Why I Still Shoot Pentax 

I noticed that as well, testing the AF Live View Tracking mode was one of the first things I did hehe. Sadly.. I am not impressed, in fact I think its a step back. The AF.C aspect that they are trying to implement here is commendable but it is woefully slow and painful. And we still have the AF box darting about and hunting next to it occasionally for something with better contrast. The big issue is letting go and it recenters upon doing that, it actually makes the shooting experience harder than the K-1 way imo (you might just have to play with both to compare). I can basically let go and reacquire with the K-1's version far faster than waiting for the K3III's to AF.C and catch up. I did not test it thoroughly tho, I wondered if it was stuck in AF.C or it could be toggled off? I appreciated what looked like a smaller box however (like a crosshair vs a big ass square box). Would be nice if you could change the size of the box/crosshair etc. Anyway, its a nice little feature that has helped me out heaps when I cannot get down low enough. IIRC I took this shot of my cat with the PLM and used the K3III AF Tracking mode (camera is like 10cm above ground level). It works well enough. flic.kr/p/2mKiA7v

No worries, thanks for commenting.

Thank you!

That's excellent to hear. I know of quite a few other K-1 and Pentax owners and had sneaky suspicions that a few of them were unaware of this particular tweak. I'm glad to know it was informative and hopefully practically useful going forward. Hit Like & Subscribe :D

I find for client work I enjoy the perks of MILC. I need to get the shots done, results for the client, so I put my own needs and pleasure of shooting experience at the bottom of requirements. When I shoot for me, personal work, stuff that I can take the time to retake the shot without pressure, I like to shoot Pentax and enjoy the OVF experience. Like you say you feel a little more responsible for the end result with less help, you're engaged more and these things matter to the enjoyment factor. I think Pentax need to communicate that aspect a little better, the way the translation came off that Pentax was 'hobbyist' was awful, but I think this is what they meant. Plenty of professionals with high standards of output use Pentax cameras, it's just the way they made it sound about their brand was that it is enthusiast and amateur only (thus cannot be a camera to take seriously etc).

@@SummersSnaps Totally agree. Pentax camera's are up there with build quality. The ovf is great. Their high end cameras are certainly not toys. I know what you mean, they seem to have been pushed to this hobbiest image. The truth is you can drag them through a thunderstorm and back with the right lens. Coupled with possibly the best colour science on the market, they should be highlighting this. Truth is Pentax marketing is a touch out of date. Let's see some advertising out in the field, birding, landscapes, rain snow and mountains.

I thought it might be kinda standard affair but my experience says otherwise.

Super, glad it helped.

Yeh there are many sides to me, mostly on facebook I am a huge manchild 😆 The secret I think with anything is to bypass peoples personalities (if you can) and then just absorb the information and add it to your own. It's possible to hate an actors real life personality and outlook but at the same time be blown away with their performances. Compartmentalizing is useful. So don't take my FB persona very seriously, I do adore photography and I think here is a better place to tap into the more serious aspect of this craft. Thank you for the positive words, liking and subscribing. It all helps. Please feel free to share also. See you on the next one!

You're welcome Raymond! Hit Like & Subscribe! :)

Thank you Mark!

Yeh I thought about the smaller bite sized vids, but it is chaptered. I think that helps enough, people can resume where they left of easily from using that feature. I agree with Dan Milnor, this is not Instagram, if folk lack the attention span to watch a 30-40min clip then that is on them. Useful info cannot always be bite sized and if doing menu diving vids etc, it takes time to ensure the point and advice has been made. YT is a great place for that kinda consumption, these days I enjoy watching long clips, sometimes 2hr vids etc. The real issue is not the length of time but whether or not I am holding your attention. Some users report that I do this ok, that despite it being rather lengthy the audience is engaged enough. I hope that's true. 30mins feels like 10 etc. Thanks again Lee for your thoughts and comments, much appreciated as always ❤

I'm glad you liked it, thanks for liking and commenting :)

Thanks William, the K-1 with FA Limited lenses is a real special camera combo, such a gorgeous experience, enjoy! As for Aperture Priority mode I still have not found a camera that does it as well as K-1, it's something I wish my Fuji cameras had, their version is a little more 'locked in' and more work to toggle between Auto ISO and fixed ISO values, Pentax made it easy. I believe SR will be disabled by default when pixelshift is engaged, if not then yeah definitely do it, I tend to use 2 second timer and there is a way in the Custom Menu to set up SR to being toggled off automatically when engaging a 2 second timer so have a look for that option to. Have fun!

