Really good shots..well done.

Karlo

Went for a walk yesterday along the local canal and through some ancient woodland to try out the K-x and 50mm manual f1.7. Nice sunny day with mixed lighting in the woods.
All shots handheld and JPEGs straight from the cow...just resized to 1000x664 or thereabouts.

Really like the lens and brilliant value, plus its very light and unobtrusive...goes well with the K-x.

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karlo

Gareth, Blimey that was quite a co-incidence...I think its great value. I would be particularly interested to see how it performs with the K5 if you've still got that. It's great with the 12MP sensor but will it be found wanting with the 16MP?

Make sure you post something with it once you've got it and had it for a few days!

ISO, Thanks very much for your comment...glad you liked them.

Another batch taken with K-X and Tamron 70-300, on manual, like before. Feel free to
comment and /or critique.

Cheers

Karlo

Smeggy, John and Gareth...Thanks for your comments.

Just a bit more information: My main motivations for showing the images were firstly, it was the first time i'd used the Tamron at a zoo. Previously the longest lens I had was only 200mm so I was interested in showing what the longer reach could bring as the combination of K-x and Tamron 70-300 is great value for money and the K-x is a highly recommended 'cheap' introduction to DSLR photography and Pentax in particular.New, the combination cost me £480 but can be had good condition used now for £210-£220.

Secondly I wanted to try out the "Your Photos Forum" as it seems better for showing several themed photos at once than 'drip feeding' them one per day for a week in the usual Gallery.

Having decided to show them I thought I might as well invite comments and critique as I was likely to get some anyway!

On a more technical note, I'd actually forgotten that the widest aperture at 300mm was f5.6...i was convinced for some reason it was f6.3 and so I thought f8 would give me that bit extra sharpness without losing much else! (thanks Smeggy).

It was very much an exercise in manual control (or lack of). I appreciate I could have just put it on semi auto but want to be able to operate beyond that in all genres. For a lot of the shots I had to focus manually anyway as the cages and netting were confusing the AF.

Basic EXIF for each image is as follows:

Lioness asleep...ISO 160,f8, 1/400, 300mm

Bambi...ISO 250, f8, 1/800, 300mm

Black Rhino pair...ISO 200, f8, 1/400, 90mm

Buffalo...ISO 200, f8, 1/250, 240mm

Jaguar...ISO 160, f8, 1/160, 300mm

I didn't think the sharpness at 300mm was bad. Unfortunately with the Jaguar there was nowhere else to go...I was as far right as the viewing fencing went. Also with it being a very busy day crowd wise, often I had to shoot from a less advantageous
position. If it had just been me I would often have waited but I had a partner and two teenagers with me and it was usually me holding them up!

Anyway that's about it...part two to follow shortly!

Thanks Stan, glad you enjoyed them.

Thanks for your comments Nigel. I will have a play around at the weekend with the different settings and see if I can find a slightly boosted new datum. I took about 270 shots altogether but have only got about 30-40 where the overall look is satisfactory or better. Everything was shot at f8 with EV compensation fluctuating between about -1 and +1 on the 'good' shots. Many shots were spoilt by me scrabbling at the thumbwheel trying to alter the EV whilst keeping the animal/bird in frame and sometimes re-focussing at the same time...I really need more practice. I was surprised by how low the shutter speed was set some times which didn't help as often it was far too low and I couldn't compensate enough or make changes in time..before losing the 'shot'..or I would go for it anyway and then find at home reviewing the shots that it was either blurred or over-exposed or both!

Made the big mistake of leaving my reading glasses at home so I couldn't even see what I had shot clearly on the LCD.

I'll post a few more tomorrow including three that didn't seem to load properly before..not sure whether it was something I did or didn't do.

That card you are using is very slow and isn't really suitable as you say, but as John mentions even if you upgrade the card, your camera is the limiting factor then. I don't know how fast the camera saves the images but I would guess that there's probably not much point in buying any card faster than a class 6 for it as you won't really see the benefit.

I've got a K-x and was using a class 6 card to take pictures of Go-Karts and planes but found that the camera was locking up after about 3 images at full quality ( in about 2 seconds) 12 MP JPEG (actual saved file size is about 5-6MB per image). I then bought a class 10 card (Sandisk Ultra 16GB) and noticed a slight improvement...but nowhere near as much as I had hoped. Its now up to about 4 images in 3 seconds before it freezes...I presume the camera just can't process the information quickly enough.

The only way I'm going to get more images per second is if I save them at a lower quality..say 6-8 MP (probably about 3.5- 4MB per image). This is ok if you don't intend printing them out at anything bigger than 7x5 or 9x6 or thereabouts as you are sacrificing potential print quality at larger sizes by saving in smaller file sizes.

As John says..the more modern the camera...the faster it can save a given volume of data.

A selection of animals shots. All taken with Kx + Tamron 70-300. All JPEG straight from camera using Manual mode. All resized to 800x531...nothing else done.













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This is the first time i've used this format to display photos, hope i've done it right. Comments, 'favourites' and constructive criticism welcome.

thanks, Karlo

Fruit salad.

karlo

Great timing...nice shot.

karlo