Does anyone have any experience with this lens ?

My LBA is calling me toward a mid/wide prime or a Macro lens & this one is both.
My concerns are, it's not that fast (will it be much better at 2.8 than my Tamron 28-75?) & I'd imagine the macro working distance would be very low, would there be an issue with blocking subject light with the camera ?

As title states i want to get my hand on some nice primes. Autofocus only though as my manual skills are terrible.
I'm also looking to get a proper 1:1 Macro lense (would also like AF for when using as regular lens)

Anyone have anything available that I might be interested in ? PM me if you like.

I'm sure I've seen printable postcards & greetings cards in Staples. Might look more pro than regular prints stuck to a plain card. Not sure on price of them though.

Have you thought of getting them printed instead of doing it at home ?
Depends on the quantities you are thinking about I suppose, but it could turn out more cost effective that way.

Head in the fridge door




Camera Model: PENTAX K20D
Image Date: 2009:02:16 12:47:40
Focal Length: 10.0mm (10-17 fisheye)
Exposure Time: composite of 5 exposures.
Aperture: f/6.7
ISO equiv: 100

Amin, there are plenty of photoshop sharpening tutorials on the web - start with google & browse them till you find one your comfortable to follow. I think the sharpening on my example is slightly overdone, it's alot easier to control on an original size image. If your mainly interested in portraits, you may want to look at sharpening using a high pass filter (again plenty of tutorials around) These will go into alot more depth than I am here.

I just did it quickly to demonstrate what I meant by my suggestions.
When I said "global" I meant the whole image.
I used Unsharp mask on the whole image (use the preview to judge the amounts - try not to overdo it, you can always add more by running it again)
Then the "local" sharpening of the eyes I did like this -
Using the elipse or lasso selection tool draw roughly around the eyes (just outside of the lashes & eyelids),
one eye first then hold shift whilst selecting the other (using shift allows you to add to the selection) if you struggle with this you could always do one eye at a time.
Once you have your selection go to the "select" menu & select "modify" then "feather" - I used a value of 10 pixels on this small image but you may need to use more on an original, maybe 30ish.
Now sharpen using unsharp mask as you did earlier, but remember the eyes have already been sharpened as part of the whole image so go gently with the sharpening here (you'll notice some halos on my quick fix)
I then boosted the contrast a little (good for the web) using the basic contrast adjustment.

I hope this helps Amin. If you're still struggling then PM me your msn messenger address & I can go through it with you step-by-step if you'd like.

Plus, buy a nice dark ND filter so you can use longer shutter speeds in daylight.

Here's a visualisation of what I suggested Aminstar. A quick before & after shot (although have cropped original too)

Some global unsharp mask. Further unsharp mask on the eyes only. & boosting of contrast.

[IMG]http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q105/RR76/beforeandafter.jpg[/IMG]

You could sharpen the eyes only & go for soft focus, but your little one has baby soft skin still, so why not show it off !

Anybody got their 55mm da* yet ? Rumour has it that SRS have shipped their initial allocation. Anyone on here lucky enough to be in that group ?

If so, Samples & review please

Oh yeah, there it is ! That makes a total of £200 back from Pentax UK.
Hey, when I look at it that way, I should go out & spend £200 on a new lens.

Thanks Martin. I'll definately have to practice my cloning, as it looks far better without the bin !