Shutterfinger

The Pentax K-7: Post-review Reflections

This is the Masonic Temple in Center City Philadelphia, shot with a Pentax K-7 and 35mm f/2.8 Macro DA at ISO 100. If you think this JPEG looks good you should see the print!

As most of you know, I finished a 3-part review of the Pentax K-7 for Mike Johnston’s TOP blog a few weeks ago. Although I pointed out a few weakness, such as the sometimes bewildering number of menu options, distracting noise at high ISOs when shooting JPEGs, and slow AF speed in low light, the review was positive.

And why not? I judge a camera by how much I enjoy using it to take pictures, not by how it looks on paper or how “inferior” it is to a camera I can’t afford or would never buy because it’s too big and heavy. My experience has been (and still is) that there are few practical situations for which the K-7 is not be up to the task. The trick is knowing how to get the best out of it. Now that I’d had the chance to get even more familiar with it, here are a few tips and observations I’d like to pass along to anyone else interested in how to do so.

It Doesn't Have to Be in Color

This is the original photograph. Although it's not riotously colorful, I found my eye tended to get too fixated on the umbrella rather than roaming the rest of the image.

I guess you don't need me to tell you that this is the black and white version. Compare it to the color version above. Does your eye roam more and fixate less on the umbrella? I hope so.

I've been shooting and printing in black and white for most of my photographic career. Even so, now that I do the bulk of my work with digital cameras I sometimes forget that black and white is still an option. Depending on the subject, it may even be the best option. The trick is knowing when to convert to black and white and when to leave well enough alone.

I think I made the right decision with the photo above. Color would seem the natural choice for a carnival, but in this particular case I thought it made the image look too busy. There were too many different colors and shapes competiting for attention. By removing the color and balancing out the tones I thought I might simplify the composition and strengthen the impact of the shapes. I'll let you be the judge of how well I succeeded, but if nothing else this is a reminder that black and white is always an option, even when it's derived from the most colorful of scenes.

Pentax K-7 Review on TOP

I just thought I'd let you loyal readers know that Mike Johnston over at The Online Photographer has published the first of a three-part review I'm writing on the Pentax K-7. If you're wondering why I didn't publish it here it's because he has a much larger readership. He therefore has more access to companies interested in loaning equipment. I encourage you to check out the review but remember to visit here for non-equipment related postings.

If Hardly Anyone Prints Anymore Then...?

I had to throw away half of the original pixels to re-size this photo for this post. If this is the only "print" I ever make, then so what?

In a previous post I asked whether anyone prints anymore. Some of us still take great pleasure in doing so, but a surprising number of us don't print much, if at all, and apparently don't feel the need.

This fact prompts the following question: Why then are so many of us so fixated on the number of megapixels a camera can cram into an image? Even a 30-inch diagonal LCD monitor is capable of displaying only 2560 x 1600 pixels, which is the equivalent of roughly 4.3MP. A more common 19-inch monitor would display 1680 × 1050 pixels, give or take a few dozen pixels or so. Unless you size your photos to cover the entire screen you'd need even less than the maximum--so why the thirst for megapixels?

I can understand the desire for high-resolution if you're shooting landscapes and you're making poster-sized prints, but otherwise, why collect oversized files that consume hard drive space and become a pain to archive? Am I missing something here? If so, please enlighten me.

You Are Becoming Unnecessary

You knew it had to happen. It started with automatic film wind, then steadily advanced to auto-exposure, auto-loading, auto-flash, auto-focus, auto white balance, and auto-ISO. Now, with Sony's recent announcement of the IPT-DS1 camera dock accessory for its Party-shot digicams, we have reached the ultimate stage in automation: a camera that will frame, focus and  take pictures automatically, without the aid of a photographer. Once attached to the IPT-DS1 dock, the Party-shot will be able to pan 360 degrees and tilts 24 degrees, automatically detect faces, adjust composition and take photos for you.

I must confess the news has made me mildly depressed. I suspect it's only a matter of time before some tech company creates a machine that will automatically write blog posts and do a better job of it than I can. Until then, I'm going to remove all the batteries from my cameras, just to be safe. You never know...