Super, I'm glad you enjoyed it. Hit Like & Subscribe! 😁

Thank you Lee!

Super Jim, sounds like you understand the process and functionality of it well. It is a nice feature.

Thanks for commenting (and subscribing).

Thank you.

Super, glad it helped.

Thank you!

Thank you Matthew. I did for awhile try using RAWTherapee to treat the motion, but I did not like the editor as a whole nor enjoy exporting a tiff and then doing the majority of the editing work as a tiff in LR/PS. I tried working the other way around and doing the editing of the DNG first and then using RAWTherapee as a motion correction at the end, but that doesn't seem to work and crashes RAWTherapee (basically if you're going to have to motion corrected from RAWTherapee it needs to be a blank slate pixelshifted file and done first). The way I present here is pretty simple and have used that for years. Even when doing waterfalls with slow moving water etc. It's not as hard as it looks, it's pretty simple, and because you have two layers in PS you can even make adjustments to the water or whatever, brightening the exposure or darkening it if you slightly miss match the two frames. Glad you enjoyed it.

Thank you Duck! I'm glad it helped. I'm not much of an astro guy tbh but I have tested the feature and it has worked well for me.

With my rather limited experience in astro I have found that a good base setting is f2.8/10"/6400iso when used with an ultrawide (10mm on apsc...so 15mm full frame equivalent) Never used astrotracer since the kp doesnt have that feature, but you can use those settings and then exoeriment depending on the lens of course. So, you could drop the iso to 800 which would result in a 3 stops larger - so 80" shutter speed - to achieve the same exposure. Trial and error...

Yes the Hyper P mode is nicely done as well on Pentax, it is also a mode that gets exercised frequently. The key is we all shoot differently and if things work well for you then there should be no reason to really implement some of the things I have found to like and appreciate (highlighted here). The most important take away is being honest with yourself. If you shoot a certain way and something happens that is a little out of your typical comfort box or shooting experience, are you able to quickly grab that moment before it passes or are you too busy fiddling with knobs etc. I know of excellent wedding photographers (brand ambassadors no less) that shoot their cameras in full Auto. They want to remain fully in the zone and capture moments, not messing with a dial or setting and their work reflects this. Content first, always. Hope you enjoyed the video, thanks for stopping by.

I can relate a lot to this. Even after a year of using the Fuji XT4 it still has options that are a mystery to me. Modern camera with modern offerings equals more options and buttons needed. Sometimes its nice to have things simpler and streamlined.

It has good weather sealing, I dunno about the best. I think Olympus is actually the only system that actually have an IP rating, a case could be had they are the standard to follow. Unfortunately I have heard of far too many Pentax users believing their units are water proof only to learn after some shooting in the rain that it wasn't as durable as they were led to believe. It can be a bit erratic, gaskets wear over time. Some get away with it, some do not. I chose this title because as much as I like my Fuji and appreciate its perks over Pentax, I still use Pentax for the reasons outlined in the video. Cameras are just tools.

@@SummersSnaps Then i happened to be the one who got away with it, k-3 ii no issues, k-70 no issues in extreme weather conditions. Fuji is awesome, not doubts about it, but in the end - Pentax will give you the better images in low light conditions.

@@sovu9399 Fuji feels like for me the camera best to 'capture moments'. IQ matters not so much here, its about AF, split second, zero lag captures (EFCS is useful here), content trumps IQ etc. Fuji IQ is acceptable but certainly not the best (some of that is just down to APS-C vs FF stuff). K-1 trumps Fuji for IQ in any light imo, and especially so when acting on pixelshift should conditions allow. It's 2022, paying for a k-1 brand new I think is maybe not a great idea, but I've seen them go for really bargain prices in the used market. I could honestly shoot K-1 for the genres its suitable for for the next 20yrs and just recycle K-1's with no complaints. Actually... the real complaint I have for Pentax is a lack of affordable WR primes. Only their flagship primes like the DFA50 and 85 get full AW protection, I was gutted that their updated FA ltds was just some coating and round blades :(

@@SummersSnaps That is my main complaint as well, + the high prices like they are WR lenses. All in all i agree with you. Fuji is quick with beautiful image quality, but Pentax is not about speed, nor about video (except k-3 iii), it is about baking high dynamic range images.

