Photos taken by a Pentax camera for tech. discussion - Season 0

[ricsal]

Hi Ricsal. Thanks. I did move back abit but still could not focus.
As you can see from the picture, there is a stem in front of the stigma and it was focused.
I am thinking perhaps the stigma is too thin/tiny for the camera to detect as something contrasty.
Hmm...

Usually what I know from Flower Photography, things like that stem have to be move away, usually they push it out of the focus. I think the green stem is stronger in contrast thats why the camera decided to take that into account than the stigma itself since its very thin.

Actually I just remembered I did take the same flower before and yes, even I couldnt get the stigma but that was with my Lumix Prosumer. also it was a shoot and run so I didnt bother(and havent read the Flower photography during that time). :bsmilie:

 

[Ben Loke]

Maybe we should have one in the picture subforums

"Show your flower and macros by a Pentax camera"
"Show your Landscapes by a Pentax camera"
"Show your portraits shots by a Pentax camera"

When this thread was first started, I posted below suggestions on August 26, 2009.

//Besides the current themes already existed in CS gallery, why not have new photo galleries base on camera brand like Pentax gallery, Canon gallery, Nikon gallery etc?//

Pinholecam shared similar idea with regards to having the various themes catergorized by major camera makes.

A fan of Pentax, Canon, Nikon etc will easily look at pics taken with the respective makes in the subforum. I'm not sure if this can be done or may invole an overhaul of the current data base. Ideas/suggestions although not fleasibile for implemention currently perhaps are worth sharing.

 

[Anthony Lee]

Switch your lens to manual focus and focus on the stigma.

Hello fellow pentaxians.
I have a difficulty in focusing the stigma of a flower.
Am using K-x with kit lens, set to macro, 40mm, f7.1, 1/125, AF-center, center weighted and when i tried to focus on the whole flower, the stigma part was blur.
How do i get the whole flower to be clear?
Appreciate any help rendered.

 

[Nanoo]

Usually what I know from Flower Photography, things like that stem have to be move away, usually they push it out of the focus. I think the green stem is stronger in contrast thats why the camera decided to take that into account than the stigma itself since its very thin.

Actually I just remembered I did take the same flower before and yes, even I couldnt get the stigma but that was with my Lumix Prosumer. also it was a shoot and run so I didnt bother(and havent read the Flower photography during that time). :bsmilie:

Point noted. Thanks.

Switch your lens to manual focus and focus on the stigma.

Hello fellow pentaxians.
I have a difficulty in focusing the stigma of a flower.
Am using K-x with kit lens, set to macro, 40mm, f7.1, 1/125, AF-center, center weighted and when i tried to focus on the whole flower, the stigma part was blur.
How do i get the whole flower to be clear?
Appreciate any help rendered.

Hi Anthony, thanks for your tips. So i guess AF has it's limitations somewhat. :think:

 

[Recoil3d]

Manual focusingsing would solve the problem otherwise its hard to really judge the exact centre of the viewfinder (the k-x dosent have the indicators) maybe thats why "you" thought it was the centre but the cameras "centre" is on the leaf instead?:dunno:

 

[Gengh]

I think all we need is a thread where Pentaxians can post their pictures - any pictures. It's really something very casual and random. People can post/view, say wow, or whatever. Sometimes people do not really want to create a new thread for a pic in the photo gallery sub-forums. I do not really see any harm done with such a thread and do not understand why such a purpose would contravene forum rules and policy. I used to enjoy posting and sharing my pics on that "show pictures by a Pentax camera" thread. But since that was removed, I had stopped posting altogether, not even in the photo-galleries.

I really liked that thread too, and now that it's gone I'm posting significantly less, since I don't like starting a whole new thread to just post one or two photos. The old thread suited our needs pretty well... :cry: Though this may be inconsequential now, people did ignore fengwei's instructions to only post two photos at a time and not a whole album.

But since the mods have decided that such sub-forum photo threads are not in the best interest of CS, we also suck thumb....

 

[Gengh]

Hello fellow pentaxians.
I have a difficulty in focusing the stigma of a flower.
Am using K-x with kit lens, set to macro, 40mm, f7.1, 1/125, AF-center, center weighted and when i tried to focus on the whole flower, the stigma part was blur.
How do i get the whole flower to be clear?
Appreciate any help rendered.

It's most probably just a depth of field issue. You can use something like this: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html to see how much DOF you have. Based on your settings, and guessing that your focusing distance was about 30cm, you'll see that you only have 2cm of DOF. If I remember correctly, these are medium sized flowers, with pretty long stigmas, so you'll simply not be able to get the whole flower in focus. To get larger DOF, you can try moving further away, a wider lens, or larger f#.

Manual focusing will allow you to choose to have the stigma in focus, but throwing the petals out of focus. The stem that is in focus was probably in the same plane as the petals and behind the stigma, it only looks like it's in front of the stigma 'cos the sharp focus compared to the OOF background makes it "pop".

 

[Nanoo]

It's most probably just a depth of field issue. You can use something like this: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html to see how much DOF you have. Based on your settings, and guessing that your focusing distance was about 30cm, you'll see that you only have 2cm of DOF. If I remember correctly, these are medium sized flowers, with pretty long stigmas, so you'll simply not be able to get the whole flower in focus. To get larger DOF, you can try moving further away, a wider lens, or larger f#.

Manual focusing will allow you to choose to have the stigma in focus, but throwing the petals out of focus. The stem that is in focus was probably in the same plane as the petals and behind the stigma, it only looks like it's in front of the stigma 'cos the sharp focus compared to the OOF background makes it "pop".

