present before switching to a real editor.

The fact that Geeqie doesn't have (built-in) any way to retouch
my photos is a big plus for me, because I'm certain not alter my
photos by mistake.  :)  Although I suspect that DigiKam, Shotwell and
the rest don't actually touch the JPEG's, but instead store the
updates in separate files somewhere, and only upon request they
actually update the files.  However for RAW I find this useless.

About the histogram in case of RAW photos, I think it's the
embedded JPEG (or the converted JPEG maybe?) histogram, and not the
actual raw one...  And because I try to practice ETTR this would
have been very useful to me...

However on the bright side, I've recently discovered that it's
capable of color management (ICC), and has a very nice feature to
display multiple photos side-by-side, which could help me decide
between multiple almost identical copies.


 I haven't decided between Darktable and RawTherapee -- my impression is
 that RawTherapee is easier to use, but Darktable is faster and has more
 features.  I'm curious why you claimed that Darktable has fewer knobs and
 switches, when was the last time you tried it?

 http://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/photography/DarktableVsRawtherapee

 I should probably sit down and really try to process about a hundred
 images with each.

Yes, I've read that comparison between them, and as said I haven't
tried Darktable not even for one photo.  I've made my decision a
couple of months ago simply based on a first impression of the UI
layout and behaviour (and I still stand by that decision).


Today I've reopened Darktable again and here are the first
differences I found:

* indeed Darktable seems to have more knobs although they aren't
enabled by default, and you have to go through modules to get them;
however even in Rawtherapee I find myself using only color profiles,
white balance, crop  resize, noise reduction, sharpness, exposure
compensation, black point, and LAB curves (in this order);  thus more
knobs or not doesn't make a big difference now;

* a plus on Darktable's side is the fact that I can filter and see
only those modules actually used;  or that I can star the modules
I use the most;

* both have long menus of knobs and you need to scroll through
them;  if you use a scroll wheel (or equivalent on laptop pad), in
Darktable you must scroll on the scroll bar itself or you'll change
the settings if you are over a knob;  in Rawtherapee you can scroll
anywhere in the side bar and you'll only move the menu up or down, and
not touch the values;  almost a tie breaker for me;

* because I'm a developer I don't use the mouse too often, and I
prefer the keyboard;  in Rawtherapee I can move with tab between the
various knobs and I can type in my value;  in Darktable the keyboard
is almost useless;  moreover in Rawtherapee a lot of things have
key-bindings;

* in Rawtherapee there is a reset button next to each knob to
put it in default state (very useful when you play around with knobs);
 Darktable doesn't seem to have one for each individual knob, but only
for the overall module;  on the other side Rawtherapee is missing the
overall module reset button;  thus a tie :)

* in Darktable I didn't find a way to display the actual raw
histogram; (linear is not the actual raw one;)  I find this essential
especially when toying with ETTR;

* Rawtherapee's interface seems to be more conservative about
space (it has tighter margins for sidebars, etc.) however it has more
space between the various sliders;  Darktable is the reverse: crammed
sliders (now combine that with the scroll frenzy)... :)  for example
in Darktable almost 10-15% of my screen height is eaten just by the
logo and the overall menu and the photos strip at the bottom which I
would care less when focusing

Re: Linux RAW editor/manager? (was Re: OT - Lightzone Open Source Photo Editor (Windows, Linux))

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 6:14 PM, Aahz Maruch a...@pobox.com wrote:
 Anyone have other suggestions for a Linux RAW editor/manager?


