Why I shoot Pentax

I was taking a picture of a group recently and after I finished one of the people walked over and asked "Is that a Cannon or Nikon?"  After mentally choking him while shoving a 300mm lens down his throat, responded nicely "No, a Pentax" to which he said "Oh, I didn't know they made Digital SLRs."  I mentally choked him again.

Mr. Choking victim is not the only one who thinks only Cannon and Nikon make DSLRs.  Some people know Sony makes them too  :)  Pentax, Olympus and Panasonic all make "mainstream" DSLRs and there are lots of specialty companies but Cannon and Nikon seem to suck the oxygen out of the discussion.  That is a shame.  If the personal computer experience has taught us anything, it is that competition is good.  iPhoto and iMovie drove Microsoft and other developers to make better visual media apps.  Google banished unrealistic inbox sizes with Gmail.  And look at what the iPhone has done for cell phones!  A photography world with only Cannon and Nikon would quickly become boring and expensive.  Panasonic is driving the "toss away the past" movement with the GH series that has no mirror and does incredible video.  Olympus is trying to see how small you can make a DSLR and Sony has reignited the megapixel race.  Cannon and Nikon seem to be intent on mirroring each other more than innovating IMHO.

What camera?

Let me start by saying DLSRs have reached a point where there are no bad choices, just different ones.  The differences between sensors have become slight and if the rumors are true, Sony makes Nikons sensors.  Choosing a camera has come down to the 3 Fs/P - Features, Family and Feel over Price- feature of the body, the family of products associated with it and the subjective "feel" at the price you can afford.  Instead of trying to list all the possible "F3/P," Ill tell you what brought me to Pentax.

Why DSLR?

Imaging resource has a great, but slightly dated, article on why a DSLR.  For me, I wanted a better sensor, better lens and better flash.  Before deciding what features matter to you, decide what your current camera is NOT doing for you.  Todays super zoom cameras are more like SLRs with only one lens than the point and shoot digitals of a few years ago.  I almost waited out another generation of DSLR with an FZ28.

The lineup

This site is about getting the most from your budget and that is exactly what I was looking for in my first DSLR.  My initial candidates were the Pentax K200D, Pentax K2000/k-m, Nikon D60, Nikon D40, Cannon EOS 450, Panasonic DMC-G1.  Right at decision time the Nikon D5000 and Cannon EOS 500 were announced and gave me serious headaches!  I never really considered any Sony or Olympus models.

Cut Day

I eliminated the D40 because it was too limited.  The combination of the 6MP sensor and limited autofocus lens selection was just too much of too little.  I plan to use this body for 5+ years so I decided 10MP was my target.  Yes, I know there is more than MP count but I wanted the ability to make large prints.

Next to go was the EOS 450.  Other than price I cant think of a good reason to eliminate it.  I just didnt connect with the Cannon.  The feel was just wrong for me.  Something about the Cannon way of thinking doesn't match me because I have issues with my wife's Cannon S5 P&S.

I thought REALLY hard about the Pansonic DMC-G1.  My last P&S/Supersoom was an FZ8 and I really loved it.  Actually, I still have it and use it when I dont want to carry as much or if there is a serious hazard to my camera.  I loved the size and true live view of the G1 plus the video capability but the price and sensor sent it packing.  The G1, like the Olympus E520, uses a micro 4/3 sensor with a 2x FOV crop.  One of the things I wanted was a bigger, softer sensor and the 4/3 was not what I was looking for.  I have also learned, the hard way, not to buy version 1.0.  

The D5000/EOS500 threw me for a loop but at the end of the day, the major advantage of them was video with a HUGE increase in price.  I have a video camera (a Cannon - see I dont discriminate!)  and I dont use it much compared to my still camera.  I would have to sacrifice a lot of still capability in the form of lenses and accessories to get video and that was not my purpose in going to a DSLR.

The Contenders

My final choices were the K200, K2000 and the D60.  

