PhotographyBanzai.com

I finished going through the first day of photos from the Otakon 2011 convention in Baltimore, MD today. Some highlight images of the day: I primarily used the DA 40mm f2.8 lens for that day, switching between using and not using the flash. Overall the flash is a big help outside to create a level exposure between the subject and background, yet still having high contrast throughout the image.  The main benefit being that I don’t have to care as much if I shooting into or away from the sun or not. I decided to do cropping this time to see if the final results turn out a bit better overall. Getting decent framing is a challenge with prime lenses, but it is what I prefer.

I’m thinking about what to bring to the “Otakon” Anime convention. As this is going to be a big trip for us, I wanted to bring my A-game. The K-5 body is still MIA, but I wanted to have two camera bodies available. I purchased a used *ist D camera body. That blurred coin in the image is a nickel, not a quarter! I just had the camera delivered a few days ago. Really great. The small size is amazing. Guess which lens I instantly put on it? Yep… the DA 40mm f2.8 Limited. The grip is better than the old *ist DS I had, but it could have been better with some extra room for finger tips. Surprising number of advanced controls and settings. Three custom setting saves. Timer button, green button, flash control button, af button… I started by turning off all of the extras such as noise reduction and instant preview. With my 16gb CF cards a single RAW writes in around 9 seconds based on one test. Once the image is written, I can press the review button and the image comes up instantly. While I...

EDIT: I suggest not going to this convention or other ones run by that company. Search Google for something like "animecons Kopf convention police report" .  This weekend a friend and I went to a first-run convention called “Anime Midwest.” It’s one of many small conventions that a group of people have been running around this area for the last few months. It has a very different feel than something like Anime Central (23,000 guests this year). With anime convention, more is better in my book. Some highlight images:  On Friday and Saturday I was using the K-7 with the 14mm f2.8 lens. I had used the 14mm f2.8 at AMKE this year, but without a flash like this time. My goal was to make images with light falloff as an alternative to small depth of field photography (I still ended up adding some fill light in post processing to some images). Lately I’ve been having focus issues with the K-7, so I was suffering from that a bit even with the wide angle lens.  This was probably...

I spent the weekend with a friend at Soycon taking photos. This is dubbed a “cosplay gathering” where a large group of people meetup for events and photography.  Edit: I removed the old video along with various similar videos. All of those were compiled into one video and placed on my Cosplay/crafting channel instead of the “Photography Banzai” one.  A few highlight images: From a photography standpoint I did have a few issues. My newer camera, the K-5, is being fixed (It looks like I feel compelled to mention that in every single posting until I get it back…), so I had to use the older K-7.  That meant less dynamic range, poor high ISO, and fewer megapixels. For whatever reason the camera seems to back-focus at around 10 feet away from my subject, which isn’t something I remember happening in the past. I noticed a hint of it with the 55mm f1.4 when I looked at those model shots I took a few days ago, but on Saturday when I used my 31mm f1.8 lens it was more consistent at showing t...

A friend and I has a small model shoot on Thursday. Our goals were to generate some useful example images for a basic photography panel we will be running at a convention soon. While I’m not sure the shoot was successful from that aspect, I think I did get some nice images. I was using the K-7 camera body, the DA* 55mm f1.4 lens, a Sigma 530DG Super flash, and a custom bracket. Used the camera primarily in Av, but I also controlled the ISO along with the aperture. 