Although I've looked through all the replies, I didn't see some of
the Linux solutions out there.  Thus I'll try to list them here (in
order of my preference):

* http://www.rawtherapee.com/ -- Raw Therapee;  (I've only used this one;)
* http://www.darktable.org/ -- darktable;  (second runner,
although not that many knobs and switches;)
* http://rawstudio.org/ -- RawStudio;
* http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/ -- UFRaw;  (this goes well with Gimp;)
* http://www.digikam.org/ -- digiKam;  (it seems this one is
geared towards photo management;)
* http://photivo.org/ -- Photivo;
* http://lightzoneproject.org/ -- LightZone;  (didn't try it;)
* http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/ -- dcraw;  (command
line, backend for most;)
* http://www.libraw.org/ -- libraw;  (library, backend for some other;)


Moreover related to the subject, I could also recommend the following:

* http://geeqie.sourceforge.net/ -- Geeqie;  (I use it to browse
through all my photos, and to pre-select them; is able to read RAW;)
* http://www.yorba.org/projects/shotwell -- Shotwell;  (it's
lightweight and you could use it to fetch and manage your photos;)
* http://www.testcams.com/rawshack -- Rawshack;  (RAW file
statistical analyzer;)
* http://www.imagemagick.org/ -- Image Magick;
* http://www.graphicsmagick.org/ -- Graphics Magick;  (a better?
version of the above?)


Maybe also some interesting articles on the topic of Linux and RAW:

* 
http://www.freedupthoughts.com/2012/06/rawtherapee-lightroom-for-linux.html
-- Rawtherapee -- Lightroom For Linux;
* http://cks.mef.org/space/rtblog/photography/PhotoWorkflow -- My
current photo processing workflow (as of June 2010);

Hope it helps,
Ciprian.


P.S.: I've started collecting things I read about digital
photography on my wiki (including the links from above).

  http://wiki.volution.ro/CiprianDorinCraciun/Notes/Public/Photography

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Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hello all!

I've been struggling twice so far to obtain the so called UniWB
on a Pentax K-30, but without any real success so far.

Has anyone been able to succeed at this? (And maybe share a raw
photo that has the appropriate WB settings?)


I've tried the method described on
http://www.guillermoluijk.com/tutorial/uniwb/index_en.htm , and I've
obtained the coefficients: (RGB) 0.98 1.00 1.00 or 1.01 1.00 1.02.
(Coefficients are obtained by running `dcraw -i -w -v ./photo.dng`,
and also checked against the output of `rawshack`.)

However when using any of these WB settings, the in-camera
histogram just ignores the blue channel (although in RAW it exists and
is well exposed)...


I've then tried a more sane approach: I've played with the
manual WB by setting the temperature (in Kelvin) and the bias, and see
what coefficients I obtain. The best one (i.e. closer to 1) I've
obtained (RGB) 1.51 1.00 1.51, for 3700K and a bias towards green and
a little towards blue (I think).


Moreover I've also set the following knobs in the hopes that the
histogram is more liniar:
* custom image to neutral;
* contrast to the extreme left (i.e. negative value);
* high/low adj to the extreme left (i.e. negative value); (I
don't exactly know what this implies, but the result is satisfying;)

I've compared the resulting JPEG histogram with the actual RAW
histogram and these settings seemed the closest (by a visual
interpretation, however without taking into account WB).

I don't know yet how to handle the following:
* saturation --- some say that it should be set to the left;
* sharpness --- what is the difference in Pentax between
sharpness and fine sharpness;
* high/low adj. --- what does it actually do?

Is there a more in depth documentation about the implication of
all these? (The K-30 manual is a little bit sketchy and shallow on
these subjects...)


As seen I'm a little bit puzzled, however I'm confident that given
time I'll figure things out.

Thanks,
Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 6:21 PM, Charles Robinson charl...@visi.com wrote:
 On May 22, 2013, at 09:37 , Ciprian Dorin Craciun ciprian.crac...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
I've been struggling twice so far to obtain the so called UniWB
 on a Pentax K-30, but without any real success so far.

 I'm sorry that I don't have any help for you on this other than to ask: why?

 It sounds like you are going through a lot of work and calculations to 
 accomplish.. what, exactly?


I guess Matthew Hunt perfectly described the why behind the
UniWB technique.

