Samyang is brilliant! Mostly I use it for Landscapes at f11 or so. But it has its uses for other stuff like I was talking about - you just have to get up very close and personal! Theres plenty of shots with the Samyang 14mm on my Gallery here

link

And I've been using 'Catch in Focus' with my manual lenses - very happy with that, but thats another story - I am going to start a new thread soon.

I did the same just last couple of days with the kids - feeding ducks and chasing squirrels one day with the Tamron adaptal 135mm f2.8 - had to stand right back, moving around a lot, but the results are great - beautiful perspectives, fast speeds, lovely colours (a bit of PF to worry about in some).

Then today a playground & forest walk with 14mm f2.8. This time shooting right up close, frame-filling, completely different perspective (!) but great again - totally different dynamic to the images. I wouldn't have wanted to swap around, just get right into what you're doing with the one lens and make the most of it.

I like how you have got in close with these - it has helped to limit the quite high contrast in the lighting. Was the first one taken more in the middle of the day? The others have warmer yellows.

My favourite is the last where you have got the swans placed beautifully.
I see a slight blue cast on the shadow areas in this shot - maybe pulling down on the blue / cyan tones will help, and shouldn't affect any of the rest of the image.

Surely ultimately, a DSLR will always offer the most as it it is so flexible. You can head out with a backpack full of lenses to cover every possible shooting opportunity at top quality, or you can pack lite with a couple of zooms.

Or, restrict yourself with a single prime. This has for decades been a route to more creativity - not restricting at all as you have to find better angles and viewpoints and move around a lot. If the location is so full of shots then you will want to return in future with a different lens maybe, and you'll benefit also if the lighting is different then.

We have quite small DSLR bodies - surely this with the huge range of lens possibilities will prove less limiting in the end?

I'll try and give an example - lets say we're in Av mode in very bright conditions, and ISO is already set to 100. You want to take a shot with a very small depth of field, so you dial in the smallest aperture - lets say this was f1.8.

In very bright conditions this could easily produce a shutter speed at the meter determined EV value that was in excess of the maximum possible - say 1/8000 sec. Without auto ec activated, the shutter speed would flash indictating too bright for the settings. You would then have to stop down the aperture until the shutter speed stopped flashing and showed a steady 8000.

With auto ec active the camera will take this action (stopping down) automatically. It will not change ISO because that is already at 100, the lower limit. You can take the shot without doing anything.

In Tv mode you could set a slow shutter speed that requires an aperture that is too small for the lense - f32 for example. Without the auto ec the aperture value would be flashing. With the auto ec function active the camera would automatically reset the shutter speed to the correct value that relates to the lense's actual maximum, eg f22.

Why would you want this? Its a bit like 'green mode' - what you would set when giving the camera to someone who doesn't know about camera settings, but will just be snapping away for a bit. Or if you are shooting in a rapid manner in wildly changing lighting say, and won't have any time to adjust anything.

No, it has no effect in M, X or B modes.

In extreme overexposed situations the user-set value that can be adjusted will be flashing. With auto-ec activated you won't see this, but nor will you get any idea of where you're going wrong.

Its a kind of 'safety net' setting, to prevent gross exposure error caused by setting a combination of aperture / shutter speed / and ISO that results in such an extreme exposure.

Whichever variable is active according to the Mode will be changed to a value that gives the metered exposure. Its like temporarily dialing in so many stops of EV to 'correct' the exposure.

Glad to have discovered this gem on the South Coast, good for day trips this year as we're not doing Devon.

Took the K7 & 18-55WR along with the family - thought I'd need any water resistance I could get. Very pleased with how the combination performed, both for these 'Landscape' type shots and for blasting away at 5fps as the kids splash about!











































Thanks for checking them out!

If you find it works well for you, no-one here will have any problem with that!

You've got a great Pentax DSLR and lens collection - the K30 is a nice compact and feature-packed camera. What if you got a very small prime lens to take when you need to stay light - the IQ on some of the Pentax options is very high and they add very little bulk to the camera body?

So John, are you saying that the K7 & K5 do not have 'electronic rolling shutter' control by the user in order to avoid being taxed more highly as a 'video' camera as opposed to a still camera?

And usuqa, are you saying that the K5II now has such 'electronic shutter control'?. If so, does anyone know how you actually change this setting on the camera?