As I’m a believer in going to the source to make sure things go well, I just sent a general inquiry email to Ricoh Japan . For people who are actually good at Japanese, pardon my low quality letter. I think it good enough to get my point across though. If you see odd squares and such below in my letter to Ricoh, that means your computer can’t display Japanese because the proper fonts and/or system data isn’t installed. はじめまして、　スコットです。 メッセージはアメリカから。　　RICOHは日本の会社です、そして日本語を書きました。　少しが分かります。　すみません。　　私は頑張ります。 This message is from America. Ricoh is a Japanese company, so I wanted to write in Japanese. I only understand a little. Excuse me. I’ll keep trying. RICOHのPENTAX買収のニュースを見ました。　　良いニュースですね！　　RICOHは古いKーMOUNTレンズを作りました。　　GRーDIGITALも良いカメラ見たいと思います。 I saw Ricoh’s pentax acquisition news. It’s good news isn’t it! Ricoh made old K-mount lenses. The GR-Digital is also a nice camera I think. 私はPENTAXユーザーです。　「*IST　DS」カメラから。　（K１０D、Kー７、Kー５も）。　　そして、ペンタッ...

Pentax will be part of Ricoh by October… Huh? While not unexpected, it is a little abrupt. Ritax? Pencoh? Nope… Here is Ricoh’s full press release in PDF format. “On completion of the Acquisition, Ricoh will begin to use the PENTAX brand name for some of its digital camera products, and HOYA will continue to use the PENTAX brand name for their endoscopes and other products. Furthermore, with the Acquisition, both companies will cooperate with each other to increase the value of the PENTAX brand.” So it looks like they will use the Pentax name at least. I’ll assume that means the 35mm, 645D, and Q-mount will stay Pentax. The Ricoh release is pretty positive from my point of view (unlike the useless Hoya one). It sounds like they respect Pentax’s history and want to really improve and grow the interchangeable systems. Maybe that will mean full-frame Pentax in the future and some interesting glass? It’s also interesting how much they men...

I thought I wrote an article about the Pentax AF-280T flash unit describing what settings work best with the flash. I spend a few minutes searching through the site with no luck. I was making a large number of video overviews today and did one on the AF-280T. I guess that I mentioned an article that only existed in my mind! I’ll fix that post haste…done (see below). Put the camera in Sv, Tv or P mode and the flash in red/green auto mode. Sv mode settings and overview: – Put the camera in Sv mode and modify the ISO to change depth of field. ISO 80 on the K-5 will force the camera to use the largest aperture it can when the flash is powered. I’ve used Sv with my Pentax AF-280T flash with good results. This is the simplest mode to use with the flash as all you will need to control is the ISO setting. It is also the mode I get the best results in without much effort on my part. – Matrix metering is fine. – Set the ISO yourself. – Allow the camera and flash to control aperture and sh...

As I’m sure you have realized by now, I primarily used Pentax equipment. I also spend time reading forums like pentaxforums.com with the lively equipment centric debates. I would like to eventually offer more content on this site for all brands, but I will need to make some connections before that can happen. Well anyways, here is another post about Pentax I was writing up for a forum topic. It deals with Pentax’s recent history and how I see it. I also talk about full-frame digital cameras as that was the topic of discussion. I love talking about Pentax full-frame. I’ll first include some background as how I see it before saying where I think they will go. I think the K-7 and K-x were a positive turning point for Pentax. Both in leadership (Hoya) and focus on the photographic tools they offer. Camera companies are not known to be fast. Even before Hoya showed up there was a shift internally when the K-7 was being developed, so I’d say it was more internal Pentax with some reality chec...

If you haven’t noticed, Pentax will be joining the small sized mirror-less interchangeable lens camera club. There is a lot of information out for the camera excluding sample photos. Here are a few images borrowed from Pentax USA and the USA president Ned’s blog: Now I’ll give some opinion on what I see as the positives and negatives of this new camera and lens system… First off, I’ll go over the negatives to get them out of the way: – As everyone and their brother on the Internet has pointed out, it has a small sized sensor. I’m going to just say wait and see what the quality will be like once full reviews are available. The physical laws of nature can be a harsh mistress though. – The Q is stuck between a rock and hard place considering economics. Digicams and entry level SLRs are cheap. I’m not sure there is much room to fit the Q in due to the small sensor at $800 with a prime lens. I think $800 is well into SLR and mirrorless-large-sensor territory. – An optical viewfinder is only...