Hello all. It seems like ages since i have posted any pics on here, although I have snapping away a fair bit recently I thought I would share a handful here, of some of the plants which have burst into life recently with the full onset of spring. All are taken with the K3 and DA 35 ltd macro, which is a combination I am using more and more as (to my mind) it delivers some very cool results. I think I also used flash on all of these (the weenie(ish) AFZ200, which I like a lot when used with a diffuser). Anyway...

1. Garden Pearls




2. Forget-me-not




3. Spring Yellow




4. Otherworldly weirdness




5. Line of white hearts




6. From the alien forest




7. Sarracenia (this is like a pitcher plant, which I have been growing)




8. Baby Oak (this was sprouting from my garden path, so I gently transplanted it, but took a picture along the way...




Hope you like these. As ever, my flickr stream is full of all my random stuff

Cheers

I hope you are enjoying the fisheye - looks like it. For me it really shines with interiors andI think your shots here from sudbury hall (esp. the first) are cool! with such a huge filed of view it is very hard not to get something burned out, so I tend to dial in a load of -ve EV and check the histogram a lot - that would be my top tip for what it is worth...

Cheers

A couple of neat shots - nice. I saw some dragonflies today at Barnes so they are starting to appear (no idea what species I'm afraid, but pretty sizeable) - tried getting a shot of one and singularly failed!

Cheers

In terms of third party lenses...

In K mount you can get 10-20 and (I think still) 8-16 from Sigma, although neither are as fast as f2.8. I think the pentax prime 14mm is f2.8:, and there is the limited 15mm (again slower than f2..

Sigma do a 35mm f1.4 in Pentax mount, which gets stellar reviews

Cabstar has covered the 17-50 lengths at f2.8

Sigma also do an 85mm f1.4, which is rather wonderful (I do have one of those), and Pentax previously an did A* and FA* 85mm f1.4 as well, which is discontinued but come up for sale from time to time and are very highly regarded as well

Hope that helps

Really rather lovely, and I rather like the texture

Cheers

Wow these are ace! really good use of the wide angle and a fascinating looking space. Really top notch!

Nice one

I hope you enjoy the fisheye John, I really love mine. It produces some great images (in my view) and is a pretty versatile lens, notwithstanding the (correct) observations about purple fringing etc. In general, with a little PP, I find I can deal with that to my satisfaction. In fact the biggest challenge I think is exposure: capturing such a wide view inevitably means having some really bright and dark areas, so blown highlights need to watched out for.

Here's a couple as food for thought (perhaps?) the first is from the St Swithun shrine in Winchester cathedral last year (you'll probably either love or hate the PP), and the second (completely different) is of some blooms in the park. As I recall for the second I was almost touching the flowers in the foreground with the big front element of the lens…







Look forward to seeing some pics!

Cheers

Nice one Danny, that looks like a killer combo, and look forward to seeing some more Like everyone else, I had a go from the RAW file, and here's my take, which I processed using DXO Optics Pro, and then tweaked a little in photoshop:




and, just to be different, did a mono version. Not sure whether it suits the subject but I generally try most things in B/W...:




Reckon you'll have a great time with that setup!

Cheers

I have one of these Lowepro primus AW:

link

Might be just the ticket. I reckon you would get your kit list in there plus have room for a scrunched up waterproof, sandwiches, water bottle, map etc...

Arrived exactly as described - a beautiful thing!

Thank you vjacesslav