LBA- Pentax DA 55-300 f4-5.8 First Shots

Alrighty! I got my long awaited new Tele Zoom yesterday and I managed to carve out a little bit of time to play with it. Here are my first few test shots. For a consumer level zoom at it's price point and SIZE/WEIGHT. I am pretty chuffed, it may not be as sharp as some zooms that cost 3-4x as much (Big surprise there wot?) but it is acceptably sharp. This is going to be a hiking, active outdoors lens and as such weight and form factor are a big deal. At some point I will post some comparison pictures for ya, but suffice it to say that with hood reversed it fits in my camera bag nicely and will go in my camelbak in the soft case it came with very easily, and will be a welcome addition. The last time I climbed Mt Timpanogos (September of '08 if you want to go back to my archives) The longest lens I had was an old, but very sharp, manual focus 135mm f2.5, I really wished for more reach at that point and this will scratch that itch.

Moving forward here are some test shots, the first is a 10 or 11 shot panorama shot at 55mm and stitched in Photoshop Elements. Unfortunately, I neglected to turn the camera to portrait orientation so I did cut off a lot of the sky, and I forgot to manually set the WB so I had a color change partway through the shot. I will fix that later, I shoot RAW+JPEG and I can go back and re-develop the RAW with a consistent WB. I am not sure how wide it will show when you click on it, but it you really want send me an e-mail and I will send you a compressed JPEG.

EDIT: I have now fixed my WB issues, you can download the HUGE original here or a slightly smaller 1080pixel high one here. The password for either of them is "Wide" Everybody else who goes there but doesn't read my blog won't get to see them large. Feel special?

Here is a moon shot from my front porch, I found that f11 gave me a better exposure, f8 was a little blown out.... not sure why.

Here is a 100% crop (or will be when you click on it) not bad for what it is. NOT bad at all!

(Do think it would be a wee bit sharper with a better tripod, which I plan to fix soon.)

All these were taken at ISO 400 (Hence the noisy skies) and f8 and 300mm except as noted. Pretty decent for my first try. Need to follow the advice of a forum member though. "Get a BIG lens and get closer" I have the lens now I need to get closer. The only processing for this series is a slight levels adjust and one pass of USM at 20% Radius of 60 and threshold of 0.

This was at 55mm, the whole flock of gulls took off suddenly, very loud occurance!

Tight crop.

This guy was landing and I caught him at the point of touchdown, this was straightened and cropped, but not much else.

Not quite there yet.....

People have been asking me for My Timpanogos temple pictures for awhile, figured I would run down on the way to my folks house a week ago. Ended up with not quite the shot quality I wanted/needed. I bracketed 2 stops each way, think I need to go 3 at least and do 5 shots.

That and find a better angle, with the color cast differences of the lights I don't think this side will work for a nighttime shot. Maybe a sunset/late evening facing East with the Temple and the Mountains both lit by the evening sun......

Anyway, call these a failure and move on I guess.....

One from this Morning

Lone Peak from the parking lot of Riverton Hospital. Nothing special but I kinda liked it!

Pentax DA 15 f4 Limited Vs. Sigma DC EX 10-20 f4.5-5.6

OK, first things first, if you want to see more images or download full size images of the comparison shots that I have NOT posted copy and paste this link: http://LloydShell.zenfolio.com/p417755350

Alrighty, with that piece of housekeeping done on to the main event! A friend of mine recently rented a Pentax DA 15mm f4 Limited for a trip to the 4 corners area of UT/AZ/CO/NM he had a couple of extra days after he got home before it needed to be returned to www.cameralensrentals.com (A great place to rent from if you need to!) and he offered me the chance to play with it. I was very eager to do so and jumped at the chance, even though I would have very limited amounts of time to do anything with it. I already have a lens that covers that focal length but it is much larger as you can see here.

With lens caps on you can see that the Sigma is twice the size (and weight) of the Pentax despite the Pentax being all metal, I guess aluminum has its merits!
With the hoods on, the size differential is similar. The Pentax has a built in slide out hood which is very handy, where the Sigma has a detachable and reversible hood which saves space but is really quite large.

