Monthly Archives: August 2015

Opal Fields sunset

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When Fossicking in Opal Fields near Lightning Ridge, NSW we found ourselve so focused we almost missed the beautifull sunset to the eucalypt trees and dust. In the last moment I picked up the camera and managed to take this amazing shot.

Opal Fields near Lightning Ridge

Photographing the night sky

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When doing Landscape photography, most of us focus on mastering light hours, wide angles and game of light on rocks and woods. For me is the mastery of landscape in night time photography. With all the stars, milkyway and planets to show and minimum light to support or cover your lack of skills, the night sky is and always going to be the ultimate challange. But with all the possibilities and fruits to offer, eventualy you start to love it as i do.

Milkyway at Lake Wakapitu, NZ

Maybe for higher resolution image and wider angle you deside to use panoramatic stitching software as I did in this case.  Image stitched by Microsoft Image Composite Editor. So nice and easy free editor. Even you can see the stitches but for free editor and night sky… wel done, well done indeed

Milky Way and Venus near Cumborah (Lightning Ridge), NSW

Capturing 3 sources of bright light took some time but in the end rewarded with nice picture with an amazing mood.

Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex

 

 

Taking out my 50

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I like the feeling of old quality things. You all know that uncle or friend or grandfather still driving that 20 or 30 years old car and you always admired that all-metal feeling when you touched it. No plastics, no warranty, no mechanics hooking it up on computer. No matter it stinks a bit, it needs its care and your friend probably spends his every weekend trying to fix it, old high quality things brings us old memories and standards that just you granny remembers;)

In case of Asahi Pentax 50 we are talking not just about high end quality but about the cheapest lense for pentax ever. Like… ever.
For just arround 50 bucks you can have an amazing 50mm manual focusing lense with so huge bokeh it will make it hard to make all-sharp face picture.

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All you need to get ready is to take several images for every picture. From my experience the view finder shows slightly different sharpens and focus point than the display and than the reality. Forget about beep tone when focused and about green square showing you focused area. It just doesn`t work.
And be prepared for helpfull turists offering you to make you a picture of you. No matter how many times you tell them its manual focus, they still gonna take one picture after another and complain about how tha camera is broken. But that’s the funny part. In case of this lense you gonna get your bang for your buck!

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Back in the times when The Asahi Optical Company, later marketed as Pentax, popularised M42 lens mount (usually known as a pentax screw mount) managed to make the highest quality glass available. And that’s exactly the feeling you have when touching the lens. You almost got a feeling that the lense is the same weight as the camera body and that’s the feeling I like. Touchning the solid metal-glass lens.

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Comparing to this, when touching it’s much jounger automatic brother (Pentax automatic fifty), you feel a bit of disapppointment like you spent four times more money on some cheap plastic rubbish. For understanding quality and pros and cons of automatic 50, you must take the picture itself. But about auto 50 some other time.
See for yourself, enjoy

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