Quote Originally Posted by nighthawk View Post
Cold,
Very nice shot. Nikon and Pentax just cannot be beat for their rich colors and contrast. Love the bokeh with that lens. silky smooth but not overpowering.

I was looking at my lens late yesterday and saw something funky about the circular polarizer I have on that Sigma 70-300 macro. Yep sure enough it is hazed. That would explain some of the soft issues I am having. It is a Hoya filter so they should replace it free of charge. One other thing you touched on in another post is the internal shake reduction that Pentax uses. While it does do a good job, makes the lenses much cheaper, it can also cause the photo to be a bit soft in lower light conditions. The folks on the Pentax forums board say to either use a flash or drop an f stop to slightly over expose the shot. The shake reduction is good for about two stops. the shot of the bridge sign is from a tripod with a remote shutter release, no shake reduction. The duck was from a mono pod without shake reduction. the shots of the new structure being built in the lake are hand held with shake reduction.

I shoot everything in RAW although the K-10D allows you to shoot in both RAW and JPEG simultaneously. I am also using Adobe RGB instead of sRBG setting in my camera's manual menu. The problem I found there is while Adobe lets the camera use a wider range of color not all PP programs accept Adobe RGB so it has to convert over to sRGB.

Which RGB setting do you use? I should say that my preferred shooting mode is Manual. Probably because I learned to shoot on a Pentax K-1000 that I still have.
Lot of good info - wonder if Eric still shoots RAW ?