Comments please! First-ish pics with new camera **Fixed now! Resized and a few more**

[CoolMickster1995]

These are not the very first pics but pretty close. I bought the new camera (pentax K100D, my first digital camera) for our upcoming med cruise, anticipating lots of no-flash churches and museums where we would want to take pictures. So this weekend I started seriously seeing what the camera would do indoors (mostly) with no flash. These were taken with the 50-200 lens.

I have some questions about how to improve, but I'm curious to hear some comments first . . .

 

[claribella]

Can't see pics....

 

[CoolMickster1995]

Yes, I had a few problems getting everything posted but I think it's working now.

 

[MICKEY88]

pics not working

 

[DisneyGirl4188]

Yes, I had a few problems getting everything posted but I think it's working now.

You may want to try loading them onto photobucket There are usually issues when trying to upload a picture to the DIS from Kodak.


Everyone else: If you want to see the pictures, right click, go to properties, copy and paste into the address bar.

 

[ukcatfan]

I cannot see the pictures either, but can make one comment without seeing them. If you plan on doing a fair amount of low light shots, you should consider buying the 50mm f/1.4 or at least a used 50mm if you want to save money. Most of them are manual focus though.

Kevin

 

[handicap18]

I can see all but 2 of them. They look good. What's the EXIFdata on them (ISO, shutter & f/stop). Looks like the IS works pretty good. I agree with Kevin. The 50mm f/1.4 is great to have on a trip like the one you mention. Though also look for a 24mm or 8mm f/1.4 or 1.8. Sigma makes one of each, don't know if they are in a Pentax mount or not, but they are fairly affordable. The 50 might be a bit to tight for that type of touring. Especially if you want the wide look inside churches.

 

[CoolMickster1995]

I think the pics are up now. I didn't really want them as big as they are, but that's the best I could do . . . And I have ordered the 50mm f/1.4 lens!

 

[tinksdad]

If those are hand held, you did very well!! The IS is working well!! Get a tripod and even a remote shutter release will help when the light gets low too (if you don't have one). A fast lens is ALWAYS a big help, good purchase on the 500mm f/1.4!!

 

[Groucho]

Like ukcatfan, the 50-200mm is really not a low-light lens... at 200mm, the most you can get is F5.6. That's four full stops slower than the 50mm F1.4 - that's the difference between shooting at ISO 200 or ISO 3200, or 1/240th of a second or 1/15th of a second. You won't have the range, but you'll be able to get photos much more easily, plus they'll be higher quality due to the superior optics of the 50mm (hard to beat with almost any zoom lens.)

It does look like you were able to get some pretty good results, but even with IS, a couple (like the book spines) still have a touch of blur - not surprising at 1/3rd of a second. If you are shooting with the 50-200mm in a lower light environment, you'll probably do well to set the ISO slightly higher - going to ISO 800 will give you 1/6th of a second with very little noise, and ISO 1600 will give you a little bit of noise but 1/12th of a second shutter, probably enough to take care of those blurs (along with IS).

The Sigma lenses that Handicap18 mentions are available in Pentax mounts for the same price as the other mounts... $269 for a 28mm F1.8 or $339 for the 24mm F1.8. They sound nice but I don't know how the reviews are? There's always the Pentax Limited 31mm F1.8, but that's a cool $780 after rebate! I'm not used to paying those kind of bucks no matter how nice the lens is.

If those are hand held, you did very well!! The IS is working well!! Get a tripod and even a remote shutter release will help when the light gets low too (if you don't have one). A fast lens is ALWAYS a big help, good purchase on the 500mm f/1.4!!

500mm F1.4? Now THAT is a lens!

 

[GrumpyOne]

The first thing I noticed was that you kept the same settings. With the exception of the shutter speed, all pics seem to be at ISO 400 and Aperture of 5.6. I'm guessing you were shotting in aperture priority mode and for indoors work, I would have gone with something like ISO 400 f/4.0 to keep the shutter faster and changed aperture as required. There's nothing wrong with the settings you used but they aren't always the best for every situation. Here's what I would be looking at, although I'm further behind the learning curve than many of the regular posters and it's easy to Monday morning quarterback.