Now off-topic a little bit to describe my personal context in all this:
* I perfectly understand that what makes the difference between a
good and ordinary photo is mainly composition (and to a less
extent the hardware and technicalities, although they can help a lot);
* I am quite new to shooting RAW (for example only now I've found
about ETTR and UniWB), although I'm not quite new to amateur digital
photography; (I've had a small bridge since 2006 which also had RAW,
but the manual settings were quite difficult to tweak;)
* because I do photography only as a hobby, I have the time to
fiddle with the camera and then develop the resulting RAW's;


Otherwise I perfectly agree with you that for average shooting
what I'm trying to do is an overkill, and most likely could lead to
bad results. (I'm also pretty certain that until I completely
understand how all these techniques work and get some practice, my
shots will be well sub-ordinary.)


On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 7:06 PM, Charles Robinson charl...@visi.com wrote:
 On May 22, 2013, at 10:52 , Matthew Hunt m...@pobox.com wrote:

 UniWB, as I understand it, is an effort to find a set of camera
 settings (white balance, etc.) that makes the displayed histogram come
 as close as possible to this ideal.

 Ugh - sounds like a lot of work.

:) Well it is... I've already lost about two days without a
concrete result...


 For the K30 (and K5), there is so much exposure latitude that if you're 
 really worried about oversaturation, just underexpose by a stop.. or two.. 
 or three.. and bring the levels up to what you'd like to see in post.  Job 
 done!

The underexposure is exactly the problem: in most cases although
the JPEG (or the embedded JPEG in the RAW that we see the histogram
for) is overexposed, the actual RAW data is under exposed, to the
point that almost 25% of the histogram contains nothing.

That is why on the contrary, when shooting RAW, it is recommended
to overexpose the picture by 1-3 stops. The only problem is to know
how much? (Because the histogram is pointless now.)


 Otherwise it seems to me like so much fussing and stressing to get the right 
 histogram that you've forgotten that the reason you have a camera is to take 
 photos.

:) Yup. I agree.

However picture this, when shooting RAW it's just like shooting
without a histogram: you don't know what you get until you open the
files on the computer.

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 7:18 PM, Darren Addy pixelsmi...@gmail.com wrote:
 I'd like to thank Ciprian for his question, without which I would have
 been unaware of UniWB. After a bit of reading (
 http://www.malch.com/nikon/UniWB.html ) I can see why some bother to
 try it,

:) No problem.

A little bit of self-promotion: I've kept a list of all the things
related with digital photography that I've read and I've found
interesting or useful:

  http://wiki.volution.ro/CiprianDorinCraciun/Notes/Public/Photography


 however for the way I work I'm afraid it would cause more
 problems than it would solve. I tend to shoot RAW+ and often just use
 the JPEG. (I like to have the RAW available in case I get something
 really good that I want to bring out more in post-processing - or,
 conversely, something is blown in the JPEG that I'd like to recover
 from the RAW). The distortion of the JPEG by the UniWB process would
 be unacceptable to me.

Yes. Unfortunately this is the drawback, the resulting JPEG from
the camera would be pretty useless, as it would get all green and
without any contrast...


 Related? a good article to read, with some good suggestions would be
 this one by Thom Hogan on Magic Camera Settings:
 http://www.bythom.com/magicsettings.htm

Yup. Read it. Loved it.

It pretty much says: don't ask for magic settings, know your
camera, know what you try to achieve. :)

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 7:32 PM, Charles Robinson charl...@visi.com wrote:
 However - in real-world shooting: I've been shooting RAW since about March of 
 2008 - starting with my K10D, then the K7, and now the K5.  I've never had a 
 problem with not knowing what I get.  The images largely just work, 
 especially now with the K5 and its more-accurate metering and much-wider 
 exposure latitude.

 Certainly it's worked closely-enough that I can rely on the crappy JPEG 
 preview of the image to know that I'm in the right ballpark.

I just wonder what you mean by worked closely-enough? Have you
tweaked some settings to get the JPEG much closer to the raw image?


 I'd advocate not worrying about it until you come into a situation where the 
 lack of specifics causes you grief (not MEASURE grief, but the inability to 
 use the image) and then you can worry about fixing the problem.

