dahlia

[Talisker]

Dahlia, photographed using a venerable Vivitar Series 1 90mm (the original one with the 'matched multiplier'!) with ringflash on a K10D.

[m8o]

Talisker ...ringflash ? Please Do Tell! All I ever hear is that is not available for the K10D.
(and welcome to the forum!)

[roentarre]

Staggering details and colour. Ring flash does have its place in macro.

[Talisker]

I presume its OK to reply given that this is a competition post and will presumably 'disappear' when the voting area is live!

It's an old self-metering/manual ringflash - they are probably still available somewhere as they were available under any number of different brand names. There is only one setting available on auto, which for ISO100 is f5.6, which was rather limiting in film days as the DoF was very shallow. Although the flash metering is remarkably good, all things considered, it was still a bit hit and miss. It's all much easier in the digital world as you can crank up the ISO to 200 or 400 without any real detrimental effect and stop down further, giving a much better DoF, or simply set ithe flash at full power and instantly review whether you got the calculations right.

As for sharpness, the old Vivitar was always known as a remarkable lens. I bought mine second hand a few years ago in almost mint condition (it must date to mid/late-70s) - they were well out of my league when new! No 'a' stop on the aperture ring, but that's not an issue when using the flash, and I'm (just) old enough to remember stop-down metering on my late father's Practika...

[LaRee]

I love this image. I really expected it to be leading the pack in the challenge. It is beautiful! Lots of tough competition this go around. I think you have an image here to really be proud of.