These were all taken handheld, first day with the lens, and this is my first effort at posting photos to this forum. Only PP is one click of sharpening in Picasa. All taken as JPGs ( I usually shoot in DNG Raw).

This lens is quite heavy, but as a tele-macro, it seems to be very good. The backlit garden sprinkler is one that I like in particular, and when seen at its original size, looks like fireworks going off in the garden. Nothing to speak of in the way of flare etc.

Looking forward to getting much more used to this lens

Nor sure how to add titles to each picture. In order, they are:

Backlit garden sprinkler
Backlit Mandevilla
Bushfires at sunset
Come on in....
Rosella taking off from persimmon tree

Any help on this picture posting lark would be much appreciated

[Derridale]

Couple more, shot in DNG Raw, with no PP at all. Straight from the K20D, to show the depth of colour saturation. Not the world's best or sharpest pics, and some of the first taken with this new Sigma 180 Macro, but the colours are just as seen in the early morning sun.

Pics are titled:

Achingly red
Beautiful pink

If someone could tell me how to put the title at the top of each pic, that would be much appreciated. I've posted these as attachments.

[KrisK10D]

Some good stuff there, Derridal. The pink rose is beautiful.

I'm not sure what the black band on the right of the last 2 shots is tho.

If you want a site to host photos, I use ImageShack® - Image Hosting It wont resize images unless you tell it to. I find it easier to use something like Photoshop to change the resolution and dimension and saving as a .jpg before uploading them. Hope that helps. PM me if you need more help with it.

[Derridale]

Thanks Kris - yes, I saw those black bands after I'd posted. I used Picasa to resize the pics down to below 500k, as per the forum rules, but perhaps it is something to do with the fact I uploaded them as attachments rather than externally hosted pictures....

Or maybe Picasa screwed them up - not sure. I used Picasa exactly the same way for the first lot above, and they seemed to come through OK...

All suggestions welcome re the art of posting pics and getting them to look as good as everyone else's...

[Ash]

Nice collection Pete,

The roses are nicely captured.
A few forum members suggested I use photobucket to host the photos, and they come out fine that way. They also help to resize your images on upload so you don't have to bother with it.

[daacon]

Very well done Pete - the flowers are beautiful but I think my favorite is the sprinkler shot.

[Photo Tramp]

I like them all Pete, I think you have done a wonderful job on the capture. The lens is a great asset to your creativity. Well Done.

[Derridale]

Thanks for the gracious comments guys - appreciated. I posted these more to try out the posting process, and also to show what a nice lens this Sigma 180 really is. And hopefully I'll get better with it once I learn its quirks and strengths.

How do I get those titles or comments just atop each picture like I've seen in other's posts? Do I have to use externally hosted photos to do that?

What about Flickr - does that work as an external URL?

I'm not really au fait with using HTML code or tags etc, so I was kinda hoping that the direct attachment method would do it. I managed to get the pics here, obviously, but would be nice if there is an easy way to add those lines BETWEEN the pics to describe the next one etc.

Any help much appreciated

And thanks again for the compliments - made my day.

[cupic]

Brillant colour in the Rosella

[channeler]

All nice shots Pete but I especially like the colours/textures of those last two flowers.

Paul

[ivoire]

These were all taken handheld, first day with the lens, and this is my first effort at posting to this forum. Only PP is one click of sharpening in Picasa. All taken as JPGs ( I usually shoot in DNG Raw).

I like the pics you shot very much and was wondering how fast the autofocus is when shooting long (as in your landscape shot). I've been debating on a 70-200 f2.8 or a prime in the 150-200mm range. this lens looks very good. What is your opinion on this lens for non macro shooting? thanks, mike

[Peter Zack]

There are a couple of ways to post pictures to a thread.
You can post them to the PentaxForums gallery and then link them to the thread or you can use several different web sites to do it.
I use Imageshack to do it and if you look at the attachment, you can see that I can type titles and info above or below each image:



So what you do is load the image to Imageshack and then right click on the image. Hit "View" Below the image will pop up 4 Hot links. For PF we use the bottom one. Make sure you click thumbnails "NO" before you copy that bottom link "C". Then you copy the hot link to the thread and highlight the ho tlink. You then hit "B" to get the hot link to attach. (see second attachment below).

Now you can use "A" to attach images to your threads as a direct upload but hit the little paper clip and add the attachment anywhere you want it in the thread. Then you can add info to the image but you use server space here which is limited.

[Peter Zack]

Btw. great shots and looks like a great lens. Love the Rose shots.

[rmtagg]

Great shots Enjoyed seeing them. Keep practicing with that lens

[Derridale]

Ivoire - thanks for the compliments. The Sigma 180 was bought primarily for use as a macro lens with long focal length. I'm a keen fly-fisher, and also like to try and take macros of many of the water bugs and insects we try to mimic with artificial 'flies'. They are very skittish, hence the long focal length. I already have the Tamron SP90 macro, but that needs to get too close. Used as a general purpose 180mm tele lens, it works just fine. It does have a focus limiter on it, so focus travel is not excessive, but as the lens is so big and heavy, I wouldn't recommend it as a prime tele just for the occasional macro. Perhaps the Tammy or Sigma 70-300 or the Pentax 55-300 would be a better bet for that?


Peter Zack - what can I say? That explanation is fantastic - thank you! Your post is duly cut and pasted and printed for reference. I'll try that method next

It's 06:25 here in Brisbane, and the sun is not yet up (it's our late autumn/fall, only a couple of weeks to go till winter, for all you northern hemisphere types) but I'll be out trying more with this lens later today. I'll try the ImageShack method of posting if I get some decent shots.

What a great resource for help and learning all the folks are here on PF - thank you all