1999 with a Nikon Coolpix, low resolution images.- New software advancements gives a new life to my old pictures. It's not as good as if captured with a Pentax K-5, but it's still fantastic.

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

Hi Photographer friends,

In 1999, I was living in Maine. One of my first digital camera was the Nikon Coolpix 990. It had 3.32 megapixels, and I thought it was fantastic. The truth is that it was indeed fantastic. Pentax did not have a digital camera at the time and I was astonished at the images I was able to produce.

 

Fourteen years later, I reloaded some of the images on my computer and tried to improve them with today's Photoshop. Take in consideration that the images were improved back then with the Photoshop version available at the time.

 

The images are still not very good for enlargements on printed paper, but considering that most people view or exchange images on a computer screen, the results are pretty impressive.

 

Look for yourself. The first images are the originals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have thousands of pictures taken with low resolution digital cameras. Maybe it's time for me to rediscover perfectly good images lost in inferior technology.

Isn't technology amazing?

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

I'm glad that cameras like the Pentax K-5 are available, but I'm also glad that technological advancement in software allows me to give a second life to my older images.

Ah! Technology, the more it changes the more it’s the same. New iBook for the Pentax K-01

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

Hi Photographer friends,

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently writing a new e-book. This time, it’s about the new Pentax K-01 that was announced in February with a start of delivery at the end of March.

We already heard all kind of negative comments about this new camera, "it's too Boxy", "It looks like a brick", who would want a bright yellow camera?", "Who is Marc Newson anyway?", "It has no EVF (Electronic ViewFinder) or OVF (Optical ViewFinder)  so it's useless", and many other comments.

As for myself, I cannot judge anything by looks only. Pentax has always been on the forefront of technology, daring in their designs, and here they go again. The K-01 is certainly daring or pushing aesthetic to a new level…but why can't aesthetic and functionality live together?

As I am writing my book, I am finding out a lot about the camera, and the specifications are pretty impressive.  We, as human, tend to want the newest technology while we don’t want things to change. It’s an oxymoron, a paradox, or call it what you want, but that’s really the way we are.

The K-01 is a blend of new technology, new aesthetic, bold design, and that’s what the upcoming generation will gravitate to.  I often let other people use my DSLR to take a picture of me or my family or friends as a group, and the first thing they do is to hold the camera like a point-and-shoot, trying to compose the picture by looking at the LCD screen.  They are at lost when I tell them to look in the viewfinder.

Apparently, the most used camera is the world is the iPhone or Smart phones.  That leads me to believe that the new generation won’t care about an EVF or OVF.

So…my new book or e-book will actually be published first as an iBook, for the Apple iPad.

Why would I do that?

Because Apple introduced “iBooks Author” in January and the concept is an absolute game changer.  You get to read a book while experiencing multi-media. Yes, you can view videos, image galleries, interact with images and diagrams, follow Internet links, search the Internet, highlight passages, write and save your own notes, and more. Check it out here and here. I can’t think of a better way to learn.

My new iBook will be available on the Apple App Store for the iPad. I will make a version also available as a PDF file, just like my other e-books.  The iPad 2 has been selling at the rate of a little over one million per week. Not everybody that has an iPad 2  will  buy a Pentax K-01, but many will, I hope.

I am setting up my iBook as a template that will be used for many future “Everything you need to know…and then some” series of camera “How to books”, and this time, for all major brands of cameras.

Ah! Technology, the more it changes the more it’s the same.

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

My Samsung / Verizon Cell Phone camera IQ is getting closer to my Pentax DSLR. I want a Pentax in my Cell Phone.

Visitors to this page also liked: See "Recommended Reading" on the right column. We honor reciprocal links. Email: brqyvn@aol.com

Hi Pentaxian friends.

About a month ago, I purchase and posted about my new iPod Touch . I liked it except that it was only useful around my own home network or at places like Starbuck where Wi-Fi is available. I already have the second generation of iPod and the songs and images capabilities are about the same. Neither has a camera. I purchased it at Costco and was able to return it for a full refund. I cannot afford an Apple iPhone and don't really like AT&T for cellular phone services.

