[RICHARD L.]

I like SHARP lenses, my tastes have evolved with experience and I'm ready to make some efforts to get the sharp results I strive for. Pentax 645Z + P67 105 mm f/2.4 @ f/22.

[cpk]

As I said earlier, if you are concerned with corner sharpness with the DA 18-135, check out the DxO software:

See my post #8 at DA 18-135mm after DxO Treatment - PentaxForums.com

[tibbitts]

I like SHARP lenses, my tastes have evolved with experience and I'm ready to make some efforts to get the sharp results I strive for. Pentax 645Z + P67 105 mm f/2.4 @ f/22.

No argument with sharper, although I went to a presentation with a landscape photographer once, and even he could see the handwriting on the wall that his days of being willing/able to physically tote his 8x10in camera, lenses, and wooden tripod (no carbon fiber then if I recall) up and down mountains were coming to an end in his late 40s. It was a motivation for him to finish a book project. So it's interesting that you've evolved in one direction while I'm guessing most people evolve in the opposite direction.

[RICHARD L.]

Simply buy a llama to carry your equipment, like Ansel Adams thought of doing. In the end he contented himself with only a huge Cadillac station wagon ... lol !

Regards

P.S.I'm 5'10" and I weighed 275 pounds most of my life, lifting weights and being a bodybuilder, so I had no problem carrying my stuff. As I'm getting older, now I have a Dodge Grand Caravan to handle my equipment. Photographers like Mike Oria or Tim Fitzharris drive Jeeps or 4X4 and can go pretty far before having to walk much.

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Last edited by RICHARD L.; 01-11-2021 at 08:44 AM.

[goatsNdonkey]

My largest camera is my Koni-Omega Rapid M, which can do things like this with its normal Hexanon 90mm lens:




But then I like to take pictures like this, too. (lens was manual Samyang 16mm on K10D, image cropped):



I wonder how close to each of those effects I could get with careful use of my possibly-arriving-today DA 18-135mm WR with careful selection of focal length, aperture, and focusing distance? Is there a "sweet spot" in those settings to get the best of corner/edge sharpness in a landscape and another sweet spot for getting mainly center sharpness with progressive blurring around it? And of course there will be the possibility of blur from some kind of precipitation with that WR lens .

Then, of course, he could try my stable of manual (often m42 mount) primes as well.

[RICHARD L.]

Many years ago, I had a 10 Mpx K10 with a DA 18-55 mm. This lens was a disaster at 18 mm but was not too bad between 28 and 55 mm, although one side of the image was always softer than the other side. Not being patient, I put this lens out of its misery and got a DA 16-45 (plagued with chromatic aberrations in the corners but very sharp). Now the K3 corrects these CA woes quite well with the 16-45. I acquired only the best lenses I could afford from there on (DA* 50-135, DA* 60-250, etc), then turned FF with a K1 (with a tremendously good DFA 28-105 mm and a trove of FA prime lenses) and now I'm totally into medium-format (with a 645Z and 13 P67 and 17 P645 lenses) since I retired. You keep learning with age.

Regards

[tibbitts]

Simply buy a llama to carry your equipment, like Ansel Adams thought of doing. In the end he contented himself with only a huge Cadillac station wagon ... lol !

Regards

P.S.I'm 5'10" and I weighed 275 pounds most of my life, lifting weights and being a bodybuilder, so I had no problem carrying my stuff. As I'm getting older, now I have a Dodge Grand Caravan to handle my equipment. Photographers like Mike Oria or Tim Fitzharris drive Jeeps or 4X4 and can go pretty far before having to walk much.

I believe with Adams, except for some of the early days, a lot of his photography was done relatively close to roads, and of course some from the camera platform on his vehicle. That's a good point about llamas, although it's a big commitment that would involve a lifestyle change for most people (in places where trail-trained llamas can't be rented, obviously.) In this case I think it was more a limitation of elevation change and climbing/scrambing than just carrying the weight.

[RICHARD L.]

Plus, llamas might spit in you face ... lol !

Regards

[goatsNdonkey]

Plus, llamas might spit in you face ... lol !

Regards

And a donkey might bite you!

[goatsNdonkey]

Perhaps because so many of my lenses are very old and were cheap for me to get, practiced bottom-feeder on ebay that I am, I am usually expecting each lens I get to have an assortment of weaknesses and strengths, and some of them turn out to have strengths that take me by surprise.

Another thing, perhaps not a lot of others share, is that I fret very little about lens aberrations. I'd be the last person to de-fish a picture from a fish-eye lens for example--why have a fish-eye lens if you don't appreciate its magical powers of making horizons and other straight lines as mutable as taffy?

I will plop a lens on a dslr or on a film body, and go out and see the world as it sees it. I want it to surprise me. Of course I want something in focus. I want something to be sharp. I'm not fond of having a decentered lens. I want it to expose the way the settings say it should, but after that, let it give me the world anew.

It is nice sometimes to make a thorough test of a lens to see whether there are specific applications it is useful for, to get a particular kind of picture, but, unlike perhaps many other PF members, I don't often plan pictures. And when I do, I usually find some way to accomplish them the way I want.

Long ago, in my film only days, I'm talking the '70s and early '80s, I shot a lot at f/11-16 at hyperfocal distance settings, whenever I shot landscape shots, sharpness my main goal, though often using ASA 400 film to be assured of reaching those apertures in most conditions, thwarting my sharpness goal. I am so much more comfortable with a smaller area of focus now. I have so often shot lenses wide open for as many purposes as I could, just to see what would happen with very selective focus.

So this makes me one more tolerant of soft corners. But I am not someone who never wants sharp corners, and I am one who thinks he knows how to get them when he really does need them.

[RICHARD L.]

Even if I wanted fuzzy corners, "Pentax-san" won't let me do it (sigh) ! First picture on a K3 in terrible light conditions ...

[c.a.m]

Perhaps because so many of my lenses are very old and were cheap for me to get, practiced bottom-feeder on ebay that I am, I am usually expecting each lens I get to have an assortment of weaknesses and strengths, and some of them turn out to have strengths that take me by surprise. ...snip...

Sounds like you have a very healthy and positive approach to the art of photography.

Your thread here prompted me to look again at some of my images, especially those taken with the DA 18-135. I clicked through the images in a bunch of folders, displaying them at full-screen on my 24-inch monitor, but not zooming in. And guess what? Most of them look pretty darned good, IMO, even if some of the corners would not have withstood my scrutiny on previous pixel-peeping views.

So, thanks for this thread!

- Craig

[Just1MoreDave]

Simply buy a llama to carry your equipment, like Ansel Adams thought of doing. In the end he contented himself with only a huge Cadillac station wagon ... lol !

Regards

P.S.I'm 5'10" and I weighed 275 pounds most of my life, lifting weights and being a bodybuilder, so I had no problem carrying my stuff. As I'm getting older, now I have a Dodge Grand Caravan to handle my equipment. Photographers like Mike Oria or Tim Fitzharris drive Jeeps or 4X4 and can go pretty far before having to walk much.

Llamas are popular in the Rockies. There aren't many roads. The altitude is tough. Also the weather is tricky, so it's better to have the llamas bring in supplies and gear to camp for a while. Lots of people think they are going for a nice day hike and are very uncomfortable for one night.

[goatsNdonkey]

We need a thread for pictures of llamas toting camera gear!

[RICHARD L.]

Easier to find pictures of squirrels taking pictures with tripod-mounted cameras ... lol !

Regards