Does Anyone Print Anymore?

This would probably make a lovely print--as long as I didn't mind watching half the capacity of my black ink cartridge disappear as the paper moves through the printer. Unfortunately, I do mind. That print will have to wait a while.

Back in the ancient past, when film was king, there were only two ways to view your photographs. If you were using negative film you had to print them. If you were using transparency film you didn't have to make prints but often did, because the alternatives--slide projection or looking through a loupe--were, to put it mildly, inconvenient.

I printed my photos. From the time I was in high school until about six years ago I had access to a darkroom, where I printed in black and white and, if need be, color. As a result I have a dozen boxes of 8x10-inch black and white prints, all hand-printed by me.

Today I own a color inkjet printer, an Epson Stylus Photo R800. It produces excellent color photos. It's black and white output sucks, mostly because it's impossible to get a color-neutral print monotone print out of it. The result is that I almost never print in black and white anymore.

My options are to buy a better printer, one that uses gray inks, or to have my black and white photos printed at a pro lab. The new printer option is expensive. The least I could expect to spend for the printer alone is $500, but as anyone who has used an inkjet printer knows, the consumables are the real expense. Some inkjet papers cost as much or more than photographic papers that are silver-coated. Using a lab costs less per print, but then there's the cost of having to drive there and back (twice) or having to pay shipping costs.

The result is that I seldom print anymore, and when I do, it's mostly 4x6-inch color prints for my wife to use for our family albums. The "artsy" stuff gets filed away on my hard drive or uploaded for you folks to view here.

But that's just me. Maybe everyone else who's "serious" about photography has a large-format inkjet printer these days and prints to their heart's content. Or maybe the number of people who print for themselves is roughly equal to the number of people who cook meals from scratch (i.e., from raw ingredients, not just mixing, stirring and heating).

So tell me, what do you do? How often do you print, if at all, and if you do print often, how do you manage the expense? Is there something I'm missing here or is everybody printing less these days?

A Question of Exposure

Here's a simple question for you: Let's suppose you took a picture with a digital SLR. After reviewing the picture on the LCD screen you discover that it (the picture) is about one stop too dark. Would you:

    A. Use the exposure compensation function to increase the exposure by one stop, or

    B. Use the ISO control function to increase the ISO by one stop?

Keep in mind that this is an exposure question, not one of esthetics, so shadow noise is not a concern. Also keep in mind that this is something of a trick question--a test of how well you understand the distinction between increasing exposure and increasing the signal gain from the imaging sensor.

If you choose to answer, please be so kind as to explain why you would do one rather than the other and under what circumstances. Others may find your answer... illuminating.

Featured Comment:

"I'd adjust the exposure compensation +1 stop. If the meter is underexposing, I would imagine that it would still underexpose the scene at the next higher ISO." (Tom)

Congratulations, Tom! You zeroed in on exactly what I was implying with my question. If your camera is set to one of the auto modes and is underexposing, then setting the meter to a higher ISO will simply cause the same amount of underexposure but at a higher ISO. The solution would be to increase the auto exposure compensation by one stop. If, on the other hand, you were shooting with your camera set manually, you could either increase the aperture, the shutter speed or the ISO by one stop. This distinction might not be intuitive, but there's a clear logic behind it.

Are You Working Too Hard?

It took me roughly five minutes to convert this from color to black and white and then adjust the contrast and tonality to my liking. If it grows on me over time I may go back and spend and extra ten. Would it be a better photograph if I had spent five hours on it? I'll never know. I just don't have that kind of time.

One of the most important aspects of digital photography is how you manage your workflow—that is, how you structure the flow of work involved in producing a digital photograph.

“Producing a digital photograph” can mean different things to different photographers. For some it means ending up with a Photoshop file that has a minimum of six layers, backed up onto three different media and printed at 11 x 17 inches on an inkjet printer. For others it simply means printing the JPEGs from their memory card at the local drug store.