I really liked the price and size of the K2000.  The standard kit included a dedicated flash which would save me money initially.  It also had slightly better ISO performance than the K200.  On the bad side it came with an older kit lens despite being a new camera and it had some other major shortcomings.  There is no ability to select the focus point which seriously limits creativity.  It also has no weather seals and the included flash is fixed at 90 degrees.  Much like the D40, I was concerned that I would outgrow the K2000 far too fast.

Championship bout

So I was down to the D60 and the K200.  I will admit that the K200 came in with a "reach" advantage - my first real SLR was a Pentax K1000 - but I had also always dreamed of a Nikon.  The initial price was a push since they were only $10 different on the day I got mine.  But initial price was only half the story.  Nikon decided a long time ago to put image stabilization on the lens instead of on the body.  That was probably because the technology for lens stabilization predated affordable digital bodies and Nikon could sell a lot of new lenses to film guys long before they could convince them that digital could replace film.  Pentax decided to make every lens better by putting the stabilization in body.  But that meant that any improvement in stabilization means getting a new body.  Those decisions mean that with Nikon, you pay for stabilization every time you buy a lens but newer lenses might have better stabilization.  With Pentax you pay for it once but you are stuck with that level.  Nikon also decided that the D60 was for "new" Nikon shooters and did not make it Autofocus compatible with older lenses.  So along with paying for IS each time, you are limited to newer lenses and a more limited range.  If you wanted the compatibility, you had to jump up to the D80 or better - at a significant cost.  There were some other features left to D80 or better buyers - the D60 has no vertical grip or battery grip.  There is no built in wireless flash capability.  There is no option for uncompressed RAW and no ability to control Noise Reduction.  And like the K2000, it has no weather seals.  In fact, dust is such an issue, it has a very complex dust removal system.  Finally there was the feel.  It felt cramped in my hand and with anything except the 18-50mm kit lens, it felt unbalanced because the body seemed too light.  

The K200D had a lot of the features the D60 lacked.  The in body stabilization meant I could get some seriously budget lenses right off the bat.  My first non-kit lens was a 28-80mm Tamron that cost $44.  Sure its not pro glass but for $44 if I get 2 or 3 pics a year that I love, it was worth it.  The same lens for Nikon cost $90 and on the D60 it would have been manual focus.  I got a battery grip with a vertical shutter button for $30 and because the K200 takes AA batteries, I got great Eneloop recharables for less than half what an extra Nikon (or anyone else including the one used on the Pentax K20D) battery cost.  And I can use the same batteries in my flash.  Im really glad Im not stuck buying Panasonic batteries now that they have disabled 3rd party batteries.  The feel of the camera with the battery pack attached is perfect to me and the weather seals give me confidence to shoot in pretty rough conditions.  Wireless flash is built in meaning my $250 AF-360 purchase added off camera flash at no additional cost.  But I did give up some things with the K200D.  The burst rate and continuous speed on the Pentax is no match for the Nikon.  Right now I mostly shoot flowers and landscapes so its not as big a deal.  But it is limiting.  ISO performance past 800 is really not good.  I would only use 1600 in a pinch.  And there is no denying that Nikon glass is special.  My 5MP Nikon CP5400 took incredible pictures that I attributed to the lens.  Try finding a Pentax dealer in anything except a LARGE town let alone overseas and renting equipment is right out.  The Pentax "ecosystem" is just no match for the Big 2.  Final downside - I have suffered from Pentax "focus hunting."  I have not used other systems enough to know how they do but I have missed some shots because of it.  

Final verdict

In the end it came down to total cost of ownership.  The Pentax was going to give me more bang for the buck initially and allow me to add capability much cheaper than the Nikon.  Even things like lens filters were cheaper on the Pentax because the lenses are smaller around.  That meant I could get more creative sooner rather than later.  And the "feel" of the camera cannot be underrated.  If you dont like holding your camera, you wont.  The D60 and the D40 didn't feel right in my hand, the K200 did.  I plan to hold it for a long time.  And I wont pretend there was not a bit of contrarian "be different" going on.  I owned a Beta VCR (I waited until BluRay won), listen to strange music and was a Mac guy long before it was cool.  Maybe when this blog makes me super wealthy and I can but anything I want I will get my dream Nikon but I will probably always be a Pentax guy.

