Hi Rob

May I ask, do you use AF when you are shooting the subjects in flight or otherwise? Or you mostly use MF?
The only reason I ask is if you are planning to use mostly AF and specifically with the DA*300 (my experience limits to this one only with the Pentax AF 1.7TC, so i am strictly speaking about this lens), I would suggest you to do a bit more research work, practically I mean.

If you are going to rely mostly on AF using this lens I would really suggest you to try your hands on this combination so that you dont get disappointed. Its a superb combination but its way different if you are using the DA*300 alone on its own compared to the TC combination when it comes to focusing.

It does require nudging to close focus and then it hunts and locks, but its not always that it happens also. Many times I have reverted to manually moving the focus ring of the DA*300 (setting on AF.S on my K20) as the shutter wouldn't fire and while keeping the index finger pressed I have to still keep moving the focus and then it suddenly releases. So that quick ability to just nudge and then let the TC do the final job is not always there, nor it is perfect.

Having said all that I have to reiterate that this TC is superb and I am over the moon with it, both quality wise and in the way it performs. But I mainly shoot birds and have used it for macro only, never tried flying aircraft.

Mike, you got to give it a spin so that you can have a more indepth input about this, with your experience you are a great candidate to try it and give a more technical view on it. And if I remember you got an arsenal of MF lenses that you could test it on .
I just use it for extra distance as my lenses are all AF, so drop me a line when you are ready and we can swap the TCs and give them a go when its convenient for you.

Regards

Amin

Hi everyone,
Thanks for the comments.
Shim, I also thought that the yellow flower (dandelion) came out nicely, it had a lot of sunshine and enhanced the colours and like Stefan said also I liked the shadoes that the petals cast on each other.
Thanks
Amin

yes Vikram, its a well worth the effort. Also if I had a bit more experience with PP I would be able to come up with some better images by tweaking them , got a whole load of them in my folders taken all yesterday, I can see potential in lots of them its just my PP limitations that got on the way. But as I get more familiarised and experienced with editing I will start giving it a go.
But I think my next batch might bear better results though am looking forward to implementing some cooked ideas that I have been gathering.
Amin

Hi Vikram
Yes I used incense sticks for them.
Still getting to grips with the whole concept, spent ages trying to get the exposure right and by the time I got it I was so bleemingly tired , I just snapped as many as I could and then PP them.
But now I got the full idea and I have been thinking of a few tricks to apply next time .
Am looking forward for my next time doing that so that I can experiment some more.
Thanks for your comment. I am glad they came up reasonable ok. I was afraid they were doomed to go to the bin .
Regards

Amin

Finally got around to testing my Macro lens with the adapter.
With regard to AF it seems to do the job once given a small nudge and brought close to the point, and the ability to add that extra 70mm and just losing the stops which in these situations I wouldn't want to use it anyway I think its pretty good.

As this lens doesn't have the MF/AF switch as the DA*300 I was quite surprised on how the AF mechanism it seemed to operate on it. At first I was confused on what to activate or what to do in order to not let the lens use the AF mechanism, but seemed it all came to place once I got down to it. Once I attached the lens to the TC the K20 instantly opened up the menu to input the focal range, just like with the DA*300. I input 180mm and then manually focused the subject using the ring from the 100mm. Once I was satisfied I then pressed the shutter release button and it triggered the shutter straightaway. Then to make sure the AF was working I took another shot by moving it off the focus slightly and when I pressed the shutter release button the TC immediately hunted for the focus, found it and released the shutter. And it was at the point where I would have manually focused pinpointedly.
Did some more shots and all seemed to point to the AF mechanism of the TC working efficiently.
I am not sure if this is the correct way of using the TC with this lense (I will be tesing the 50mm f1.4 some other time too) without having to change any settings but if its not please someone correct me.
So my impression is the macro 100mm although and AF lens it lets the TC do the AF and remains dormant, except when manually I need to give it a nudge.

