Workflow report: Covering events with K-1 & K5-II

[philzucker]

I've recently been assigned on my job to regularly cover outdoor and indoor events with locations ranging from large scale outdoor assemblies to indoor press conferences in a multitude of lighting situations. The pictures taken at these events have to be published fast to Instagram and Facebook accounts and have to be edited and stored for later print and further web publishing - in standard JPG format. I thought I'd describe my choice of gear and workflow.

Here we go:

On my first assignments I brought a multitude of lenses with me - among them especially the bright Tamrons 70-200/2.8 and 28-75/2.8 as well as an assortment of bright primes, but soon discovered that lens switching simply wasn't an option at those mostly fast paced events. So I ended up with an on first glance unlikely tandem that now works surprisingly well for me:

1. K-1 with Tamron 28-300 Di super-zoom

2. K-5II with Pentax DA10-17 fish-eye zoom

The K-1 with the Tamron super-zoom never lets me down; acquisition of focus is perfect in all circumstances, even with people walking fast towards me. ISO is set to auto with 6.400 max; the K-1 runs in P-mode. Program shift (especially for occasionally getting the aperture wide open for better background separation) and exposure compensation are assigned to the two wheels of the K-1. The latitude and sensitivity of the K-1's sensor allows me to take pictures that are fine even at the most challenging locations - especially those only dimly lit or those with high contrasts in the open sun - without resorting to any (fill-)flash use. I shoot raw (with a JPG backup on the second card) and for instant social media publishing develop selected pictures in-camera to XS-size JPGs that are transferred to my smartphone via the Image Sync app (which fortunately now works reliably). Later all RAWs are imported to Lightroom for finer adjustments and cropping and the are exported as JPGs for further use.

The K5-II with the fish-eye zoom has the job to deliver the unusual wide perspectives; since the K5-II has no WiFi, its pictures are not used for instant sharing; auto ISO is limited to 5.000, P-mode is used with program shift and exposure compensation on the two wheels. Latitude is less good as with the K-1, but still impressive, leaving much room for difficult lighting situations. Like with the K-1 only RAW is used, but processing in LR is mandatory here. As far as the typical distortion of the fish-eye pictures is concerned they are both used as they are or de-fished.

The JPGs exported from both cameras have to be no larger then 6 MP - 3.000 by 2.000 is more than enough for all intended uses in print and on the web. So I get a sort of real life pixel binning that reduces / covers noise perfectly well that comes from using high ISO, additional shadow raising and/or other PP exposure adjustments. Of course not all results are fit for fine art printing - but perfectly well for the journalistic use they are intended for.

To sum things up: With the K-1/Tamron 28-300 and the K-5II/DA10-17 I have a very reliable combo that I can trust in and that simply delivers painlessly for the event coverage I'm doing right now. What makes both cameras specials IMO is the room for error they provide with their great latitude - because I often don't have a second chance to take "the pic" at those events.

Any questions as far as the mentioned workflow and choice of gear is concerned are welcome - but please note that I won't share any pictures (some issues are involved here I won't delve into).

Phil

 

[robbo d]

Hence why I avoid the K3 for low light where I can, because the K5iis and K1 give me plenty of lattitude and low light performance.

Interesting read and nice to know the wifi works well.

 

[soheil]

Thanks for sharing your very useful work flow. I have some wifi sd cards to transfer the images to my tablet or phone just in case, though with relatively slow speed.

 

[philzucker]

Hence why I avoid the K3 for low light where I can, because the K5iis and K1 give me plenty of lattitude and low light performance.

Indeed they do!

Interesting read

Thanks!

and nice to know the wifi works well.

The image transfer app is still not my favorite - using it is complicated - but it least now connects reliably and instantly. Wasn't so in the first few versions ...

Phil

 

[philzucker]

Thanks for sharing your very useful work flow.

Thanks for your comment!

I have some wifi sd cards to transfer the images to my tablet or phone just in case, though with relatively slow speed.

I do have a Transcend WiFi card I could use in the K5-II, but the Transcend app for image transfer is not very comfortable for image transfer - even less so then the Pentax one IIRC. I could have another look at it though - maybe it has also improved.

Phil

 

[Lyff]

Hence why I avoid the K3 for low light where I can, because the K5iis and K1 give me plenty of lattitude and low light performance.

Interesting read and nice to know the wifi works well.

I never understood why the old 16mgpx sensor in the K-5 (II) is reputed to be better in low light against the K-3 one, before switching from nikon to pentax I tried both the K-3 and the K-5 IIs and I always found the K-3 files much more pleasing even under low light thanks to much more detail and "smaller" grain.

K-3 files had more grain but I found it quite easy to process trough software like DXO and recover more detail than on the K-5 IIs. That said even if I never use in camera processing over 1600 iso on theses cameras (outside of BW), the embedded noise reduction in the K-3 seemed to handle chroma noise pretty badly against the K-5 IIs.

I mostly do concert and event photography so low light performance & dynamic range was pretty critical to me, I didn't tried the K-5 IIs extensively so maybe I missed some points you can enlighten me but so far the K-1 & K-3 combo worked better for me than the D810 & D3200.

 

[Twong]

Hence why I avoid the K3 for low light where I can, because the K5iis and K1 give me plenty of lattitude and low light performance.

Interesting read and nice to know the wifi works well.

I never understood why the old 16mgpx sensor in the K-5 (II) is reputed to be better in low light against the K-3 one, before switching from nikon to pentax I tried both the K-3 and the K-5 IIs and I always found the K-3 files much more pleasing even under low light thanks to much more detail and "smaller" grain.

K-3 files had more grain but I found it quite easy to process trough software like DXO and recover more detail than on the K-5 IIs. That said even if I never use in camera processing over 1600 iso on theses cameras (outside of BW), the embedded noise reduction in the K-3 seemed to handle chroma noise pretty badly against the K-5 IIs.

I mostly do concert and event photography so low light performance & dynamic range was pretty critical to me, I didn't tried the K-5 IIs extensively so maybe I missed some points you can enlighten me but so far the K-1 & K-3 combo worked better for me than the D810 & D3200.

I also found that K-3II files are just as easy to work with as K-5IIs. The extra resolution allows for more cropping. Overall, I prefer K-3Ii to K-5IIs. YMMV though.