I think that in landscape (or outdoor) photography, where there
is a lot of dynamic range, I could encounter this situation pretty
often. (Although I think I have to do something really wrong to get an
unusable photo...)

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 8:41 PM, Bruce Walker bruce.wal...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun
 ciprian.crac...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 6:21 PM, Charles Robinson charl...@visi.com wrote:

 For the K30 (and K5), there is so much exposure latitude that if you're 
 really worried about oversaturation, just underexpose by a stop.. or 
 two.. or three.. and bring the levels up to what you'd like to see in post. 
  Job done!

 The underexposure is exactly the problem: in most cases although
 the JPEG (or the embedded JPEG in the RAW that we see the histogram
 for) is overexposed, the actual RAW data is under exposed, to the
 point that almost 25% of the histogram contains nothing.

 Since this strange effect only occurs after you tweak the camera
 settings to achieve this elusive UniWB thing, I'd respectfully suggest
 reseting your JPEG settings back to normal.

On the contrary, this effect I've noted is **before** making any
special settings, i.e. straight normal settings.


 In software development there's a concept of premature optimization
 where the sufferer attempts to optimize perceived bottlenecks at the
 micro-level and fails to step back to look at the big picture. It
 generally comes about when somebody says That code could be rewritten
 to be faster when it's not at all clear doing so would actually help
 the system in any measurable way.

Yup, I know about this (I'm in IT too). However the accent in IT
is on premature, profiling (thus measurement), gains vs development
costs, etc.

In this case it is not premature (because the problem is known,
although not that serious for most people), the measurement is there
(i.e. how much does the in-camera JPEG histogram look like the real
histogram, and this can be computed with software), the costs are
marginal (if someone already managed to do it as he can share a
picture with those settings), and the gains are worth it.

(There are also drawbacks, like more time to fiddle in
post-processing, etc.)


 This sounds to me like the camera equivalent for you. That UniWB page
 should come with a warning label that it may lead some folks
 completely astray. :-)

Yup, it does come with that warning label on every page I've seen about it.


 The default histogram is a very useful guide but is by no means a
 precision instrument. If you want more exposure precision get a good
 lightmeter.

I don't think a better light meter (as compared with the in-camera
one) would help much, because UniWB is coupled with ETTR (expose to
the right, i.e. overexpose), thus I don't know how much over-exposure
should I use until I blow everything way over to the right. :)

Thanks for the feedback,
Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Boris Liberman bori...@gmail.com 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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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 10:16 PM, George Sinos gsi...@gmail.com wrote:
 Everyone will enjoy the hobby in their own way.  If you're into
 Landscape photography I'll suggest that, until you figure out the
 details of UniWB, you'll probably find it simpler and more useful
 bracket your exposures.  Even after you figure out the settings for
 UniWB you'll probably do that anyway.

 Frankly, even if I thought my metering was perfect I would still
 bracket the exposures.  The technically perfect exposure is often not
 the artistically most desirable result, and I like having options.

Indeed bracketing would be one solution, and I basically do
manual bracketing (i.e. I take a photo, look at the histogram, and
try to compensate for exposure) thus I end up with more than three.
However I'll have to try with exposure bracketing.

Just out of curiosity: how much do you bracket? 1/2 stops, 1 stop?


 I'm not trying to discourage you from pursuing your technical goals.
 If that's what you enjoy, by all means do it.  I'm just saying that
 photography is a much less precise pursuit than you might think if you
 read a lot of discussions on the Internet.

It is perfectly clear to me that photography is an experimental
and empirical endeavor, and not a controlled laboratory experiment. :)


 Thom Hogan writes quite a bit about UniWB in his guides for the
 various Nikon camera models.  To paraphrase Hogan, UniWB makes little
 or no difference unless you are shooting in high contrast oddly lit
 situations.  If you set the camera white balance close to how you will
 eventually render the photo, the R, G and B channel histograms will be
 close enough.

 [...]

 He recommends that UniWB be saved as one of the custom WB's and used
 when you think you might need it.

