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Test Drive of Some New Telephoto Equipment
Posted By: SCGushue, 05-07-2008, 05:37 PM

I got my hands on a Pentax A*1200mm ED IF lens late last year and have not had the time to even look at the lens since purchasing it. But the lens is massive (19 pounds) and required a platform upgrade to a Wimberley Gimbal II and a Gitzo 5540, 6X carbon fiber tripod to handle and stabilize the lens.

The weather was extrmely sunny yesterday. When I got home I decided to mount up the lens on the gimbal and go down to a lake not too far from the house to just see how the lens would handle.

By the time I reached the lake it had become mostly heavily overcast. Bummer. Because this lens needs high shutter speed even with a stable mount. Unfortunately, I had to pump the ISO up to 800 for most of the images and shutter speeds were only around 1/90 to 1/125 second.

That is a bad combination of ISO and shutterspeed to test this type of lens with. We all know how grainy 800 is.

But these are the images from my first outting with the lens combo. Not great images or subject matter by any means, but they may be the first images any Pentaxian has ever seen taken with this lens... and... believe me that I hope to do better under more favorable conditions . In all my web seaches I could not locate a single image made with this lens.

Some notes...

I don't know any of the people I photographed. They were in a public park and I just needed targets .

The man in the yellow shirt (1/90) was 200 yards away. I could barely see him with the naked eye. Full frame.
The girl was on a moving bass boat about 75 yards away. Full frame.
The female Red Wing blackbird (ISO 800 1/125 @ f9.5) was about 20-30 yards away.Full Frame
The heron (1/125, ISO 100) was 585 feet away on a submerged tree trunk and I caught him when the clouds broke for a couple of minutes.Full Frame

Last edited by SCGushue; 06-22-2008 at 04:26 PM.
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05-07-2008, 06:00 PM   #2
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Very beautiful shots, indeed these are the first images I have seen in any PENTAX forum to use this monster lens. Congratulation, although it was not ideal condition to use the lens as you said, the pictures look clean to me, I don't see any dreaded noise in any of them, the colors are excellent to me and they look extremely sharp. Keep us posted and thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

Rene
05-07-2008, 06:26 PM   #3
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Giving the lenght of the lens and the conditions, everyone of them is an exellent photograph. I had never even heard of this lens and I thought that my Bigma was heavy. Thanks for posting this and I am looking forward to your future post from this lens. (BTW, the girl is not paying attention to her fishing, she's got slack line. :-) )

Take care,
05-07-2008, 06:35 PM   #4
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Very nice shots with that shallow depth of field and tack-sharp subjects!

05-07-2008, 11:53 PM   #5
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You absolutely have tremendous skill in capturing the beauty of nature and people.
05-08-2008, 07:32 AM   #6
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holy cow that's quite the whopper A* 1200/8 ED [IF]

very nice photos, but must look strange carrying that to a park!
05-08-2008, 08:35 AM   #7
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Cool, it has it's own carrying handle. Nice shots too.

05-08-2008, 08:57 AM   #8
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Bojidar has availability marked as "Once in a lifetime". Awesome. Why not send it to Klaus at Photozone for testing? :P
05-08-2008, 07:18 PM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by OPTMEKX& Quote
Very beautiful shots, indeed these are the first images I have seen in any PENTAX forum to use this monster lens. Congratulation, although it was not ideal condition to use the lens as you said, the pictures look clean to me, I don't see any dreaded noise in any of them, the colors are excellent to me and they look extremely sharp. Keep us posted and thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

Rene
Thank you for stopping by to comment. It is a huge lens and definately required the hardware upgrade to handle movement with the lens. It will take time to learn to handle the lens but the Wimberley II Gimbal was well worth the investment. It is everything you can imagine in balancing long lenses and it does everything it claims to do.

QuoteOriginally posted by Heinrich Lohmann Quote
Giving the lenght of the lens and the conditions, everyone of them is an exellent photograph. I had never even heard of this lens and I thought that my Bigma was heavy. Thanks for posting this and I am looking forward to your future post from this lens. (BTW, the girl is not paying attention to her fishing, she's got slack line. :-) )

Take care,
Heinrich,

I can only assume that you fish
I certainly don't fish (not patient enough I think and always on the move) but only a fisherman would notice that. I'll make sure to tell her if I ever see her on the lake again.


QuoteOriginally posted by Ole Quote
Very nice shots with that shallow depth of field and tack-sharp subjects!
Thanks Ole. It will be interesting to see how the DOF works when I use this lens for what I purchased it to do.

Stephen
05-08-2008, 07:20 PM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by SCGushue Quote



Thanks Ole. It will be interesting to see how the DOF works when I use this lens for what I purchased it to do.

Stephen
Which is?
05-08-2008, 07:30 PM   #11
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QuoteOriginally posted by roentarre Quote
You absolutely have tremendous skill in capturing the beauty of nature and people.
James... you say the nicest things to me. Careful, I may begin to believe you.
Thanks mate!

QuoteOriginally posted by k100d Quote
holy cow that's quite the whopper A* 1200/8 ED [IF]

Yeah, it is a whopper. But focusing is a breeze with the * ED IF lenses.

very nice photos, but must look strange carrying that to a park!
Well, not really a park in the sense fo a city park. It was a pond established by damming a small creek so that the boating commision could provide fishing for rural residents.

QuoteOriginally posted by Fritz Quote
Cool, it has it's own carrying handle. Nice shots too.
And lucky for me. Without it the lens would be nearly impossible to handle by myself.

QuoteOriginally posted by JMS Quote
Bojidar has availability marked as "Once in a lifetime". Awesome. Why not send it to Klaus at Photozone for testing? :P
I remember reading that once too. I can't justify any reason to get it other than it is the one lens I had always wanted. But even as a guy who makes his living with a camera, this is a little over the top. Luckily, my wife didn't bat an eye.

Stephen
05-08-2008, 07:37 PM   #12
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Hi Tyler,

Well, when I finished my first graduate degree in biology I went on to study photography. I had hoped to do serious avian studies both academically and photographically. But just as things were expanding photographically in several venues... children came along. So, I specialized my photography and passed on "the dream". Now, with the kids finished with their advanced degrees I can dabble in... what once could have been.

Better late than never... Right?

Stephen
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