rivi

Hmh, certainly that would be an interesting froum with much to learn, but a problem with this is that processing should be done on the original, or at least a large version. Then resize, then sharpen, then publish. Processing resized images will hardly give really good results. So if you want images to be processed, you would need to make them available in a pixel size bigger that what is recommended.

The only occasion in the recent past (before the K20D) I found myself to miss a rapid mode was when I was trying

to capture salute firing. Otherwise I don't recall ever having missed it, in there I agree.

Well, the eyes are something we all don't want touched, and having worn glasses all my life I had this feeling

probably stronger than most. A LASIK, other that the surgery of your daughter, is done at full conciousness, and

apart from the fact that they are just cutting your eyes they also make it clear that the success depends on your

self-control of staring into a reference point. The operation itself is something you'd skip if there was a

chance, but it is the way to the goal. In the end, I know quite a few people who all say it was worth it, and

even if two weeks is a bit early to say so: I'm very confident.

 

And you are certainly right: Her story is touching and encouraging.

"Who needs 6+ fps - certainly not a Pentax shooter!" Ahemm, the K20D can do "burst-mode" of 20fps, though at reduced resolution of 1.6MP, for up to six seconds.

The pictures I personally liked most among the many good ones on the page were Maria's "hallway" for the associations a bride walking away towards the exit can wake, Justin's "Hurricane Mountain Tower" for its stormy contrast (could be larger, though), Garry's "Jessica and Irene" as a most natural portrait, Haig's "wind chimes maybe?" for its composition, Adam's "no one's listening to dad..." for the scene, and Andrew's "Puffball up close" for waking childhood memories in macro. Thanks for showing.

 

Apart from pictures: My best wishes to Todd's daughter. I feel with her: My own LASIK is now two weeks ago. It is a pain in the very moment: less so physically, but mentally the more. Yet already now I am fully convinced it was worth it. I hope she'll find that, too.

PS: all were taken with the Pentax kit lens, i.e. the DA 18-55mm/f3.5-5.6, all at 18mm. f/3.5 for the *istDS, f/4 for the star-trail, and f/5.6 for the fire (to get fore- and background sharp). Except the startrail, they're all handheld.

I've uploaded two more images to my <a href="http://www.riviclaudia.de/gallery2/main.php/v/test/">test

folder</a>.I don't have the K10D, but an *istDS. The picture of the walkway was taken with 1/4sec@ISO3200. Again

this file is the jpg as produced by camera software. The K20D one with the "firewhirl" was cropped, I therefore

uploaded another from that series, a) uncropped, and b) with 1/4sec@ISO3200 just as the *istDS one. I'd say the

banding is indeed less, and at the light-level of the *istDS picture the K20D would not have produced any (or

rather: it would have been below the black-point).

Well, soon after I got my K20D I took an startrail of about 4.4 minutes exposure time @ ISO 1600, at a really

dark site (professional observatory) The noise has a band structure, but I would say that working on the RAW

should be sufficient to get rid of it. A 1600 pixel version of that picture you can see at <a

href="http://www.riviclaudia.de/gallery2/main.php/v/test/imgp0188.jpg.html">my webpage</a> This is the jpg that

came out of the cam software, not a reworked raw! It is not quite as much a quantum leap as I had hoped for in

low-light, but it is certainly better than my old camera, an *istDS. Already at <a

href="http://www.riviclaudia.de/gallery2/main.php/v/holidays/shorttrips/imgp0998.jpg.html">this</a> light level

(1sec at ISO3200) you don't see that strucure anymore.

Hi Mis,

 

he's engineer up here. I have most contact with instrumentation and optical engineers, and since he's in the maintenance group I don't see him frequently, however. Right now he's not on turno.

This is a panorama stitch of three, basically turning around from where I took the previous one, now looking at

the telescopes of the Paranal observatory.<div></div>

Hi, I just learned about the weekly thread (thanks Garry). I made this picture of the Chilean desert two nights ago on full moon. The version in the "moonscape" thread is directly form SD-card, this one is gimped a bit with contrast curves and sharpness.<div></div>

Oops, last one was taken with different seetings, of course: 55mm, f/5.6, 2secs

And this one is taken with twilight still bright enough to illuminate the scene.<div></div>

That one really shows the landscape<div></div>

Hi Gary, thanks a lot. I meanwhile managed to get the pics from the card, and scaled them down to reasonable resolution. So these were taken in the Atacama at full moon, K20D, 18-55 kit lens at 18mm f/3.5m and 15secs. You'll guess my job from them, which is the explanation why I get to travel a bit.<div></div>

Well, logging myself in again after many years:

 

Moonlight is reflected sunlight, and so does the camera see it. A well exposed landscape that is shot in moonlight looks as a sunlit one, except for the sky. One of the major differences in the way your eye (vs. the camera) sees moonlight is that it is just at the limit where colour perception kicks in, producing a very typical and strange grey-to-color vision. The camera will not be able to capture this at all, it just doesn't know about the grey-type receptors human eyes have. Possibly you can mimick this by partial desaturation.

 

What you can do to create a unique vision is to use the sky. At full moon, it will be still turn out blue, but dark blue, and usually have some stars. I just did some shots last night, at ISO 3200, 15secs at f/3.5. Gives perfect illumination (sorry, the shots are still on the camera, not on the computer yet). Getting the moon itself into the pic is much harder, and impossible in a single shot. The contrast is much to high. The situation is similar to shooting against the sun, and wanting to have the sun and the foreground well defined in the picture.

 

PS: Somewhere above Andrew Gilchrist wrote: "I had always assumed that the moon appeared larger near the horizon because the extra atmosphere the light passes through distorts it and makes it appear larger." This is entirely psychological, the atmosphere only distorts (shortens) the vertical extent, but for this to be clearly visible you need to be within a degree of the horizon. There should be plenty of sunset pics around illustrating the effect.