Looking from the front the diameters of the lenses are readily apparent. Pentax 49mm as are ALL the Limiteds, which is great if you want to limit the number of filters you buy. Sigma 77mm which is a common professional filter size with professional cost too!
I did not include here any of the comparison photos, I try not to post anything here that is not processed a least a little to make them look better and in all honesty to the testing I did I simply posted the JPEG's straight out of the camera to my Zenfolio. As I said above you can download the original shots in the original sizes and look for resolution, CA and other things that excite you.

Besides they are REALLY boring shots!

These are two shots that I processed from the few I shot that I liked. First one of my usual suspects.

Second a flag put at the end of the docks at our lake to show people where it ends when there is snow. Loved the colors.

In short I really loved this tiny little lens, it handles well, looks good and was a FAST focusing joy to use. One day when I am rich I could see myself with a set of the Limiteds to use. Using a prime, especially a small unobtrusive one, takes me back to a different time and type of photography. One without huge zooms that weigh a ton, and cameras that are light and reasonably sized. When I put one of these on I can take my vertical grip off and have a very compact camera with awesome IQ.

Playing with my food!

I have been wanting to try my hand at some food photography for awhile, I think because it is easier to do than going outside in the winter and finding something to shoot. Warmer too, and tastes better! I finally decided I wanted to make the treat I have been longing for since fall. You see... I love rhubarb... I love it in pie and cake. Yes, cake. So I set out yesterday to make my favorite and then photograph it. That is one of the signs of true addiction in a photographer, taking pictures of ANYTHING!!!

So while the cake was in the oven I set up my table by a southern exposed window and got out the tripod and manual focus 50mm f1.4 (With vintage linear polarizer), all set.... still no cake! Forgot the dang thing takes extra time, due (I think) to the moisture of the Rhubarb, and the fact that it goes into the batter frozen, fresh rhubarb being hard to come by in the middle of winter.

With the time weighing heavily on my hands I decided it was time to get crazy with fruit. Grabbed the colander and threw a few bananas in with some apples and went to work. Looking back I think I should have manipulated the props more, but focusing takes some time and test shots etc... plus that yummy cake was getting closer and needed some icing made. Here is what the fruit did for me:

I'm not entirely convinced I have a future as a food photographer... but pretty darn close to convinced. It is harder than it looks, and the Devil is in the details which you never see until you see it on the screen, and then it is too late!

Here is the result of my labor, yellow cake mix with rhubarb layered in, which doesn't matter as it sinks to the bottom of the bundt pan anyway.

"Naked Cake"

"Dressed Cake" I think the icing fools the camera and the photographer, either that or it just needs a little less light to keep detail in the lighter areas.

A quick note on these next few shots. I used our best china and flatware that we got for our wedding, which usually only comes out for anniversaries and Valentines Day. Why? Because everything else we have is scratched and beat up, I have kids you know!

These were shot with varying apertures from f2.0 to f4.0, my old K mount is pretty good for a 30+ year old manual focus lens, but it is not a super sharp lens at f1.4 and at this close of a focus distance the DOF is ridiculously thin and hard to manage. My main interest was to find a fork position that looked natural. Don't look at me like that! As I have said before, it is harder than it looks, AND I usually try something to figure it out for myself, then research "How to do it" and learn from my screwups. I am sure that somewhere there is a school for food photography, but I cannot think of a more boring way to spend a year... seriously! I think I liked the first the best, but I'm not completely shure!

Figured I would get a couple of the "Cut" and be done. Not entirely satisfied with the look, but I enjoyed the challenge. Hope I didn't make you too hungry, or less hungry....

The Castle: by Melissa & Doug

My Sister-In-Law & Brother own a store in Fairview, UT called "The Corner Station" I highly recommend it if/when you pass through. They have a wide selection of really cool kinda retro toys. They gave my girls a toy Castle for Christmas which they adore. I have been wanting to photograph it for quite awhile, just cuz it is so cool! Anyway I took the opportunity to have a go last Monday while playing with my youngest. While not technically the best photo's in the world they show two things:

1) How cool this toy is.

