These are great shots, very accomplished. I'm not particularly a motorsport fan, but I can appreciate the skill that went into these.

Regards
David

Hello and welcome from me too.

The K-x is a great camera, not used much by me now as I have other cameras, but all my early digital work with Pentax cameras was with a variety of K-x's.

You really must view the gallery of Phil Hemsley (morpheus71), see link below. All of Phil's work is with a K-x and it is truly stunning stuff.

link

Best wishes
David

Well done, these are great, the camera most certainly didn't let you down and neither did you let the camera down!

Regards
David

No need to apologise Giulio, it is only 4 years ago!

Great to see you have lost none of your enthusiasm for the Gallery photos.

Best wishes
David

Thanks again for all of the recent comments, the first one seems to be liked & got a lot of views on Flickr (for someone who doesn't post many on there anyway).

It might end up on one of our walls someday if I can convince the missus!

Cheers
David

It's been a few years since I did this, but I would have a couple of fast zooms, e.g. DA*50-135 and something in the 17-70 range (I don't have a Pentax DA*16-50, but probably would have used it for this if I did). Definitely two bodies, so no need to keep swapping lenses, a flashgun (manual flash will do and I preferred it) and a fold-up reflector.

Also, make sure you have a second shooter, and if you have room in the car, take some lightweight step ladders, it's critical to get on the right level for group shots.

Finally, I would also be tempted to take a longer zoom, up to 200 or 300mm, especially for the second shooter getting candid shots, so they can be tightly framed from a distance.

Regards
David

Reversing rings work well, but are a bit awkward as you lose the aperture contacts. I was lucky enough to find a set of extension tubes second hand that have all the correct electrical contacts for the aperture, these work brilliantly. Also, you may recall threads on here a few years back about butchering an old zoom, i.e. taking out all of the glass and then attaching an enlarger lens to the filter ring. This enables extreme macro and maintains the aperture control on the butchered zoom. I suppose what you use depends entirely on how macro you want to go. If you go down the extreme route you will also need a good flash light source. I use a home-made lightbox attached to a powerful flashgun, which enables decent lighting at apertures of F16 or thereabouts.

Here's one of the 'extreme' examples using the butchered zoom and a Nikon enlarging lens:




Regards
David

I agree with what Steve Ledger has written above. I have a K-5 and the video is not rubbish. We also have two K-01's in the family which are used for video, and they too are pretty good, as long as you turn off the Movie SR. We have used the K-5iis and the K-01's to video a wedding event and the results were very good.

I also think Steve is on the money with the Sigma 17-70 F2.8-4. I have the same version with in-lens SR and Steve's comments have got me thinking about its video capabilities, it's something I haven't tried to date but I suspect it would work brilliantly.

Thanks for the tip Steve, what you're saying makes perfect sense.

Regards
David

I would avoid the 50mm, it's not the right focal length for general macro work. I also had that lens and sold it pretty quickly.

Regards
David

I knew that Gary, just playing Devil's advocate!

Great to see you back on the Forum.

Cheers
David