Whinlatter Forest is nearby, a very good spot, especially if you've got overcast or misty conditions. Its a great place to visit with good facilities at the car parks for before or after your walking.

Thanks Will, I appreciate the encouragment! The light is the key for me really, that's what triggered the effort to stop and get the shots.

The 'portrait' one is obviously popular, I see that it has more of the ingredients that appeal universally.

There's always a range of opinions which is part of it I guess

This is clearly not any kind of 'wow wee' spectacular landscape location. But it was the sudden, and therefore quite dramatic change from the flat beach and surrouding estuary marshes in to the dunes which got me going. There was a very special quality to the lighting, and a nice contrast offered by the blues in the sky, which attracted me and made me want to try and do justice soley to just what was there to see, which I sensed was special.

But I take the point about a lack of a 'point of interest'. Maybe if I had more time there would be other compositions to experiment with.

Yep, it really adds to the versatility of using the old lenses. With active subjects that don't like to stand still and pose it can really help hugely. I was finding it frustrating trying to nail focus traditionally when the subject will move back and forward slightly even when standing still!

So with this method you are sure to catch a few spot on - I like it in 'burst' mode for this reason. The point of activation of the shutter is not always totally precise, and when there is subject movement also it makes sense then to fire off quite a few.

I actually found it useful with the 14mm lens as well. It can often be impossible to eyeball the focus point with this focal length, so the Catch in Focus works nicely too, especially for shooting at the widest aperture.

The halo is caused by the feathered brush strokes around the edge of the blurred and sharp sections not being precise enough. Its either a duplicate layer that's blurred and then the eraser is used to reveal the sharp car underneath, or a mask is used - the result is the same I guess.

Its a tricky one to pull off because the out of focus area is quite extreme and the car is very sharp - the dividing line between is always going to be very fine. It may be possible with a finer brush used zoomed in.

I agree with Wills 'focus zone' as above, that is how it'd come out 'naturally'. Would be interesting to see if it can work. Also, Shaun, what was the actual shooting aperture? I'd assume that the distant parts were OOF anyway?

It does that - but still looks odd as it's not a natural optical effect. If its a filter effect then it should be possible to unblur the focus plane either side. Its more fiddly admittedly

I should have answered the question though - I rather think the colour works, especially the creamy car. Maybe you could tone down the reddy building behind which is more distracting in colour, but overall I'd stick to colour.

I wonder if the car was there at all ? The plane of focus doesn't extend into the surrounds at all, which appears odd I feel.

Its a good summary of your experiences. It would be interesting to see how you would re-word it if the emphasis was on camera buyers new to Pentax. The slant of your current write-up is more on the differences from the K7 and comparing the IQ to the K5, but this will mostly be lost on those who are not aware of those camera's features.

I would love to see what you said if you were targeting it, say, at users of other camera brands entry-level cameras looking for something more?

Just wanted to share my recent experiences trying out this special technique (is it still unique to Pentax)?

I believe the traditional application for this is when you 'pre-focus' a lens in manual, say over a birds nest for example, then trigger the shutter and wait - when something (eg baby birds) pass into the plane of focus it triggers the shutter.

Well on our Pentax DSLRs is also works with a manual focus lens in a different way. You start slightly out of focus and then turn the focus ring as you move the centre focus point onto your subject - when that point is in focus the centre focus light flashes and the camera fires.
It works a treat in continuous Hi-speed burst mode, especially with moving subjects when you can catch a burst of shots which may have slightly different focus points.

You just make sure that even though you're using manual focus you keep the focus mode selector on AF-S - this allows the autofocus system to keep finding focus for you and trigger the camera when it happens.

Heres a couple of shots I got using the technique recently - both with the K7 & Tamron Adaptal 135mm f2.8 (a lens from the 1970s!)












Thoroughly recommend anyone to try it out if you have a compatable camera!

OK, some disputing there, or maybe its just the terminology! All the shots have had some fairly simple PP work - a tightening up of levels, balancing the skies & ground, and a bit of extra micro-contrast to the ground textures.

But I'm always keen to bring out the best of my shots, so Karl, if you had anything in mind please suggest it, I'd be glad to try anything