2) How versatile my Sigma 17-70 lens is.

I was amazed at how close I could get to things and yet still be at my widest setting of 17mm. My only real problem was lighting. I had the blinds open with decent southern exposure but still needed to up the ISO to 400 and occasionally 800. Nevertheless I liked what I got, though I wish I would have put on my flash and bounced it straight up for more light and shot a little more stopped down, in several instances my DOF was simply too thin at that close of focus.

Nevertheless, here are my favorite shots in no particular order beyond the one they were shot in!

Welcome to my Home!
The Prince leaving to seek his Princess.

Ready for Lunch!

Peek in the Kitchen. (My wife and I have an agreement that we won't post pictures of my kids on my blog seeing as I have a lot of traffic from people we don't know. So this is as close as you will ever get to seeing one of them!) Not sure why I like this shot so much, maybe because it is the only time I caught part of child #3 in focus. Man that child can NOT sit still sometimes!

Bye Bye!!! Thanks for coming!

Holding Court.

Mount up my son and go see the world!

Time for dinner!

Trying to get "The" Shot.....

Ok, as all of you know I am fascinated with my local LDS Temple, because it is close, convenient to shoot and beautiful (and with special religious meaning to me too!). There is a shot I have long wanted to get, which is the full moon behind the temple. Great in concept, hard to execute, because you have to be up early in the morning and find just the right location for that month. This is hard, very hard!!

Well on Saturday on my way to the University of Utah to work an extra shift I noticed that the moon was just right for the shot I have been envisioning. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending of your point of view, I woke up at 6:30 Sunday morning, and in my delusional half sleep I thought I could try to get the shot if the clouds were treating me well. So I peeked out and saw that I might have a shot, though with some haze in the sky. So I quickly dressed and hopped in the van and sallied forth.

I found a decent vantage point in a neighborhood under construction and took a few shots, hurriedly because I was just waking up and it was breezy and quite cold!! Utilizing my typical temple technique I shot three shots of each composition (-2EV, 0, and +2EV) plus a fourth that exposed just for the moon. The three main shots went together well, but trying to add in the moon exposure shot just didn't work, the haze in the air caused a fair amount of flare around the moon and made it beyond the computers, or my, capacity to compensate. I am not sure that I can capture both the Temple and Moon in the same shot just because of the brightness differential. If I expose for the moon I literally get a black temple, and when you expose for the temple the moon is FAR too bright.... sigh.... One day I may do some photoshop magic putting a moon in just for grins but certain people of my acquaintance might object! (You know who you are.)

Anyway, this is what I produced, each three shot composition was processed twice, once with the "Tone Compressor" setting in Photomatix, and then again with the "Details Enhancer" setting. I liked the sky of the Details Enhancer better, but the Temple didn't look as good. I was even tempted to use a third feature of Photomatix called "Exposure Blending" to get a brighter temple and then mask that out and layer it in on top of the darker temple, but just feel that there was enough potential with the shot to make the work worthwhile...

So back to my original envisioning of the shot, I don't think I will be able to get a shot with the moon properly exposed and the temple properly exposed in the same shot without doing some sleight of hand, will have to decide how to proceed in the future. Mind you I like these shots, but the blown out disc of the moon is NOT what I had in mind!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple Jan 22 07:19 AM

On my way to work I noticed some interesting clouds to the east just as I was leaving my house. As is my usual wont I had my camera with me, so I sallied forth to see if I could get something nice of the Temple as I passed. I am getting a little tired of not having a lot of color in the skies this year, but I liked the contrast of warmly lit temple and cool landscape. These are pretty much straight out of camera. Except the first got a tiny bit of perspective distortion correction, and cropping. And the second mostly cropping and straightening.

Test shots

I have been wanting to try to shoot from this vantage point for awhile, when commuting on my Mountain Bike to/from work I often ride across this bridge over the freeway. I actually picked th worst day I could have, it was raining, but I think it helped to have a little more reflections on the road. What do you think?