You're spot on. I have played with the newer K3III, that camera is just like a mini K-1, lighter, same ergos, compact, it is GORGEOUS to hold. Unfortunately after the ergos and weight however I prefer the K-1 in almost every regard, but I do hope the K-1 successor follows your advice and is more compact and light.

In his "Pentax K-1's Pixel Shift challenges medium-format dynamic range" article, Richard Butler states a full two-stop advantage for K-1 pixel shift files. He did not think that through, though, AFAIC. In real scenarios, it should be far less than that.

Yeh I honestly don't know. If I don't know I'll err on the side of caution. I've seen a few vids on the GFX recovery now and it does look incredible. I have only tested my 645D vs K-1 and the K-1 smokes the 645D even without Pixshift. I'd love to see how the 645Z does against a pix shift K-1 file :) So yeh... I don't do math well (as you know 😁) but if you say it is on a MF level then I trust you, I hope I at least demonstrate well enough here it's improved shadow and noise recovery vs a normal file.

Yeh I had a sneaky suspicion a few Pentax users were unaware of some of this stuff. I'm glad to hear some of this content was useful, its a great camera (lots of Pentax cameras are great!). In terms of MC on/off... I think some of this is related to Jpg output perhaps. When employing this feature I tend to think its strengths lie in RAW output and I have not found many in camera duties to outperform dedicated PC software, so just like in this video how I show I correct motion that's basically my go to. I tend to use PixShift with Motion Off, but totally test it and report back! There are actually a lot of landscape shots I have done that I have not needed to motion correct a damn thing and can just reap the benefits simpler in LR with the one file and treat it like any other RAW file.

Yep that is right.

Yes sir, mostly now with the 645D. If you visit my website and look for a blog entry called 'Cars, Chicks and my Clicks' you'll see recent work with the 645D.

But also my main event rig is with Fuji, the Pentax is resevered for more personal projects.

Ok, so a couple of things that stopped from continuing your workflow approach long term (because I did exactly this) and why I finally settled on my preferred route documented in the video above are as follows; 1- Once you motion correct in RT you're left with a .Tiff file and not a DNG RAW. Now that might not be a biggy for many, but for me LR is not just a editor but it is also a launch pad to presets/profiles or LUTS etc. Many of the LUTS and Profiles do not like the Tiff so much, the colours are off, exposure shifts etc. The paid for profiles and LUTs do prefer to work from the RAW file itself (as specified in their documentation). What I would do in the past is duplicate the file and take the RAW into LR and apply the LUT to see the LUT shift as intended, then take the Tiff from RT and compare side by side and then 'correct' the Tiff to steering it more towards the DNG version. But.. its extra work and I honestly found my manual masking approach easier that doing all of that. But also... 2- ... when I discovered the additional maneuverability of a pixshift file compared to native files I thought that RT spitting out a motion corrected Tiff to work off from might actually lose the benefits of that extra post processing power. I did not test that fully because point no.1 was a big enough deal breaker anyway. It would be fine IF you stayed within RT and did the additional pushing and pulling along with the motion correction, but by this point in time you're pretty much saying goodbye to using LR/PS now, which have the stuff I like to use (see point no.1). 3- RT also does differ quite strongly to how LR might interpret the RAW data upon import. I found many images to be very weak in contrast within RT and found myself piddling about in RT to just getting the file to look 'ok' before even applying any motion correction. I'm not saying it was doing a worse job, but I got the feeling that if I did not sort the highlights, shadows, contrast and all this other stuff here and now before generating the motion corrected .Tiff file then I could be in real trouble trying to sort that stuff out in LR with that Tiff. 4- Memory. If you seldom shoot pixshift, and have to engage the brain and remember where to go in RT to apply motion correction etc, then that can be a drag I think to even use it. It needs to be simple in approach. If LR is the editor you use then staying within that domain for the main edit (and receiving the perks properly) I think makes sense. If RT could handle an edited pixshift file from LR then that would be great, but it can't, it crashes everytime. RT can only motion correct the original file, not something else (so it seems). So look... RT is a totally viable option, it depends on your editing process I think, how many 3rd party supported software you've paid for and want to use via LR and all that jazz. If RT is your preferred editor of choice (which is totally plausible and cool), then yer absolutely right, what I have outlined makes little sense. But... on the forums I frequent these days LR/PS is still incredibly popular and industry standard, so to speak from that place makes a lot of sense to some. I often found taking single non pixelshifted shot to being actually my 'standard' approach anyway, I fire off a Pixshift shot as a 'maybe I'll use it for this mossy rock' or whatever part of the scene, but lens and dynamic range dependent... sometimes the perks of Pixshift were surplus to requirement. I don't see having to take 'another' shot as being an issue is my point. I wish DCU5 allowed you to split the pixshift file up so you could actually motion correct from one of their 4 frames but that seems not to be possible. Curious that you can split one of Pentax's HDR RAW files into 3 parts within DCU5 but that Pixshift that's not possible. As we talked more and more in forums about this stuff it appeared that a lot of Pentaxians use Adobe already, had never heard about RT and were not sure what Pixshift was doing (if anything) and thought LR was even not supporting it in any way shape or form, so this segment I felt was worth bringing up. FWIW, I tend to finish the edit in PS with the motion correction then save the file as a PSB and just delete both RAWs (eventually). Pixshift is a large storage issue (same with MF camera files etc), so I think when we choose to deploy it and use it really has to be an image worth caring about (potential print etc). If I'm taking a shot that is likely just a FB/Instagram shot I won't even bother with Pixshift. I really have to think "wow... I'm onto a winner with this shot, this is worth using pixshift for" and honestly that is really quite a seldom thing. But when it happens I'm very glad of the pixelshift feature. I'd love to see it improved tho, why we cannot have the option to have some time between the 4 frames so we can allow for flash/strobes to fire (and recycle) between the frames thus making it a viable product photography tool!