My cell phone contract is with Verizon. I explored what Verizon had available these days to see if I could upgrade my current cell phone for one with a better built-in digital camera . Well...I found it. I renewed my subscription for another two years and got a new phone for free. I also signed for unlimited internet for just $39.95. The cell phone I chose is a Samsung Omnia II. It is similar to the iPhone technology but uses Windows Mobile 6.5. It's like a mini laptop and I can get all my emails wherever I go. I can surf the internet, post on Facebook and even on my blog, which I eventually will.

The 5.0 megapixels camera (The iPhone has a 3 megapixels camera) combined with a 3.7" WVGA AMOLED display screen, is what impressed me the most.  Here are some of the camera features: 5.0 megapixels, Autofocus, Scene mode, single and continuous shooting, auto-panorama, auto and adjustable white balance, Face recognition, Special Effects,  Sensitivity of ISO 50 to 800, Contrast-Saturation-Sharpness adjustment, Flash on - Auto or off, Brightness adjustment, Anti-shake, Matrix - Center Weighted and Spot metering, and more. It even has WDR (Wide Dynamic Range)  which is a form of HDR (High Dynamic Range on DSLRs) Oh yes...it also has the capability of storing images in the phone's 8 gig internal memory, or use a mini SDHC card up to 16gig, or upload your pictures to places like Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, YouTube, etc, on the internet, right from the phone. Grant you...the sensor is smaller than a DSLR, but look at how much progress that has been made in the last five years with cell phone technology. Will the cell phone cameras of tomorrow be as good as Today's DSLRs? Will Cell phones replace the cameras and computers as a media tool? Perhaps they will.

A few more attributes, my cell runs microsoft Word, Excel, Power point and all of the standard Microsoft Office applications. It can be used as a voice recorder and even has GPS. I plays video movies, TV programs, stores and play thousands of songs, podcasts, e-books, etc. My Pentax e-books can be uploaded in Word format including all of the images or in PDF without the images. Oh yeah! Did I mention that it also has video capabilities?

Ain't technology grand? Maybe Pentax will someday team-up with a cell phone manufacturer and offer Pentax Technology for the camera part. Pentax has always been know for the small footprint of their cameras.

Joshua Tree National Park

180 Degree Panorama

Victoria Gardens

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

Technology is great but is it necessarily a good thing?

Visitors to this page also liked: See "Recommended Reading" on the right column. We honor reciprocal links. Email: brqyvn@aol.com

Hi Pentaxian friends.

Technology is great but is it necessarily a good thing?

During the past two to three years, I have acquired quite a collection of new Pentax lenses. From the DA 10-17mm to the DA* 300mm and almost every lenses in between. I also started collecting the Limited lenses. I have enough lenses for just about all possible situations . Yet, I found that my photography enthusiasm has fallen several notches. Could it be because I have too many choices? Honestly...I believe so.

Every time I go on a shooting trek, I take all the lenses I can humanly carry and still complain to myself about which lenses I should have brought instead. I believe that having so many lenses and choices does not help my photography...instead it complicates it.

So, for a while anyway, I decided to put all of my zoom and telephoto lenses away. I will limit myself to carry a maximum of three lenses with me. I will carry a wide angle, a normal lens and a small telephoto. Instead of taking a powerful telephoto for photographing distant subjects, I will walk or drive closer. Who knows what I might see while physically getting closer. I know, you can't do that for sport photography without being trampled by players, but I personally don't do sport photography.