Pic 25: IMO, when you have a lot of detail in the pic, noise seems to show up easier. To reduce the noise, drop the ISO to 100 and the shutter speed to 1/50 or so. Or if you weren't that comfortable with the IS at that point, then ISO 200 and shutter 1/80-1/100.

30: That's a nice shot. The highlights aren't blown out and the part in the shadow comes out well. You seem to have a bit of blurring, noticeable around the wood grain. I'd open the aperture a bit wider, say 5.0 and make the shutter a bit faster, say 1/80.

38-1: Since you're already at ISO 400 with a slow shutter speed, the only way you're going to get more light in is to open the aperture wider. This would also have the effect of blurring the background a bit more making the figure stand out. I'd open the aperture a touch wider.

 

[Groucho]

Pic 25: IMO, when you have a lot of detail in the pic, noise seems to show up easier. To reduce the noise, drop the ISO to 100 and the shutter speed to 1/50 or so. Or if you weren't that comfortable with the IS at that point, then ISO 200 and shutter 1/80-1/100.

30: That's a nice shot. The highlights aren't blown out and the part in the shadow comes out well. You seem to have a bit of blurring, noticeable around the wood grain. I'd open the aperture a bit wider, say 5.0 and make the shutter a bit faster, say 1/80.

Just a couple things... the K100D/K110D start at 200 ISO, not 100. This is a function of the sensor, the same is true with the Nikon D40/D50 that share the same sensor. Apparently the image degraded somewhat at ISO 100 so they decided not to make it available.

As for aperture, at full zoom, F5.6 is the most you can get with the 50-200mm... it's a F4-F5.6 lens.

Other than those little technical bits, good points!

 

[CoolMickster1995]

Thanks for the comments. I still need to figure out the ISO thing with the digital camera. Almost all of these were taken at 200 mm, which means the largest (smallest?) aperture I could use was 5.6. From the comments here, I'm guessing I could have eliminated some of the blur by using the 50 mm at 4.0. But I figure I will be using the other lens for those shots, and here I really wanted to test the 200 mm. But that brings me to a question: If I am taking a picture of something that is far away (or small), is it better to use the 50 mm f/1.4 lens and plan on cropping or use the 200 mm lens at f/5.6?

 

[Groucho]

Regarding the ISO thing... it's really just like film (or supposed to be), where a 400-speed film would work better in low light than 100-speed film, if that helps you get a handle on it. Since this is your first digital, maybe you're more used to thinking that way? (And a DSLR is a great way to start off in digital!)

But that brings me to a question: If I am taking a picture of something that is far away (or small), is it better to use the 50 mm f/1.4 lens and plan on cropping or use the 200 mm lens at f/5.6?

It really all depends on the light... if you're far away enough that you need the extra reach, you'll probably be best with the 50-200mm at 200mm. If it gets a bit darker, you can do the same but also turn up the ISO to get the shutter speed down. Once it gets dark enough that even at the ISO 1600 (or 3200 if you dare, it might not be as bad as you fear) you still are getting blurs from camera shake, you will have no choice but go to a faster lens.

If you're closer to 50mm, say 75mm or so, you might get a better shot with the 50mm F1.4 no matter what the circumstances are, due to the very nice image quality of it. At some point, the extra quality is outweighed by the need to crop it too much, though, and I don't know if there's a hard and fast rule on that - it's really just something you'll learn with some experience.

However, the 50-200mm is no piece of junk and you should still be able to get very nice results out of it, so don't feel like you have to use the 50mm F1.4 whenever possible.

Oh, one other thing... looking at your photos again, the second-to-last shot, with the jester, may benefit from some white balance adjustment. Indoor photos under tungsten lights often get a yellow tinge to them, and adjusting white balance can help dramatically, including a shot like that one where it may not be so obvious that it's got a certain color cast. The tricky part is that one also has outdoor light, so correcting the white balance for the foreground may through the background out of whack, but it's worth a shot.

The photo above it, of the picture in the frame, may also benefit from white-balance adjustment. All the others look like they're using natural sunlight, which usually comes through just fine.

Adjusting white balance on a JPG is a little tricky, that's one of my favorite reasons to shoot in RAW mode - it's easy to adjust that while converting them to JPGs.