None of this is meant to say "Buy Pentax."  The K200D is right for me.  But I am saying look at what capability you are trying to add and decide what camera best fits that need at the price you want to pay.  And look at the entire price.  AA batteries and a battery grip were not factors when I started my search but became ones when I realized that I was going to have to spend a lot of extra money to ensure I had power for a week of hiking and I was going to be changing those batteries more often in dusty conditions.  And now I would not even consider a camera that didnt have the option for a vertical shutter.  And make sure you pick up an hold before you buy.  I would end with a comparison but I want to keep this rated PG!

Woof

I took notes this time!

This is a "daylight" shot:

This is a normal shot with "shade" white balance.

Shade acts as a warming filter to bring back the colors. If you use "shade" white balance for an early evening sunset, you will warm it up.  U can even use it to get a very light sepia effect.

This is the same flower shot with "Tungsten" white balance"

Everything gets a blue tint and seems to luminesce.

I left it un-cropped so you could see the effect on the different areas.  It seems to work better in soft or shaded light.  The real point is to play with and learn all the capabilities of that camera you bought with your hard earned dollars.  And of course to amaze your friends and make girls swoon  :)

Breaking the rules, eating dog food

Im not supposed to post on Sunday but I am so far behind I want to get this done!

A few years ago "eating our own dog food" was a hip business term.  It meant using your own products.  For me it means going out and shooting in the ways I talk about here.  So the other day I went out and unloaded my bag trying all my toys.  I took a LOT of bad pictures, partially because I had not used some of it in a bit.  Here are some of the good ones.

The black fabric trick is one of my favorites but by chance I didn't have mine.  But I was wearing a black coat, had my tripod and my remote.  As a result I was able to shoot this series:

this is a nice picture:

This is Dog Food!!

The ONLY difference between these pictures is the addition of a black pea coat behind the flower.  (**it was windy so the flower moved slightly between pictures)

Shortly after shooting this I decided to see just how far I could go with using steady hold and breathing to push my shutter speed down. Here is what I got at 1/6th of a second:

and here are the two pictures before and after:


Now this only works with stationary subjects or semi-stationary.  A great way to capture motion is to intentionally blur the subject while the background remains steady.  The key is keeping the background steady!  If you have to shoot 1/60 to do that, you are probably not going to get the blur you want.

Now here is where it gets sketchy.  I wanted to shoot with different white balance settings but I forgot to write down the settings!!  I think the first one is using fluorescent light.  The rest are tungsten:

Tungsten:


Normal:

Tungsten

Tungsten

I also used 10x filter on those.

Thats it for Sunday.  I am working on the DIY projects and remembering to take notes!

Break from vacation

Its amazing how quickly you can get behind after taking some time off!  Im just about caught up at and I am working on two lighting projects - shooting with inexpensive work lights and making a a kick but DIY reflector.  

Everything I needed to know about shooting I learned in the Army

Shake is the bane of all shooters.  Doesn't matter if you are shooting 300mm or 5.56mm.  If you shake, you will miss.  Before I joined the Army I had never shot anything that didn't have film in it.  I was afraid that was going to mean I would be a horrible rifleman.  On the first day at the range, the Drill Sergeants asked who had never shot before.  I reluctantly raised my hand, more afraid of the punishment for lying than the scorn for being less manly.  To my surprise the next words out of the Drill Sergeants mouth was that we non-shooters would be the ones to shoot expert (I missed by 1 shot, shot expert every time after that).  Why?  Because we had no bad habits to unlearn while the kids who knew how to shoot would not listen and fail to qualify.  They got it almost completely right.  Only 2 of the non-shooters failed to qualify the first time (they were just hard headed!) and the rest of the 25 "bolos" (not a good thing!) were all kids who had been shooting for 3 year or more.  Time to unlearn some bad habits.