And this is exactly what I've done:
* I've saved a custom WB (this should be UniWB when I get it) in
custom WB 3;
* then my K-30 has two custom user-modes where one I've called
RAW (manual mode, fixed ISO, RAW, WB set to custom WB 3, etc.) and
the other Auto (aperture mode, range ISO, RAW+, auto WB, etc.);

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 12:50 AM, Bruce Walker bruce.wal...@gmail.com wrote:
 The underexposure is exactly the problem: in most cases although
 the JPEG (or the embedded JPEG in the RAW that we see the histogram
 for) is overexposed, the actual RAW data is under exposed, to the
 point that almost 25% of the histogram contains nothing.

 Since this strange effect only occurs after you tweak the camera
 settings to achieve this elusive UniWB thing, I'd respectfully suggest
 reseting your JPEG settings back to normal.

 On the contrary, this effect I've noted is **before** making any
 special settings, i.e. straight normal settings.

 Ciprian, can you describe a scene or circumstances in which you have
 observed this very odd behavior? Maybe an example image? I'm
 non-plussed because in all of my shooting I've _never_ experienced
 that. And I can safely say that I've shot in just about every known
 lighting condition. [Known to me. :-)]

At the link below you'll find the following:
* the `.dng` which is the raw image; (this is the only option for
K-30 for RAW;)
* the `.jpeg` from the camera; (I was shooting RAW+;)
* the `.thumb.jpg` which is the extracted JPEG from the `.dng` via `dcraw`;
* the `.ppm` obtained from `dcraw` without WB;
* the `.txt` obtained from `rawshack`;

  http://data.volution.ro/ciprian/e3a8d2a8f1098b9053f28369c7a42a36/

The picture was taken in a bright morning, at a distance of about
30cm, without touching any of the image parameters except of shooting
in RAW, and manual mode. (This is the best out of other shots.)


Although I must make a small correction to my initial statement: I
was under the wrong impression that the RAW was **completely**
underexposed, which seems it was not the case. However in half of the
higher levels (from 1024 to 4095) there lies less 10% of the pixels,
meanwhile the midlevels (256 to 1024) contain almost 50% of the
pixels. (I've taken the red channel as the scene is dominated by red.)

However my main statement that the JPEG is blown out, meanwhile
the RAW is somewhat underexposed still holds, as by looking at the
JPEG histogram you have the impression of an overblown red channel,
meanwhile the raw histogram says otherwise.


 Now elsewhere you have explained that you want to doctor or calibrate
 your histogram in aid of calculating exposures for doing ETTR. You
 might want to consider that ETTR is considered by many to be no longer
 relevant and even harmful. I don't follow the notion anymore myself.

 Have you read this?

 http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/10/expose-to-the-right-is-a-bunch-of-bull.html

Interesting. I've not read it. I'll have to go through it.

Thanks for the pointer! (I'm still learning, thus if there are
also other pointers on the subject please send me a link.)


 Even doing nothing but RAW shooting I know that once you clip your
 highlights, they are gone. Pure white. No recovery possible. Complete
 loss of value.

Yup, I've learned this the hard way, as one night while doing some
long exposures to a lightened fountain (and trying to practice ETTR)
I've blown the water columns, and all my photos (except two) were
completely useless (and even those two were so-so)...

 Possibly still okay for showing to your parents. :-)

Yup, they loved those overblown photos. Parents: they can't be
objective with their children... :D

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 12:50 AM, Bruce Walker bruce.wal...@gmail.com wrote:
 Now elsewhere you have explained that you want to doctor or calibrate
 your histogram in aid of calculating exposures for doing ETTR. You
 might want to consider that ETTR is considered by many to be no longer
 relevant and even harmful. I don't follow the notion anymore myself.

 Have you read this?

 http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2011/10/expose-to-the-right-is-a-bunch-of-bull.html

 Even doing nothing but RAW shooting I know that once you clip your
 highlights, they are gone. Pure white. No recovery possible. Complete
 loss of value. Possibly still okay for showing to your parents. :-)


Ok. I've quickly read the article, and as I understand it it boils
down to this:

(A) Since ETTR was introduced noise in shadows was reduced. (Thus
there goes the initial motivation of ETTR.)

