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