thanks guys K10D makes it easy TBH, the first few shots were made somewhat difficult by the ice, but with it being indoors once I did find the right setting it just stayed there on M mode the whole time. Praise the lord for Digital photography and it's instant feedback.

it was my first hockey game so TBH I have no idea what league they are in. I do know the guys in white are the Victoria Salmon Kings, and I think the blues are the Roadrunners, not quite sure where they are from but I think it was either Dallas or Phoenix.

I mentioned these over in the lenses forum, thought perhaps people might like to see them.

The Stadium people didn't mind us taking photos but didn't like our long tele lenses, so I mounted my secret weapon. The Tamron 90mm F2.5 macro, which they seemed to be just about happy with (and so they should be, they weren't hassling people with compacts some of which were packing a lot more than 90mm).

Little did they suspect the shear cropping potential of the K10D when combined with this battered old gem of a lens.

This shot was taken at 1/90th, ~F4 and ISO 400. It is a crop measuring ~1650x1100 (1.8MP) which I then blew up to 3000x2070 using the cubic scaling mode in GIMP. It has also had a little bit of GIMP USM and Noisninja dealt with the noise. This one is my favourite shot from the evening.




The second one is really pushing the limits of what is possible, but I like it anyway and I still reckon it will print at 5x7. Taken at 1/125th and ~F4, ISO 400 this is a central crop at ~1250x833, just over 1MP. This time blown up to 2255x1515 with GIMP set to cubic, and again given some USM.




I enjoy sports photography but unfortunately don't get to do it very often, so any tips welcome.

nice idea and effect Pete, I think I might like it even better if the front flower was a bit less dark, but I like it a lot anyway.

not in Pentax mount. Canon and Leica have both produced F1.0 50mm primes though I'm not sure if either is still in production. I also seem to recall hearing that Stanley Kubrick(sp?) used an F0.7 lens to film a couple of his famous films because he wanted to be able to film by candle light.

George, thanks for that the second one is by far my favorite too, my Uncle and Aunt love it (the important thing) and no doubt in due course of time my cousin will come to hate it lol.

your comment about your intended use for the lens made me think of these. I took these shots recently while visiting relatives in Canada. It was indoors and overcast and I didn't have a flash with me. Not wanting to resort to the built in flash, I mounted my trusty SMC-A 50 1.7.







I don't pretend these are the worlds greatest portraits, but this lens makes for some wonderful candid captures of special moments because it can be used in many situations without the need for flash. The subject doesn't have to know the shot is being taken

Users of the other camera brands just don't know what they are missing in not having a stabilised 50mm prime.

note though, what is said about focusing above is 100% true, each of these is the best of several shots, I was just lucky that the one where I nailed the focus happened to be the one where my cousin was in the middle of blowing out her candles.

edit: calling to mind a recent thread which was accidentally hijacked, I would like to make it clear that I have posted these shots as an example of the capabilitys of the nifty fifty and I am not looking for critique here (TBH they are basically family snapshots anyway)

thought that might be the case, just didn't have time to test.

ahh well, it was just an idea.

An interesting thought has just crossed my mind which I have no time to test right now, so I'll post it here in case someone already knows the answer or has too much time on their hands.

If you shoot in JPEG and reduce the MP setting to say 6 instead of 10, does it have an impact on the noise characteristics of the image?

For instance if you find yourself shooting in low light at 1600ISO, are you perhaps better off dropping to a smaller JPEG size?

worthy of testing I think.

and by using the DCRAW command line raw converter with the -e switch, you can extract the embeded JPEG from the PEF produced by any Pentax camera. This is a maximum size medium quality JPEG so is perfect for those times when you don't really have the time or inclination to process it properly.

I use this function for previewing my RAW files before processing since I have yet to come across an equivalent to Pentax Photo Browser for Linux.

I was once working away for a survey company and had my DL2 with me. I was taking the survey shots on low res because they were really just reminders of what the place looked like and the IT manager got shirty if we clogged up his server with 6MP images.

Anyway in the evening I went out and took some photos for pleasure, and was dismayed to discover later that the camera was still set to low res JPEG. I swore from that day on I would never set my camera below maximum again and would resize down later if I needed to.

I have kept to that rule and to this day my camera is rarely off the RAW setting and never below max res max quality JPEG. As John says, you just never know.

now don't be discounting the effect of lens and sensor quality here. I was at a Hockey game when I was in Canada and they didn't like me using my big tele lens, so I was limited to my 90mm prime. Ended up cropping a lot of the shots I took down to 2MP but they still look great, much better than I would have got with a 2MP phone cam from closer in.

Your point is well made though, since I wouldn't have wanted to crop that tight starting from a 6MP image, that really would be pushing it.

In a related point, the above incident proves just how razor sharp the Tamron 90mm Macro really is.