A Few From Monday Night

Ran away at sunset to try to get some nice photos, the sunset didn't co-operate but the light was sure interesting. Here are the ones I liked.

Similar to one I took last June with my Pentax K-135 f2.5, would have to do a lot of clean up to get this looking that good. The 55-300 is not quite as sharp but does a good job!

Racked out to 300mm, I lowered the tripod to make it more stable, which helped tremendously. Though I think there is a little more sharpness to be wrung out of the lens with my newer tripod I am expecting.

Sunset over the lake. Really liked this shot!

I think I will need to try this later in the summer when the sun sets behind the bridge. May not get that smooth of water but I will definitely try!

I tried this with varying amounts of fill flash to bring me out, but I found that it just looked kinda fakey. This more accurately captures what I saw as I sat and watched the light fade. this is one of my favorite times of the day.

Lens Reversing Ring=FUN!

I am just getting to know this fun new accessory, it is a Bower 52mm Lens Reversing Ring from www.adorama.com for Pentax mount. I have mounted my Pentax K 50mm f1.4 and K 28mm f3.5 lenses.

The first shot is from the 28mm wide open I believe it is about a 2:1 reproduction ratio meaning that the image on my sensor is 2x the size of the object in real life.

This is from my 50mm stopped down a little, it has an impossibly thin depth of field wide open. It is close to 1:1.

This is a shot with my Sigma 17-70 at about 1:3 it works great as a macro lens but the working distance is almost touching the front element at really close focus which makes lighting hard. It will go to 1:2.3.

These were taken in a south facing window on a hazy saturday afternoon. I could get a deeper depth of field but it would take stopping down more and that entailed shutter speeds too slow for handholding. I will probably end up needing a Macro Rail should I get more into this.

This is closest focus with the K 28mm @ f5.6 ish (Can't remember) the slightest shake makes for motion blur. Definitely a case for using a tripod.

Back to the 50mm @ f8

Just a little more of that wonderful sunrise!

OK, I admit it I am a sucker for sunrises, the mundane ones, the purple/orange ones, the fiery read ones, and the ones where I just look at out the window and roll over and go back to sleep. Love them all! Some last longer than others some don't. The one this morning probably was about average but seemed shorter because I was trying to get shots while the color was good. Really should have paid more attention to when the sky was lightening.

Anyway, as I noticed the potential for a good sunrise I grabbed my bag (my tripod is always in my truck) and headed out. Seeing as I have been wanting to use my new zoom I kept it on at the start, that led to the panorama in my previous post. I probably should have tipped the lens up and tried for another row, but the sky was moving fast and I figured that it would mess up the panorama software so.... I popped on my trusty Sigma 10-20 and took a few shots, and found myself wishing to be a little bit wider... GASP!!! yes even wider than that amazing ultrawide zoom! So I did some gentle stitching of the three shots I took, nothing too crazy. This is what I got. Likely will end up being cropped to the pixel dimensions of my monitor for use as a wallpaper. Or some other more nefarious purpouse when I need a sky.... ;-)

This is a HDR quickie taken as I arrived at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. As you can see from the watermarks I have not paid for the full zoot software and didn't like the shot enough to clone the watermarks out. Interesting perspective though.

These are from the same series of shots just processed differently, I think they would both make good 8x10 crops instead of 8x12. Do you think I should add them to my gallery of Temple Photo's for sale on Zenfolio? They are certainly striking. Hmm... Originals taken with my Pentax K-28mm f3.5 manual everything classic.

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....