Will I use Pentax best DA* prime lenses or the Pentax DA limiteds? Not necessarily. I own dozens of older Pentax "A" manual focus lenses that are still superb in quality. Since I'm sort of going back to the basics, I won't be using the autofocus. The "A" lenses are manual focus, but the K-7 and other Pentax DSLRs will acknowledge when AF is achieved with a beep and the green hexagon illuminated in the viewfinder. A small red square will also briefly appear to show where the AF point is located, on most Pentax DSLRs. My eyes also play an important role. What I see is what I want to get. Using AF is sometime misleading the DSLR into focusing on another spot in your scene. Manually focusing gives you a better chance to focus exactly on the desired part of the scene. I like to use the focus point in the center, and recompose if necessary. It's going to be a slower operation, but maybe that's what we all need to do...slow down and compose. Will IQ suffer? I don't think so.

Pro lenses do last longer, can take more of a beating and usually are f/2.8 and faster. However, low cost or older lenses take good pictures as well. They may not endure the handling demanded by Professional Photographers, but they render great images quality as well. The usable ISO of today's DSLRs is so much better than what was available with film cameras. The fast lenses are not as crucial as they were once.

All Pentax DSLRs use APS-C sized sensors. When Full Frame lenses are used, the image circle is much bigger than what's needed for the smaller APS-C sensor. Since glass effectiveness or accuracy tends to be less on the outer edges of any given lens, only the middle portion of Full Frame lenses hits the sensor, making every shots within the sweet spot of the lens used. Therefore, better IQ is achieved when using a Full Frame format lens on an APS-C sensor, although it is cropped. Who cares about the cropping, what you see in the viewfinder is what you get afterall. When post processed with Photoshop, 90% of image quality can be fixed, if needed. This is today's "darkroom" and I see nothing wrong in fixing image quality with Photoshop or other software.

Today's DSLRs are great technical achievements, but too much automation can hinder one's creativity. I you use a fully "Auto-Everything " DSLR, where does the hobby and craft of photography goes? What happens to the careful analysis of a scene and the meticulous composition?

I think this approach will get me back to the groove and my pictures will improve. It's easy to take the path of least resistance, but the outcome is usually proportional.

Thank you for reading,

Yvon Bourque

A visit to Southern California. Pictured with Pentax DSLRs.

Visitors to this page also liked: See right column.
We honor reciprocal links.

Hi Pentaxian friends,

Technology is so great. One of my daughter and her boyfriend visited us last week from the East Coast, Maryland to be precise, and I was able to take most of the week off. I knew I wouldn’t have time to write new articles everyday so I wrote them in advance and scheduled them to appear everyday just a little after midnight. Thanks to Justin Serpico, Alain Dumas and Miserere, who also wrote articles, it was even easier to take a break. I carry a laptop and I was able to answer my emails, and post the comments received.

My wife and I live in Southern California, and while they were here, we had a chance to visit the area. We spent some time in Pasadena, Palm Springs and Los Angeles. Some of the highlights of their stay were visiting a small Ghost Town named Calico, Joshua Tree National Park and Palm Springs. Here are some pictures taken with my Pentax DSLRs, some with the K20D, some with the K200D and some taken by my wife with her K2000:

That's me with my daughter as photographed by my wife. Apparently she looks like me!

My wife Anne with Marisa


Marisa and Matthew

Calico General Store

Calico typical door

Calico School room

Palm Springs sunset

Joshua Tree

Joshua Tree Campsite

Daughter's silouhette

No, we didn't camp there, but wish we would have.

One week is not a long time and before we knew it, it was time for them to fly back. We had a great time and every so often, I think of how hard it is to live all across the Country. My wife and I both have children and grandchildren from previous marriage, and they reside all over the USA. They are in Florida, Maryland, California, Nevada and Washington State. None of them lives close enough for a day trip. Again, thanks to technology, we can communicate over the internet, cell phones and even see each other while chatting on the computer. We can leave text messages on cell phones and send pictures or even videos as things happen. It still does not replace a personal visit, but it’s a far cry from the way it was just a hundred years ago. Back then, moving to another State meant that chances were you wouldn’t see your loved ones in this world again.

Marisa and Matthew, we had a great time while you were here.

Thank you for reading,
Yvon Bourque