I was very lucky today to see a rare sight in our garden and spend approx 30 minutes watching and photographing it. What I saw is a Butterfly called a White Letter Hairstreak, a species which lives exclusively in the tops of Elm Trees. As you will know, there are very few English Elms left, after they were virtually wiped out by Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970's, a disease which still persists. This had a massive negative impact on the population of the White Letter Hairstreak Butterfly. I don't know the location of any Elms close to where we live, but there must be at least one for this Butterfly to be around in the locality.

All shots with the K-5iis and DFA 100WR Macro lens. Your comments are welcomed and appreciated as always.

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In the next 3 shots, the Butterfly appeared to be trying to clean its' left Antenna.

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Hope you enjoyed looking.

Best Regards
David

Hi and welcome Chris. I must say I was impressed with your images of the flowers and bark, superb if you have only been serious about photography for a short while.

Looking forward to seeing more images from you!

Regards
David

Lovely Alan, the fourth one is a stunner.

Regards
David

Thanks Phil, it's always interesting to hear people's views on images as everybody sees things differently! I preferred this image on the forum, but didn't really have a feel for what other would think!

Cheers
David

Just me playing around a little. This was shot in our cellar tonight, lit by the LED lights inside the drinks cabinet and also from the front by a white LED torch, reflected from the gold side of a collapsible reflector. Processed as two layers in Photoshop, the first the original, overlaid by a black and white with a crayon sketch filter, partially rubbed away to reveal the main subject underneath.

Photographic equipment used was a K-5iis, DA*50-135 at F2.8, a Tripod and a Reflector.

All comments welcomed as usual.




Regards
David

PS: Forgot to mention it's also had a warming filter applied to the monochrome areas.

Superb again, I love the way you have isolated things in these images so we're not distracted by the surroundings and can focus our attention on the main subjects. These are right up my street and I pay compliments to both you as a photographer and your equipment.

Regards
David

Superb set Alan, very atmospheric all of them. I think this was a great test for the K-1 too and it looks to have passed with flying colours.

Regards
David

Welcome Wayne, good to see you, hope you enjoy your time on here. As you've probably seen by 'lurking' for a while, there's no shortage of good advice and help from the members, should you need it.

Regards
David

You might also want to consider a K-m as that has the same CCD 10mp sensor as the K10D and K200D. It was the second Pentax DSLR I ever owned and took beautiful landscape images. It has the same body as the K-x, i.e. very compact and easy to use.

Regards
David

Thanks for your input Daronl, does anyone else have any thoughts on this? One reason for asking is my 50-135 has the 'latest' motor fitted, but I've still experienced this behaviour.

Has anyone ever questioned what gets replaced when a SDM Motor is fixed?

Regards
David