Monday, March 07, 2011

PESO 2011 #06 - Almond orchard





You can see more photos from Galia and me after this link.

Sunday, March 06, 2011

Enter K-5

I am awfully behind in my blogging effort. One of the things that I don't manage to get to is to produce a blog entry comparing Sony A850 and Pentax K-7. Meanwhile, I finally decided to spring for Pentax K-5, which as it appears offers basically just one but extremely important advantage over its predecessor - the Sony 16 MP sensor.

It all started when Paul Stenquist of PDML published this picture (presented here with Paul's permission) comparing K-5 with K-7 at ISO 6400.


The frame from K-7 is above and that from K-5 is below. It is no wonder that K-7, being at its highest ISO setting cannot match performance of K-5, which still has 3 stops of ISO up its sleeve. But more importantly this picture illustrates the virtue of dynamic range and the way K-5 renders the shades gradually whereas K-7 is pretty abrupt.

Although as we would see if I hopefully produce the A850 vs K-7 writeup the difference between K-7 and A850 is not as dramatic as I initially thought it were, I finally succumbed to the temptation.

Presently I've shot about 1,000 frames with K-5 and the matching between me and this camera is pretty much done. The upgrade from K-7 is seamless and as smooth as it can be. Practically I couldn't really put K-5 to the situation where its sensor and meter would produce a picture that cannot be salvaged from tonality point of view. I did manage once, shooting under the bright sun into the interior of my car. The contrast was way too high even for mighty K-5.

So, in a nutshell, K-5 is K-7 with improved sensor. I don't have SDM lenses so I cannot really appreciate the improvements K-5 offers in AF department. I've noticed significant improvement in AF speed under live view but I need to try this under real life use conditions. Was the upgrade worth it - yes. Was it necessary - no. It certainly did not make my pictures any better. But it made my shooting more convenient and worry free.

More to come, time permitting...

Gabriel Hadar - the story teller

Back in August 2010 we paid a visit to the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv. One of the attractions was the "Hour of the Story" presented by Gabriel Hadar. The kids loved it. In fact, I should say that I loved it too. But I was also with my camera and so I took pictures. After the show Gabriel approached me, gave me his card and asked for the pictures. Fortunately to me, the pictures came out really well. And so I sent them to Gabriel. A short e-mail exchange happened and finally, just a few days ago Gabriel sent me the link to his web site. For those who don't read Hebrew, the little writing beneath Gabriel's pictures says "Photography: Boris Liberman".

Great many thanks, Gabriel! And I should say that I wholeheartedly recommend you this wonderful artist and a man of his word.

The link obviously is going to be added to the friendly sites section of my blog.