(B) In case of high contrast scenes it is better to underexpose to
catch a larger range of highlights instead of blowing them out to
white.


Now about (B) it makes a lot of sense in night scenes where there
is artificial lightning mainly because the main subject of those
photos are some lightened objects, thus we don't want to overexpose
those. And as said previously I've learned this the hard way.
(Moreover as the author says the same applies to other cases where we
have high contrast.)


But with (A) I tend to disagree somewhat... Although noise got
better at lower ISO and / or in more expensive cameras, in consumer
cameras like my K-30 the story is somewhat different: at ISO 800 the
noise is perceptible, and at ISO 1600 it becomes bothersome in
shadows. Thus if the scene permits me I would gladly try to apply ETTR
to save some of that noise. (Of course if I get to higher ISO, it
means my lightning is poor, thus most likely I must use a tripod or
some place to put my camera onto.)

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 in-camera RAW histogram approximation (UniWB, various tweaks)

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 4:35 AM, Bruce Walker bruce.wal...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun
 ciprian.crac...@gmail.com wrote:
 Although I must make a small correction to my initial statement: I
 was under the wrong impression that the RAW was **completely**
 underexposed, which seems it was not the case. However in half of the
 higher levels (from 1024 to 4095) there lies less 10% of the pixels,
 meanwhile the midlevels (256 to 1024) contain almost 50% of the
 pixels. (I've taken the red channel as the scene is dominated by red.)

 There's a huge difference between bright/dark images and
 over/under-exposure. And I've heard of pixel-peeping, but
 histogram-counting?

This is a good one histogram-counting. :)

In fact it is histogram-counting only after the fact and only to
support my claim.

Although I must admit that I do tend to watch more at the
histogram and peep for blown pixels, than to watch at the actual scene
I got.  Thus many times although I get decent exposure I find that the
scene was compromised by having included or cropped certain objects.


 However my main statement that the JPEG is blown out, meanwhile
 the RAW is somewhat underexposed still holds, as by looking at the
 JPEG histogram you have the impression of an overblown red channel,
 meanwhile the raw histogram says otherwise.

 This RAW image is pretty much perfectly exposed. Emphasis on
 _perfectly_. No clipping of highlights; trace clipping of shadows;
 data spread nicely across the entire histogram. It's a really great
 exposure -- and a very good looking plant too, by the way.

 An _excellent_ exposure.

The fact that it is an excellent exposure is because I've taken
about 8 shots with various compensation levels and selected this one
afterwards by looking on my computer on how good the exposure was.
However in camera I couldn't have been able to decide between at least
half of these exposures.


 Now, I stand by my original rebuttal: toss your UniWB crud and go
 shooting. What you need is less theory and more practice. :-)

I have a mixed feeling about this. :)

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 home-made cable release?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 9:04 PM, John Sessoms jsessoms...@nc.rr.com wrote:
 As a side note about costs, in Romania where I live, the CS-205
 from Pentax costs about 35 pounds (after roughly applying exchange
 rate), and the home made parts at most 2 pounds. I don't want to be
 cheep, but paying for the CS-205 almost 10% of the camera cost seems a
 little bit too much... (And unfortunately there is only one Pentax
 reseller.)

 How about Amazon.com (Amazon.co.uk) from the UK? Is that considered
 inside the EU for customs purposes? It looks like they can ship to Romania.

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=524836

Yup, Amazon.co.uk does deliver and it doesn't need customs.


 They have a Remote Release Switch Cable RS-60E3 for Canon EOS Digital
 Rebel that will work with Pentax DSLRs. The fine print says Compatible
 with: ...Pentax (Replacement for CS-205),
 K10D/K110D/K100D/K20D/K200D/KM, *ist D/DS/DS2/DL/DL2/K10, MZ-6, MZ-L,
 ZX-L, ...

