The Photography Thread

[Plink Floyd]

He seems to be leading a busy but extremely interesting life.

White Town
Bzangy
Synthlover

[gregwar]

White Town

WAAAT ZOMG



this track is amazing i still play it from time to time

[BonsoWonderDog]

How dare people lead interesting and fulfilling lives.

[Plink Floyd]

What is I don't even

[christianrock]

OMG OMG OMG
I'M SO EXCITED
!!!!!!!CAPSLOCK!!!!!!!

I'm meeting this guy during a late lunch break, to buy my first DSLR. It comes with the kit lens, plus 3 old lenses from the 70s and 80s (Pentax is like that, the lenses fit). I'm basically getting the extra lenses, filters and bag for free, as I'm paying the going price for the camera with kit lens by itself. Which is already absurdly cheap for the quality I'm getting.

The oldest lens is a 30 dollar manual from the mid 70s and can take pics like this:



Apparently one of its strong points is indoor portraits, so I'm sure I'll use it quite a bit.

Even better manual primes that fit the Pentax cameras can be found on Ebay and CL from Pentax, Sigma, Sears and others, and usually cost under 20 bucks, unless it's a f1.4 which would go just a bit over that, but sometimes not. The Pentax world is an interesting one. If I get really serious eventually I can later upgrade to the newer version of the body which is of stunning quality for a 1.5 crop sensor.

[christianrock]

This is another pic taken with that cheap 50mm 1:2 Pentax lens from the 70s.



So apparently that effect on the out-of-focus portions of the pic, where it artfully blurries it out a bit, is called the bokeh. Yes I'm learning the snobby photographic terms.

[christianrock]

This is one of the zoom lens that comes with it, an old manual Sigma 70-210 UC. Average price is under 50 dollars. There's two for sale at a local store (KEH) for 29 (newer version) and 19 dollars (this one). They're auto-focus lenses by the way.





I'm posting photos from other people because God knows when I'll be able to take nice pics like that

[MetroSonus]

What happened to Jyoti, anyhoo?

I have no idea. I think he's too distracted living out his semi rock star like lifestyle

[christianrock]

OMG OMG OMG

I got the camera. I'm as excited as if I had gotten a new synth

This was my test to see if the camera was working



This was with the kit lens. I made a test with the prime 50mm but it's overexposing. It didn't take my manual aperture adjustment to the lens, so I have a road to figure out what I'm doing here. Now I gotta get back to work!

Oh, and

[gregwar]

so it's a Pentax ? which model ?

also, congrats ! cameras are awesome

[christianrock]

Oh yeah I forgot to name the model It's a K20D. 14.6MP 1.5x crop sensor (same size as equivalent class Nikon and Sony, bigger than Canon).

Anyway, the plan goes like this. To learn DLSR stuff with this pic, and then next year or so get a K-5 IIs body only, which is a totally wonderful camera. I can keep using whatever lenses I have and buy from now on. At the end of the year Pentax/Ricoh should announce a new camera (don't know if it will be called Pentax or Ricoh, as Ricoh bought Pentax) and the price of the K-5 IIs should fall by several hundred dollars in the used market as people dump their cameras to get the latest and greatest

[christianrock]

So here's my first attempt to learn exposure. This is my manual 50mm 2.0 lens. It performs way better than I thought it would.


f2.0 1/2000 ISO 200


Same place, but f4.0 1/500 ISO 400


This is 1/350 F2.0 ISO 100. A little overexposed but it's a hot summer day and I wanted that to come through the pic...

There was no processing at all done to the pics. Just a 4 dollar UV filter that I used on top of the lens.

Edit: hmmm these looked a bit brighter before I reduced the size of the jpg file...

[Plink Floyd]

Nice!

I gotta get a prime lens...

[Plink Floyd]

Ooh, wait... maybe in that box of old AE-1 stuff...

Wherevar that is...

[christianrock]

Manual primes for Canon show up locally on craigslist for cheap all the time. I don't know if they need an adapter, I assume they do, as the selling point for Pentax is that lenses go back to the 70s without adapters needed.

Gregwar was talking about Lensbaby earlier in the thread. All Lensbaby stuff sells for the Pentax K mount, so I might get me their Muse lens at some point. For 150 bucks, some nice effects to be had. Though I can get some nice effects out of my 50mm prime too. I took this pic over the weekend of my oldest and youngest sons - no effects or editing whatsoever, other than turning the pic black and white with in-camera processing:



Being able to take pics like that was the reason to buy the camera, so I'm pleased.

Edit: big pic is no longer big

[Plink Floyd]

Nice! Big pic is big, though...

And you're right about the older Canon lenses. It seems that there are two types of adapters: one with glass that corrects the focal length, and one without glass that doesn't allow full focus range. I haven't really looked for teh wife's old manual lenses (at least three) but they may be meh. I'll have to school me further...

[MetroSonus]

here are some of mein photos, ja.

[ElectricPuppy]

"Entrail coffee"??

Oh, no, wait. nevermind.

[christianrock]

Did I mention I bought a 50mm f/1.7 prime for my camera for 25 bucks on Feebay? It's Sears-branded so not as cool as the Pentax name lenses that would cost me like 50 dollars It looks pretty much like new, too, like someone tossed it in a drawer for 30 years.

I wonder if this lens buying spree will end up badly.

Also: Nice pics, Metro you have the eye for it.

[christianrock]

So I went to a subdivision a block away to take pictures at their park area, during lunch time today.

I tested a new lens I got for 50 dollars shipped. It's from the 70s and it's got a few blemishes on the body, and the aperture ring is kinda loose. It still takes great pictures though: (taken with medium quality jpeg and not change in any way, other than reducing the size of the jpeg)



I also finally got around to do a decent test of one of the freebie lenses I got. It's an old manual Macro lens that's really hard to focus. It's not the sharpest macro lens out there either. It kind of sucks, actually, but the colors are OK and even its softness can be artistic. I guess it was a good one in the 70s: (I had to up the brightness and contrast just a bit, this is a pretty dark lens)





You can get this lens all day on Ebay for 10-20 dollars. You need a Pentax camera though, or an adapter mount but it's not the same thing as a lot of times it doesn't allow you to focus to infinity.
That 2nd one is flowers so tiny in a bush, that people probably walk by them and never even see them. I think that's pretty cool

So I'm pretty happy with 8 lenses LOL
This is what they talk about when they talk of "Pentax colors". They're very cool, even in most of their cheap lenses. You kind of buy their cameras because of the 25 million + lenses they have out there. Or, like I did, because you find a cheap deal
I kind of want a newer body just for the sake of better ISO performance, because my pictures taken inside the house still kinda suck...

Once my 32Gb memory card arrives (got a gift card from Best Buy...) I will start taking pictures in RAW mode.