Some of those who do the former often sneer at those who do the latter because, after all, any “real” photographer knows how essential it is to shoot raw, use Lightroom or Aperture for global adjustments, and then move the best images into Photoshop for local adjustments and fine-tuning, with perhaps a few special filters and curves applied for good measure.

To this my response is that it’s possible, just possible, that there is no strict relationship between the time you spend on your photos and the ultimate quality of said photos. You could work for hours to improve a mediocre photograph only to end up with an improved version of a mediocre photograph.

This could be worth the time and effort if you were doing it as a learning exercise. If not, you might want to ask yourself if there might be a better way. Digital cameras and computers are, after all, supposed to be labor-saving devices. Why not use them to reduce the amount of time and effort it takes to produce photographs?

For example, instead of shooting raw, then converting the images to JPEGs for printing or distribution, why not set your camera to raw+JPEG and let you camera do the conversions for you? To make the JPEGs look good you’d have to get your white balance and exposure right from the start, but this too saves you time in the long run.

Other time-savers include automating the process of ingesting, naming and storing your image files, assigning metadata, and sorting the best from the rest. Anything you do often that takes more time than you’d like is a good candidate for automating. Look at it this way: The less time you spend sitting in front of your computer, the more you can spend shooting, or maybe even interacting with other people. You don’t have to use your camera or be social, of course. It’s just a suggestion.

...But Can You Find It? (Part 2)

Believe it or not, this is part of a collection I'm creating on cars in parking garages. I doubt I'll have much serious competition for this particular subject matter.

I have to confess I was being a bit disingenuous in my previous post. Although it's true I had a hard time finding one particular photograph, my success rate given the number of photos in my archives is remarkably high. And I'm able to do it with relatively primitive and inexpensive tools. (I'm not bragging about this, mind you. Given my temporarily diminished income, frugality is more a necessity than a virtue.)

Let's start with the basics. I have a very logical file structure and file naming procedure. All files are grouped in folders by year, then month, then shoot date and/or subject. All files within a folder are numbered by year/month/day followed by a sequential number. For example, the photo above is named "2009_320_3169.jpg." What I like about this system is that I always know where a file came from and where to put it back when I'm done. The image sorter I use (Photo Mechanic) renames the files automatically as I download them and places them in the folder of my choice.

The only cumbersome part of my system is keeping track of my best images--the ones I want to be able to find in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Keywords help, but only if I remember to assign them and what they were. I also find that keywords work better for pictures of people and places than abstracts, which tend to have abstract titles, such as "Glistening Chrome."

It would help if Photo Mechanic allowed me to search for photos that had a particular star or color rating (Aperture has this feature) but since it doesn't, I manually create a special folder within each year folder. This special folder, named "My Best", contains aliases or copies of all my best photos for that particular year. At least then when I'm searching for something, I'm looking in only one or two folders. If it's not in the "My Best" folder then it's obviously not worth finding. (Yes, I'm being ironic.)

Just to be clear, I'm not claiming this is the best system in the world or that I wouldn't be better off with a copy of Aperture or Lightroom on my hard drive, but for now it's keeping me sane and keeping my bank balance in the black. Now if I could only figure out a way to sell some of these damned photographs...

You've Shot It--But Can You Find It?

Shooting pictures is the easy part. The hard part is coming up with a reliable way to file and retrieve them at a moment's notice.

It took me three months to find this photo. I wanted to post it back in January, when it would have been most appropriate for the season. I'm posting it now because otherwise what was all the searching for? (I'll leave it to you to judge whether or not it was worth the effort.)

The reason I couldn't find it was because I forgot not only that I had shot in on film, but where I had stashed the CD with the scan. This meant that the only way to search was to look through every single file folder and CD until I found it. At least I knew that I had shot it within the past year, so I didn't have to go back any further than 2008.

Needless to say, I need to come up with a more efficient system for finding my photos once they're saved and filed. I have some ideas for how to do this, not all of which involve buying several hundred dollars worth of new software, but I'd be very interested to know what works for you. Can you find your best digital files at a moment's notice and if so, how? I'd be very interested to know how much the various methods agree as well as differ.