BRM = BPT

The Army calls it Basic Rifle Marksmanship.  It is a proven method for teaching a serious business.  It is literally life or death.  We can translate that method into BPT - Basic Photographic Technique.  Before we ever put a single round in our rifles, we spent hours on dime and washer drills.  We would put a dime on the muzzle of our rifle and go through the entire shooting sequence.  The goal was to keep the dime/washer on the end.  Try it on your biggest lens with the dime on the lens hood.  Its hard!  We had a sequence beaten (they could still do that back then) into us - Breathe, Relax, Aim, Squeeze.  Take a breath, relax your body letting the breath out, aim as you get to the bottom of your breath, hold your breath momentarily, squeeze the trigger.  Here is a graphic representation of the sequence:

All of this applies to shooting with a long lens or in low light.  Take note of the length of the line for squeeze.  That is to scale.  One of the worst habits shooters, film or rifle, have is pulling the trigger/stabbing the shutter.  For a camera, make sure you have a good grip.  It should be firm but not white knuckle.  Put pad of your finger on the shutter button, not the tip. This will force you to squeeze down, not stab.  Think about and feel the ring around the shutter button.  If you can't feel it, you are using the tip instead of the pad.  When you want to shoot, squeeze down instead of pushing or stabbing.  Don't worry about releasing!!!!  The camera doesnt care how long you squeeze.  You want to hold it for a second.  If you are thinking about releasing, you will stab down so you can let it up immediately.

Burst shooting

I learned to shoot on an M16A1 that had a full auto mode.  One of the first things we were told was to never spray and pray.  If you run out of ammo, you die.  Instead we were taught to shoot controlled 3 round bursts.  Later the M16A2 got rid of the full auto completely and replaced it with an "automatic" burst mode.  Of course all of us oldsters decried the change as an accommodation for lazy shooters.  The skill to shoot a full auto in bursts was one of those dividing lines between good and bad shooters and we liked it.  The Army just wanted live soldiers and told us to STFU.  On your camera, learn to do the same thing.  Most of us shooting on a budget have cameras that can only shoot so many shots before needing a break to dump to the card.  And if you are shooting RAW with anything less than a $5000 monster you have even fewer shots before you need to give it a rest.  For me on the K200D, 3-5 shots are about right.  If I burst shoot 3-5 with a short (1-2 breaths) break, I can shoot for 30 seconds or more before I clog up the buffer.  Here is a graphic:

This shows an every breath shooting zone which is really important when the target is trying to kill you but it works for action subjects like cars or runners too.

By shooting like this, you can eliminate almost all shake.  If you hold your breath too long, you will induce shake as your body gets starved of oxygen and naturally increases your heart rate and breathing.  For me, on a three picture burst I have a very predictable sequence of "perfect" shots - 1/3 or 2.  If I squeeze a little too hard, I get 1 and 3 with the middle being blurry because at the bottom of my squeeze I moved the camera.  If squeezed too light - which is just like a stab - I get the second shot because I was light, didn't get response, stabbed a little to activate the shutter, got steady and then let up jerking the camera again.  On good days I get lots of 1/3 and I have a great control picture to figure which of the steady ones I like best.

Lots of camera reviews praise large buffer/high ISO cameras and complain about low buffer/low ISO cameras.  I dont have the $2000+ laying around for a Nikon D700so its ISO magic doesn't do anything for me.  Like the angry old Army guys, I think large buffers are for lazy photographers.  More than that, I think they teach bad habits and cause more bad pictures than they produce.  Controlled shooting will beat spray and pray every time.  How many times have you missed a shot because you filled the buffer?  Internalize these techniques and you will not miss those shots.  By learning the basics of being a steady shooter, you can get more great pictures in less light and with less chaff and more wheat.  This saves you time in Photoshop and time is money.  And by getting steady, you can push that ISO down, aperture up and still get the shot, just like the D700 guys.

Great pictures don't care what you shoot with.  If someone else is paying the bill, go for the best equipment possible.  But if its your dime, learn a little and save a lot.  Let the trust fund babies buy the expensive stuff (and drive down prices!) and watch them still get crappy pictures while you smile and  thank the Army for not only protecting your right to take pictures, but making those pictures better.