Hello all. I recently used a voucher I was given for a day at the British Wildlife Centre in Surrey - a great place with some cracking animals and birds resident. I'm wading through the hods of pictures I took there, but thought I would post a little series of B/W shots of one of their Barn Owls (called Kevin I believe)...

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She (I think it was a female, in spite of being called Kevin) was beautiful and endearing I thought. I hope you like these. There are more on my flickr stream (including one or two in colour!) - I originally started processing these shots this way as i wasn't happy with the cluttered backgrounds, and then ended up doing almost all of them like this; thought I would share.

Cheers

If you want super sharp, you could look at the DA35 Macro. It is a real jewel IMO, although being a macro it has quite a long focus throw so isn't the quickest, and I imagine for portraits it would be pretty unforgiving. DA 40 is a beaut too

Cheers

Gosh that is hard. I think I would plump for something by Nick Brandt's 'On this Earth... A shadow Falls...' series. One day I would love to see the great animals in Africa and his photos are inspirational. It is so hard to pick one but I really like his shot of Elephants in the Amboseli:

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(I think this links to the right pic)

I also like the fact that he still uses film (in a Pentax 67 as it happens). I think it would just be great to see these spectacles of the animal kingdom, and to be able to capture such wonderful images too would be the icing on the cake

Cheers

I normally have a 540 flash with an omni bounce diffuser on it, normally wound down to -1 or more, on a cheapo remote TTL cord from the hotshoe. I can then hold it alongside the lens, either side, above or below it, or have it in the hotshoe, or pretty much anywhere else...

Cheers

I am not sure whether anyone on here has ever experimented with making a timelapse movie, or how easy that would be with a Pentax (presumably no more difficult than with any other dSLR); It's on my wishlist of things to try one day, but I came across this one online (not made with Pentax), and it is amazing I think. Thought I would share...

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Cheers

That is very groovy. There's another one here; from the top of the Shard...

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Cheers

Here's some very mediocre shots to illustrate the mini tripod:

General arrangement:



View from below, showing the slots where the screw can go, and also when folded up:






A view showing how small it is when folded up:



and a couple of views showing how much up and down tilt it can provide, although more can be achieved by finding a sloping surface to put it on:






Hope that helps

Cheers

Would it be that difficult to, as well as having the Hyperfocal Distance calculator in the camera software, have option that the (AF) lens automatically adjusts itself to the HD when the autofocus button is pressed?

Many thanks everyone, very encouraging.

Tim - these were indeed all taken with the mini-manfrotto tripod thing. The model I have is the MP3-D01; there is a link to it here:

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I think it is a really top notch bit of kit. It has limitations but I think they are mostly minor (certainly to my mind). It screws into the tripod mount of the camera and has three fold-out legs to enable the camera to stand about an inch an a half off the ground and to be adjusted to point in various attitudes (although there are limits). When folded up, it is not really any bigger than a tripod QR plate, and it has a mini-screwdriver attached to it by a thin string to help get it on and off. the legs are stiff enough that they stay in whatever position they are put subject to the camera not being too heavy.

The limitations are: it is low, so it either needs to stand on the ground or on some street furniture - walls/bollards etc. - it is pretty stable and the legs have grippy rubber which helps; it cannot be used in portrait orientation, and nor with the battery grip attached as the tripod mount on that is too off-set; it cannot be used if the overall camera is too heavy - the slots which the attachment screw passes through on the main plate of teh device enable adjustment to an extent to counter shifts in the centre of gravity of the overall system when putting different lenses on, but there is a limit.

It works perfectly with the limiteds, and also with the sigma 10-20, but the DA*16-50 seemed too heavy.

I use the tiny Pentax remote to fire the shutter and tend to use live view to compose the shots. It's a lot more convenient in a city than lugging round a tripod, and I also think it is a lot better than the Gorillapod I have, which I also like, but this is better as it stays attached to camera and you barely notice it's there.

Hope that is helpful

Thanks again all

Cheers

EDIT: If I get a few minutes, I'll post some pics of the device as well

It's a good challenge - I am forever sneaking an extra lens in my bag when I head out, so I admire your will power!

Cheers