@@SummersSnaps Thanks, Eddy, I can see why you prefer the approach you presented. Regarding: 1. It is a shame that LR is sensitive to whether the source is a raw file or a TIFF. For almost any image manipulation it should be possible to separate demosaicing (required for raw files) from interpretations and adjustments, e.g., applying LUTs, profiles, etc. As it is, I completely understand why a pre-processing approach is out of the question for you. 2. A 16-bit TIFF file is every bit as malleable as a raw file. Most raw files only support 14-bit and nothing should be lost in the conversion. Ideally, the TIFF file should be based on a linear tone curve. 3. You would definitely want to avoid compressing the dynamic range when creating the TIFF file. This could be achieved, but your point about preferring not having to deal with RT's interface makes sense. 4. RT definitely needs the original file. Ideally, RT would be able to do the pixel shift processing and then output a so-called linear DNG. LR should then be able to deal with the latter as if it were a single shot from the camera (still a raw file but with all the pixel shifting processing and repairing applied). If you want to use one of the four pixel shift files for your manual correction you should be able to extract all four frames from a pixel shift file using dcrawps. For instance, dcrawps -s all -T -4 -w

@@class_a I think I tried dcrawps and struggled to get that working. I might have to try that again. FWIW it is not just pixelshift that is an issue for me with workflow approaches. If I do high end portrait work and for example do a lot of destructive fixing (such as blemishes) with more advanced tools in PS, then after that process, if hitting Save and returning to LR I am now working on a Tiff which (as outlined earlier) is not ideal. If you're interested to hear my workaround to these kind of problems I do go into greater depth about it here; ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-2J4HK4DzHNE.html (pls don't feel inclined to watch tho if you're not fussed).

@@SummersSnaps I've watched your Photoshop workflow video, thanks for the pointer. I left a lengthy comment which you may find unhelpful as it is mainly about pedantic word choices. However, if you make it till the end, you may find a useful tip regarding how to order your edits.

​@@SummersSnaps I hope extracting frames from dcrawps will work for you but I probably it won't be possible to get raw files from dcrawps in a format that will avoid the problems you mentioned regarding profiles and LUTs. Working in LR on a TIFF produced by Photoshop should not be problematic as you shouldn't need to use any profiles, LUTs, etc. anymore. All this should happen before you transfer the image to Photoshop. LR should select completely neutral processing for PS-sourced TIFFs, so I'm not sure what issues could occur (other than a broken parametric workflow and the additional space requirements). It would be ideal if Adobe managed to either include the whole layer processing engine of PS into LR or just automated the reapplication of PS-edits to a changed source. Both of these approaches would save one the need to revisit PS again, after performing any changes to the original LR image. There are many kinds of PS editing operations (the non-permanent ones) that would happily work with a changed source and produce the desired final output without having to force the user to make the trip to PS and back again manually.