[TonyTurley]

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I spent part of lovely Friday & Saturday afternoons trying to capture critters with the Q and several adapted lenses, with varying success. I also practiced a bit with the new Pentax mini red dot sight I purchased recently. I need more practice with both the sight and the big Minolta 30cm. Granted, these shots were all through a window from about 25 feet away. I need to take the time to set up a tripod properly where I'm not spooking the wildlife.The lens that I liked the most from both an image quality and FOV for that distance was the old Rokkor-PF 58/1.4.

Minolta Tele Rokkor-MC 30cm/4.5




Minolta Rokkor-X 50/1.7




Minolta Rokkor-PF 58/1.4










Sakar Minolta mount 135/2.5

[barondla]

Good start with Q adapted lens tele shooting. It takes practice. The Pentax Mini red dot will help find the subject. Keep shooting and posting.

If you get a chance, post a squirrel picture to Rupert's thread in this forum.
thanks
barondla

[TonyTurley]

Thanks. It does indeed take practice . . . I am much more adept at using adapted lenses on my Sony NEX. I seem to struggle finding the focus sweet spot using focus peaking with the Q.

Tony

[hnikesch]

What apertures are you using, I find f5.6 a good starting point for adapting lenses to my Q then try +/- one stop from there. I also find adding contrast and sharpening helps.

[TonyTurley]

Thanks for the tips, Hans. I was using f/5.6 on the lenses. I was tinkering with both Manual and Aperture Priority. The large dynamic range in light levels made it tough to get consistent exposures up under the tree canopy. I did tweak the contrast, but didn't do any sharpening. These were just JPEGs; I think I'll go back to RAW with the Q and see if that yields better results.

[TonyTurley]

The critters were very active around and under the Red Maple this evening. I have a Sigma Zoom Master 35-70 1:2.8-4 that I've used very little, and I mounted that on the Q. I think the results turned out well. I also focused without the loupe, which worked fine in the shade. The first three are JPEGs with a bit of PP, the last three were developed from the RAW files. I probably needed to ease off the saturation a bit in the last three. Aperture was f/5.6 and f/8. Anyone know the bird directly behind the Jay in #1?

[snostorm]

Anyone know the bird directly behind the Jay in #1?

Hi Tony,

It appears to be a female Brown Headed Cowbird

Scott

[TonyTurley]

Hi Tony,

It appears to be a female Brown Headed Cowbird

Scott

Thanks Scott. I wondered if it might be a Cowbird, but I thought they were bigger than that.

[crewl1]

Good work Tony, second day looks like you did better on the focus.
If you aren't doing so yet, try a cheap loupe vs the peaking.
I find I get more accurate focusing when I use a loupe than when I rely on peaking, even with the screen zoomed in.
I use a loupe for a Nikon 1 like this LCD Viewfinder Loupes Magnifier Eyecup Extender V5 Hood for Nikon 1 J1 DSLR | eBay
Requires boring out the tripod screw location a bit to move the unit left to clear the buttons on the Q.

[TonyTurley]

Thanks Larry. I actually used the loupe the first day, and went without it the second day. I found it hard to get critical focus with the loupe. Still not completely there on day 2, but it was better.