The ISO for those was 1600 (3200 is rather noisy on the K100)

I've just uploaded a shot (in my portfolio) of Jupiter rising above the trees in my parents garden (they have much darker skies than mine). The exposures been pushed to the max in Post processing to get more of the foreground. I intend to have at least a few more goes at Jupiter whilst it's good & bright - hopefully I'll get something I dare show soon
Mike

I believe the comet is currently quite faint (not a naked eye object) so you'll need higher ISO/ longer exposure to stand any chance of seeing it.

If you did so well with those conditions my 30s f5 should have been much more overexposed than it looks... I think my focusing must need improvement.

Impressive!
Was it piggy back mounted on a motorised mount, or am I doing things completely wrong?
It's better than I've achieved yet with my scope.

I must have another go now the forth moon is visible...

Mike

I'd guess that using HR video and moving the camera through the point of focus could produce the images to stack quite easily (probably much simpler than taking a single reasonably focused macro shot.

Hang on, that means I've now got a use for video... I'm going to have to upgrade!

Whilst not all to my taste, there are some great pictures there! I'd be very happy with most of them, and I don't think any of them have significant flaws.

Prompted by womble's comment, I think nos. 10, 53 & 62 could all benefit from straightening. I also thought the third pidgeon shot looked a little soft - but when I saw the enlarged version I see why you included it

I hope you get as much from the forum as I do,
Mike

Agreed! [Unless you want to sell the K7 cheap to me... ]

It's only once you've had a good while to play with the K7 that you can get a true picture of what feature suit your style. I had my K100 for ~10 months, and can think of a few features I'd like to add (increased ISO range, liveview, high resolution sensor...) but for most work it's quite adequate - perhaps I'll upgrade next year.
Mike

From my speadsheet again :
rectilinear 9% gain in FOV for each dimension
Fisheyes 12-15% gain in FOV (depending on design)


Not to be sneezed at! (It ruins the glass)

Mike

I've not used anything quite like that, though one of my macro books raves about 'butterfly bars' which basically give a similar arrangement.

To me it seems a fairly expensive solution, given that the flashes are not P-TTL, and I got both my ring flashes for less (IIRC ~£40 each). Curries curently have the Pentax AF 360FGZ for only £15 more.

Bouncing a P-TTL flash of a reflector can work well for macro & exposures are automatic - If you have a suitable flash I recomend tryng that first, it gives a diffused light from low enough to emphasise surface detail. this morning a added a picture to my portfolio which was one of my first efforts with P-TTL.

Twin flashes certainly have some advantages as they enable you to prevent excessive shadows, with out giving the very flat light produced by a ring flash.

Mike

If you give us a link to it we might be able to help.

[quote:3496ace15f="Hypocorism I strongly urge you to refer to any field of view at given focal length specs for lenses to verify this.[/quote]Very good advice!
Focal length gets to be meaningless with fish eye lenses.
I've played with theoretical calculations for different pure lens designs:

With a theoretical pure rectilinear 5mm lens (on APS-C) only manages a 139° diagonal field of view (~131° horizontal). Meanwhile the Pentax 10-17 can reach 180° diagonal.
Theoretically an orthogonal 11mm lens can give 180° horizontally. Other designs give less for the focal length - 120° for equisolid, 114° for equidistance, 106° sterographic vs 90° rectilinear.
(Actual lenses generally use a mixture of designs)

The different desins for fisheye lenses make huge differences to their field of view and the nature of their distrotions!

Mike