Please let me have your views on the images.

Sorry to stretch this thread everyone, but I just thought I should put up some examples and may be it will help drawing the conclusions.
Apologies as the Great tit was taken without the TC and the goldfinch with the TC, but I just dug out two more examples of lack of sharpness and they were precisely taken seconds apart, same spot but the plumage being different and most probably the shadow underneath the starling also has a huge influence for me as you will notice from the starling the lack of sharpness is latent.
Both taken one minute apart, at exactly the same settings

Jackie,
My input is from a very inexperienced point of view, so please take it with a pinch of salt.

I use my K20 with the 300mm plus the TC on it and I have seen many shots of mine like the ones you have. And I have some which came out pretty sharp, if you see on a couple of threads where I have put up some of them you will see what I mean, just a couple of days ago me and Scott were having a go at birds having a whale of fun time.

My point is this, I often get shots which are like the ones above when light is a huge problem. That is one of the problems, but high iso also ruins them. I also notice that no matter how much I lock on to focus, often even manually you just cant get the sharpness alive on them depending on the angle of the light. And on the other hand when the light is good or from the correct angle the shots are absolutely great.

At first I used to think that its the lens or I might be doing something wrong, but then with time and thanks to the flocking of the birds in the backgarden I have come to these conclusions.

Its very upractical to use remote while shooting birds. More so when I have the TC attached because my left hand is on the focus ring, the right hand alternating between the handle of the tripod to lock on to position, which by itself is hard as they keep moving and then suddenly when I find the spot my right hand goes straight to the shutter for the release. I have thought about using remote but its so fiddly, I do keep it in the pocket (my right pocket) and in fact my K20 is left constantly set up for remote shutter, but if I go fiddling to the pocket and by the time I take it out and release the shutter it might be too late.

So the action of the hand from the tripod handle to the K20 to press the shutter is the closest and in my opinion I think, provided your lens/K20 is mounted on a tripod, there is little chance of shake.

The other reason I remember getting shots like that was the distance from the birds I was taking the shots from, I still have a few like those but they were mostly because I was way too far.

Even today I took this one hardly 20 ft away but look at the result. This was definitely due to the angle of the sun which did not allow me to lock in properly to get the sharpest of the images. I shoot the birds from the same location, just at different times of the day and the angle of the sun makes such a huge difference, sometimes just a few minutes or a branch of the tree allowing the sun through and a great shot comes through.

Look at the two shots, taken from exactly the same spot but the difference is tremendous.
Hope this helps. But I would certainly keep trying.

This one lacks quality, sharpness being the main culprit, but I could swear in the viewfinder I was pinpointed,(I use a magnifier), its just the sun that was totally against me, look at the glare on the right side, on the head, even the feeder reflects so much light due to the angle of the sun,



While this one in my opinion came out better, much better actually

Paul
Thank you very much for that. I am glad I get the thumbs up from you.
These were my first smoke abstract shots. I think I can improve much more. I detected so much room for improvement while processing and now where to tweak them while shooting.
And the more I am using photoshop the more confident I am becoming but certainly I could do much much better.
That's where all your comments and suggestions come highly regarded.
Thanks
Amin

HI everyone
Need some help with my settings.
I am trying to set up my K20 so that I can increase my shutter speed to around 250 while using my Sigma flash remotely.
The problem is it only lets me go to 180. The moment I pop open my onboard flash so that it can be used as controller immediately the shutter value goes to 180 and as I turn the wheel if I happen to turn the opposite way it will decrease the shutter value and just remain there. If the shutter value goes lower and if I try to increase it again it won't go.
But my main problem is wanting to increase the shutter value to 250 and it won't let me do it. I have tried M mode and still it just stops there.
Am I missing something here?
Can someone please shed some light into this?
I am trying to do some abstract work with smoke so I need as much light as possible from different angles while bumping the shutter value as high as possible, oh and keeping the iso at 100 as well.

Thank you

Amin