Hi,

I just picked this up on ebay this morning for £55 including postage. Mint condition according to the page, and hardly used. Good feedback supports the claims made by the seller as being true. As it's going on a DL, the effective AoV is going to be around 150-450, I needed an AF zoom of that sort of range and decided to go with the RileyRule after being outbid on a couple of 3rd party lenses.

From what I have found, it's a good price.. hence buying it. Does anyone here use one at all, and if so what do you think of it? It hasn't really been mentioned in dispatches here much!! I read a couple of reviews that criticised the lack of close focussing and it's feel.

Feel is obviously subjective, and if I could get close enough to wildlife that sub 1m focussing was an issue, I would use my 70-210 macro. I have seen a couple of people state that out past 280 there's a noticable drop in quality, but using it on the DL (where I don't use the outer 15% or so of the lens) is this still a consideration?

Have you noticed that I'm looking for a comfort vote..

Cheers

Liam

Hi Reza,

does anyone here know if the particular part(s) are the same as any of the other pentax bodies? You could try here.. (there weren't any LXs at the time of posting, but several different models were available.

http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/search.dll?sofocus=bs&sbrftog=1&from=R10...

I just put the string "pentax spares" (without the quotes) into the search engine at ebay, and people are selling duff bodies for a quid, and a fiver postage. Obviously you'd need to ask exactly which bits still work etc. but it may be a way to get the parts required, if indeed they're compatible.

Your repair shop might be happy enough just to swap them over. They won't guarantee the parts, obviously, but for that price, if they work when fitted, they should work for quite a while.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

the site's not that bad, and the pictures are nice too. You may want to upload Ammonite_col_button.gif though, as it doesn't seem to be on your server.. hence the image placements where you have the second row of buttons (div id="Layer3") on the front page, rather than the images themselves.

Cheers

Liam

Hi Brian,

that's nice, I'm glad you explained the source..

Have you still got the original file. I haven't used Matt's shapening advice yet, but would like to see the difference. I'm a bit of a noob at digital, and I'm going to try out some raw shots this weekend.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

there's a lot of detail in that. I'll be trying the sharpenomattic on a RAW image or three on, probably, Sunday. I'm off to a birthday party tomorrow, so I may get some pictures taken then as well, to test out my portrait skills.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

with the focussing, I set the lens up and then, as I was using the triopod sraight down onto the subject, used the geared section to raise and lower the whole unit in a similar wy to a macro rail.

I'll try out the photoshop trick for getting sharpness. I use GIMP, but the idea's the same.

The lens was my soligor 70-210 macro. I had to wait until I got the tubes to be able to mount it (as seen here.. https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2074).

I set it up with.. in order...

camera | 25mm ext tube | 2x converter | 2x converter | Lens

This gave me the greatest close up, after trying a number of combinations with that lens. I've got other lensses I can try, including a 28-80 macro zoom.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

I'm rushing off to work, but I tried out my new extension tubes a couple of days ago, and this..

http://www.liamsworld.org.uk/galleries/macro1/index.html

is the result.

I'll fill in the details later, but the clarity of the original images is stunning.

On the flower buds, there are little red dots, you can barely make them out. I can zoom in to those and fill the screen before there's any noticeable pixellation, and they can't be more than a couple of tenths of a millimetre across..!!!!!!

God knows what they'd be like in RAW. I think the depth of field is around 0.25-0.5mm, so that was fun trying to manually focus.

(The flower is Mahonia japonica if you needed to know)

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

glad you like it..

John,

I do it with everything. If I can make it, I'd rather do that than buy something.. or at least buy something cheap and modify it anyway. The stands for remote flashes for instance; I picked up a high-hat stand (the one that a drummer fixes his high hat cymbal to) from a boot sale, added a 1/4" bolt to fix the flash to it, and can now position a flash anywhere from ground level to about 7-8 feet high and in a radius of around 4 feet in any direction. The main stand is 4' high, with a swivel joint holding a counterbalanced arm of another 4' or so. Handy if you have lots of junk around the place but need correct positioning of the flash. I have another baby tripod, so I may change the bolt for the ball joint now.

Cheers

Liam

Hi,

How many of you would trust hundreds of pounds worth of camera gear to one of these..?




Nor me either. But I guess most of you have one lying around to use with the point and shoot. They cost about a quid on ebay.

Problem:

Knowing you need a tripod for the day, and would prefer to use one over a beanbag, you have to lug the manfrotto/vanguard etc, with you because there's no alternative right? Wrong. You can follow Liam's handy hint here instead.

It started sounding like a JML advert so I went with it..

The reason that these are inherently unsteady is because the head of the tripod stops the legs from angling out far enough to give the required size of base area to support the camera steadily. As you can see in the above photo, the legs only come out a couple of inches from vertical.

Solution:

Have a look underneath the head, between the legs of the tripod and you'll see a phillips screw (at least on both the ones I have there is).

Undo it so the legs are detached from the head, and just insert a couple of washers between the leg cradle and the head, like so..




You won't see them so it doesn't matter what they look like. Play with different thicknesses/numbers of washers until you have the right clearance between legs and body for the legs to open sufficiently, while still having enough thread to screw the lot back together again. If not, get a longer screw. It'll be metric so dig around in the garage or pop into your local iron mongers and spend about 5p on one.

While you have it apart, just check the screws that hold the legs to the cradle and tighten them if needed. Put it all back together again and you have a tripod easily capable of supporting your camera safely..




..even when using a lens mounted tripod fixing.




It also enables you to shoot from only a couple of inches off the ground. They all come with ball joint adjustment, so you can leave the legs where they fall and adjust as necessary with that.

Total cost, even if you have to buy the tripod specially from ebay, is change out of a couple of quid, and you get to use an otherwise redundant bit of kit.

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Liam

Hi all,

one of my other hats is as a manager on a tech forum. You might want to read this and get your OS updated, as it concerns image files.

http://www.techsupportforum.com/comments-announcements/84196-security-alert-upda...

Cheers

Liam