I had my Pentax modified to monochrome
Quote from James Warner on July 21, 2022, 11:51 amQuote from EckyH on July 19, 2022, 5:41 pmWhat have you done?
Yeah, I apologize for that
Too late. 😀
Few hours ago I wrote that guy a message and asked him for his terms and conditions. This is aggravated by the fact that a mint K-5II with shutter count less than 4000 is on it's way to me...
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Quote from EckyH on July 21, 2022, 12:03 pmQuote from James Warner on July 21, 2022, 11:51 amQuote from EckyH on July 19, 2022, 5:41 pmWhat have you done?
Yeah, I apologize for that
Too late.
Few hours ago I wrote that guy a message and asked him for his terms and conditions. This is aggravated by the fact that a mint K-5II with shutter count less than 4000 is on it's way to me...E.
Haha, awesome! You'll have to let me know how it goes. He was great working with. Very communicative. It took a while, but I wasn't in a rush and he updated me without me having to nag him. Really a pleasure. Shipping from Lithuania didn't take too long either.
I was going to put more of those details in a post/video with more of the nerdy stuff too for anyone interested in how the process went. But yes, in short a great experience with him.
Quote from James Warner on July 21, 2022, 11:49 amQuote from ahoyhere on July 20, 2022, 6:03 am<snip>
I've never heard of one of those astro cams being used for anything other than astro -- that would be interesting to see the results! I don't know anything about that speciality astrophotography stuff except that when you Google how to monochrome convert your camera almost all the research and help on the matter was done by astrophotographers
Right? I was excited when he was getting into it, thinking I could help and participate and frankly I could not at all! It's wildly different to what we call "photography." But still, a camera is a camera… maybe…?
Thanks for the compliments, and I definitely still feel like I have a ton to learn with black and white shots. But it's a fun way to learn. Doing side-by-sides with my non-converted K-5iis were interesting because the histogram looked so different, even beyond the exposure difference. Just the spread of light. The monochrome converted camera images are a lot flatter out of camera, so I just play with the tone curve and really like how they end up. I haven't done any landscape with it yet but I really, really want to. I think that would be interesting to judge the file differences too.
There's always more to learn of course but look at your first shots and the ones you put in the video, what a difference!
How do the histograms differ? Are they flatter for the monochrome shots or do you mean the raws simply look flatter?
For landscape, you definitely want some filters, much of nature is the same shade (medium grey).
I also wonder how your converted camera would do with an infrared filter………
The camera still has it's IR cut filter in place, but each pixel is more sensitive to light that gets through that cut filter. I don't think the K-5's cut filter is particularly weak, but haven't looked into it. @sprucebruce actually brought that up to me as well. Would be a fun experiment!
The histograms are interesting. The screenshots below are from the K-5iis and the converted K-5 II. There's a sharp cut on the highlights of the converted, verses the sloped highlights of the non-converted. And then overall the non-converted is less flat, more contrast.
Obviously scene by scene is going to look different. This scene had a white background so a lot of whites. But the general pattern seen here has applied to other test shots as well between the two.
Uploaded files:
Quote from James Warner on July 22, 2022, 12:13 pm
The histograms are interesting. The screenshots below are from the K-5iis and the converted K-5 II. There's a sharp cut on the highlights of the converted, verses the sloped highlights of the non-converted. And then overall the non-converted is less flat, more contrast.
Obviously scene by scene is going to look different. This scene had a white background so a lot of whites. But the general pattern seen here has applied to other test shots as well between the two.
That is interesting! There's a LOT more info to right side.
Also would be interesting to find out if it varies based on ISO, which I bet it would.
Quote from EckyH on July 21, 2022, 12:03 pma mint K-5II with shutter count less than 4000 is on it's way to me...
Unfortunately, the camera came with remarkable scratches on the LCD screen yesterday. Fortunately the law here in Germany forces commercial sellers to take back even used goods, so I sent it back. To be fair: the ebay seller handled the issue very professionally.
Today I found another K-5II in excellent condition at MPB Germany with a shutter count of 5300 for 280€ including shipping. That's 45€ less than the scratched camera. And usually their stated conditions of the gear match the reality. From that perspective the scratches on the first camera save the shipping costs from Nottuln to Vilnius and back. 🙂
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The K-5II from MPB arrived here on Wednesday in the stated excellent condition.
Today I brought it to the post office and now... "thoughts and prayers" or so... 😉
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The camera arrived in Vilnius on Wednesday afternoon.
Few hours ago I received a message:
your camera is ready.
That was really quick! And the best part: obviously all went well. Phew.
At the moment I am grateful that someone planted this idea in my mind, that a nice guy in Lithuania takes care of the camera and that it is fairly simple to carry out such an action.
And I'm already curious how the images from that camera will be.
E.
Quote from EckyH on August 5, 2022, 6:19 pmThe camera arrived in Vilnius on Wednesday afternoon.
Few hours ago I received a message:
your camera is ready.
That was really quick! And the best part: obviously all went well. Phew.
At the moment I am grateful that someone planted this idea in my mind, that a nice guy in Lithuania takes care of the camera and that it is fairly simple to carry out such an action.
And I'm already curious how the images from that camera will be.
E.
Ah! So awesome. He probably already told you but you'll need to use a program to convert the RAW files to monochrome RAW files before you edit them. You can buy a program called monochrome2DNG for $20 (30 day free trial to see if you like it). There's also potentially a way to get a free program like raw therapee to skip the demosiacing process and edit that way, but I couldn't get it to work.
Quote from James Warner on August 5, 2022, 7:31 pmAh! So awesome.
Awesome indeed. He also gave me access to the first test images made with my converted camera. "I'm excited" is strongly understated.
He probably already told you but you'll need to use a program to convert the RAW files to monochrome RAW files before you edit them. You can buy a program called monochrome2DNG for $20 (30 day free trial to see if you like it). There's also potentially a way to get a free program like raw therapee to skip the demosiacing process and edit that way, but I couldn't get it to work.
Yes, he did. That "Monochrome2DNG" is available only for Windows and MacOS and not for Linux, which I use. But we have exiftool.
The RawTherapee 5.8 (RT) approach worked for me as follows: load the image in RT, open it with the editor, "Alt-r" to activate the RAW module, open the "Sensor with Bayer Matrix" menu, open the "Demosaicing" menu. In the menu beside "Method:" choose "Mono".
If I understand it right, then the preparation of the RAW files is just to manipulate some metadata within the file. exiftool can do that. It's just the question, which metadata has to be set to which value.
If you work with "Monochrome2DNG" or could try it, then the following would be really helpful: If you could read out a DNG file with exiftool before and after the conversion, redirect the output into two different text files - then I could analyse that and work out an exiftool based approach...
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