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remote-Release-Switch-RS-60E3-Digital/dp/B007SNK6YM/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronicsie=UTF8qid=1368640099sr=1-1keywords=Remote+switch+for+canon+digital+rebel

Thanks! Now this is acceptable. :) I think I'll order it.

Thanks,
Ciprian.

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Pentax K-30 home-made cable release?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Hello all!

I was just wondering if anyone managed to build a home-made
variant of the cable release for the Pentax K-30?

I've found the following links:

  http://www.hobbymaker.narod.ru/English/Articles/cable_sw_eng.htm
  http://poildegris.free.fr/electronique/CS205/
  http://www.photosig.com/articles/1088/article
  http://www.digisniper.com/photography/tutorials/advanced/

However it doesn't seem to work for me...

From what I've seen I get 3V voltage between the middle contact
and ground (contact A and B in the image below), but no voltage
between C and B, or A and B for that matter. (And just coupling A and
B doesn't either focus or shot the image, neither does C and B. I
haven't tried all three together.)

  http://www.photosig.com/articles/1088/CS-205-schema.gif

Any hints here?

Thanks,
Ciprian.


P.S.: Initially I've sent this email to the Pentax users mailing
list (Yahoo), but so far no answers (granted since yesterday), and I
hope I have more luck on this one. :)

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Re: Pentax K-30 home-made cable release?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 8:21 PM, Larry Colen l...@red4est.com wrote:
 Pentax uses the same cable release as the low end Canon cameras,
 so they are available premade for less than the individual parts
 cost from places like linkdelight, dealextreme, ephotoinc etc.

I didn't know about the compatibility with Cannon (someone else
also suggested this on the pentax-users mailing list).


I'll check both E-bay, DealExtreme, etc., unfortunately there are
a few disadvantages:
* I hope they ship in Romania;
* it will take forever to get them; (2-3 weeks at least if from China;)
* I'll have to go to customs (if not shipped from EU), and I have
no idea what fee they'll apply (it also depends on the customs officer
mood);


 I recently splurged and paid $20 or so for the intervalometer version.

There is a single Pentax reseller in Romania that has it, and as
I've said on the pentax-users mailing list:

As a side note about costs, in Romania where I live, the CS-205
from Pentax costs about 35 pounds (after roughly applying exchange
rate), and the home made parts at most 2 pounds. I don't want to be
cheep, but paying for the CS-205 almost 10% of the camera cost seems a
little bit too much... (And unfortunately there is only one Pentax
reseller.)


This means roughly 50 US$ only for the basic CS-205 version...

Ciprian.

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Re: Pentax K-30 home-made cable release?

[Ciprian Dorin Craciun]

Ok. Based on the feedback I've received, I've managed to make it work:
* the previously cited articles are correct, and they work on the
K-30; thus based on the schema below, to focus connect A and B, and
for trigger both A, B and C together (only B and C doesn't work);
  http://www.photosig.com/articles/1088/CS-205-schema.gif
* for the focus to work it must be enabled in the custom functions
menu (search for the entry with remote control in the name);

Ciprian.


On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Ciprian Dorin Craciun
ciprian.crac...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hello all!

 I was just wondering if anyone managed to build a home-made
 variant of the cable release for the Pentax K-30?

 I've found the following links:

   http://www.hobbymaker.narod.ru/English/Articles/cable_sw_eng.htm
   http://poildegris.free.fr/electronique/CS205/
   http://www.photosig.com/articles/1088/article
   http://www.digisniper.com/photography/tutorials/advanced/

 However it doesn't seem to work for me...

 From what I've seen I get 3V voltage between the middle contact
 and ground (contact A and B in the image below), but no voltage
 between C and B, or A and B for that matter. (And just coupling A and
 B doesn't either focus or shot the image, neither does C and B. I
 haven't tried all three together.)

   http://www.photosig.com/articles/1088/CS-205-schema.gif

 Any hints here?

 Thanks,
 Ciprian.


 P.S.: Initially I've sent this email to the Pentax users mailing
 list (Yahoo), but so far no answers (granted since yesterday), and I
 hope I have more luck on this one. :)

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