Hi Gengh, thanks for the explanation. I understand now. :thumbsup:

 

[otc]

Hello fellow pentaxians.
I have a difficulty in focusing the stigma of a flower.
Am using K-x with kit lens, set to macro, 40mm, f7.1, 1/125, AF-center, center weighted and when i tried to focus on the whole flower, the stigma part was blur.
How do i get the whole flower to be clear?
Appreciate any help rendered.

Increase the f stop to f11 to f16, to increase dOF but shutter speed will be much slower. Increase higher ISO for higher shuttter speed.

otc

 

[Gengh]

Hi Gengh, thanks for the explanation. I understand now. :thumbsup:

You're welcome. Just experiment more and you'll get the hang of estimating your DOF.

 

[Nanoo]

Thanks otc...will try again this weekend when i'm there...

 

[darrrrrrrrrr]

Not easy to get the whole flower in focus compared to insects, since flowers are so much bigger and "deeper" so there's bound to be a part that is out of focus, unless you mount the camera on a tripod, stop down your lens a lot more, and maybe even do focus stacking, where you shoot multiple images at different focus distances and painstakingly blend them together on computer. Because I'm too lazy to use tripod, I shoot my flowers at wide apertures and go for the shallow depth of field look instead. However, I need to open eyes big big to manual focus and pay very close attention to nailing the perfect focus!

 

[Nanoo]

Thanks Darrrrrrrrrr (can't believe i actually counted the number of Rs)
Yes not easy i suppose...but hey, it's fun to experiment. (probably doing alot of deleting too..)
Will standing say 2 metres away with a longer zoom helps? Hmm...

 

[darrrrrrrrrr]

Thanks Darrrrrrrrrr (can't believe i actually counted the number of Rs)
Yes not easy i suppose...but hey, it's fun to experiment. (probably doing alot of deleting too..)
Will standing say 2 metres away with a longer zoom helps? Hmm...

Sorry about that, there's a story to my username, which I'll save for another day. Yeah a lot of practice and a lot of deleting is involved, especially if there's wind!

I'm not sure about the mathematical calculations involved, but yes I did notice there was a difference in the final pictures when I used my 90mm lens up close and my 70-200mm lens from further away. IIRC the flowers in the below 2 photos are somewhat similar in size..

90mm f/8

170mm f/3.5

 

[Nanoo]

Hmm..interesting indeed.
Thanks for the beautiful pictures...very nice!

 

[Clown]

the reason we need to implement rules to reduce the load on the server is cuz CS is still a privately funded, non-profit forum and the recent server crash has cost the admins a great deal of money and time apart from their full time jobs.
there were some talks about this on the fb page when cs was down. people were suggesting cluster and load balancing but that costs a lot of cash which nobody is willing to come up with.

so we're just asking for the cooperation of the members to help keep this place alive physically. =)

hope u guys can understand.

 

[otc]

the reason we need to implement rules to reduce the load on the server is cuz CS is still a privately funded, non-profit forum and the recent server crash has cost the admins a great deal of money and time apart from their full time jobs.
there were some talks about this on the fb page when cs was down. people were suggesting cluster and load balancing but that costs a lot of cash which nobody is willing to come up with.

so we're just asking for the cooperation of the members to help keep this place alive physically. =)

hope u guys can understand.

thank you for your explaination. Its been appreciated

otc

 

[Ben Loke]

the reason we need to implement rules to reduce the load on the server is cuz CS is still a privately funded, non-profit forum and the recent server crash has cost the admins a great deal of money and time apart from their full time jobs.
there were some talks about this on the fb page when cs was down. people were suggesting cluster and load balancing but that costs a lot of cash which nobody is willing to come up with.

so we're just asking for the cooperation of the members to help keep this place alive physically. =)

hope u guys can understand.

I am sure some of us in CS are not the "nobody" as stated.
As a matter of fact, is there the possibility of members contributing a yearly token sum towards the running cost of CS?

 

[darrrrrrrrrr]

I am sure some of us in CS are not the "nobody" as stated.
As a matter of fact, is there the possibility of members contributing a yearly token sum towards the running cost of CS?

Pentaxforums has the donation thing where you have to donate at least US$10 to sell things on the Marketplace, so that could be something that can be considered here. :dunno:

 

[ranchy]

Hmm been seeing this topic on Manual focus discuss on Marco, prompt me to think how to do more with manual lens and manual focusing.

Just a few questions, normally when you all manual focus, do you all wait for the Auto focus confirmation to come out then you take the shot? Or by seeing through the viewfinder, you find it to be focus and you just snap it without the AF confirmation?

I try with the "catch-in-focus" , and had a hard time when i fully pressed and turning to focus and had to wait for the AF confirmation is up then it would snap even though i felt it is focus. (Shooting at low lighting taking photo of a baby, miss quite a few nice moment when it wont let me snap )
I try to snap without "catch-in-focus" and i prefer this option ;p

And also, with manual lens, erm.. can you recompose your shoots? Like focus on the person (With AF confirmation), shift and recompose and shoot? Would the focus be on the person?

Remember Fengwei said during the Photoskill workshop, manual focusing makes you think your set up before you take your shot. Anyone have any tips or rule of thumbs or shortcuts, like which setting (Aperture, Shtterspeed, iso) is best during a shoot? Landscape, portraits or maybe shooting during low lights?

Sorry to ask so many questions, :sweat: still new to it and still learning.