[babywriter]

September thread is up:

Single in September 2020 - PentaxForums.com

[pepperberry farm]

September thread is up:

Single in September 2020 - PentaxForums.com

awesome

[Tsuken]

So, a month finished with the Sigma 70-300 f4-5.6 DG macro attached to my KP. (Well, mostly ... this morning I had meant to use the Sigma to take a photo of the DA50-200, then change lenses; I forgot to take the photo, and I don't like to do more lens-swapping than I have to, so a pic *of* the 70-300 has to sub for a pic *with* the 70-300 for today. Soz.)

Anyhoo, how was it?

Meh. It was ok.

[scurries off to check through the month's album ... hmmm ... actually *really* happy with a bunch of those photos...]

So, the potential results from the lens are really excellent. My "meh" response comes down simply to feeling un-excited by it, I think. It's a perfectly serviceable long zoom, and that's how it feels to use. If I need that sort of reach, it has it. And it's sharp, which is good.

But... there doesn't seem to me to be anything particularly characterful about the resulting images, or about the lens in use. Which leaves me thinking what I like about the photos was down to me: composition/seeing. Perhaps that's quite encouraging, given how many of the photos in hindsight I really like.

I guess that's a strength of the lens simply in terms of the range it covers: 70 mm all the way to 300 mm. It does allow one to "see" and capture a wide range of subjects, in a wide range of ways. I can't say though that there's anything specific or individual to this lens that recommends it, beyond the reach and the sharpness.

Similarly there is a general negative for me which (my earlier comment notwithstanding) is simply that it is a zoom. I don't get on with zooms quite the same as primes. That's not to do with this lens, though, so shouldn't be off-putting.

Specific negatives there are though:

1. Attaching and detaching the lens hood is rather fraught. I have to make sure the body is set to MF first, otherwise there's a (momentary; before I realise and freeze) horrifying graunch which I hope to gods comes from the lens and not the camera. With the DA50-200 I have on at the moment, or my Plastic Fantastic, messing with the hood (or filters) does precisely nothing to the focus. No idea what that is, technically/mechanically, but I don't like it.

2. Long MFD; somewhat better when switched to "macro" mode. (But realistically, what can one expect at 300 mm, especially for the price?)

3. Focus is hunty at times - particularly in Live View.

4. Manual focus ring lacks any tactile sense (though it works ... fine).

As for the hinted-at-above price, it was ridiculously little. I don't know/can't remember exactly (it was a present) but I'm sure it was somewhere in the vicinity of $170 Australian. That kind of money, anyway. Definitely significantly under $200. So, yeah ... I can forgive a lot. Especially when I look at my 'Single in' album (and most of my 'Daily in' this month too).

Faves:

These fullas (who I have now re-uploaded, having reprocessed with smaller and less-intense circular gradient lightening the right-hand bat, as it had made a big halo before):




This morning:


Golden Dawn by -Occasionally Focused-

This evening:


Rail gold by -Occasionally Focused-

All the flower close-ups:




And despite the depth of focus not being everything I could wish (not possible of course like this), this busy bee being busy to start off my August:


Busy as by -Occasionally Focused-

In sum: it's definitely worth having a long lens, and this is a well-cheap way to get a perfectly respectable and potentially very sharp long lens. Have a thumbs-up, Sigma.

[Sandy Hancock]

All done for August.

Last time I "Singled" the DA*200 was before the release of the K-1, and I sold it immediately after the month was over. I thought it was big, heavy, slow to focus, and had too much purple fringing. But there was no doubt about its image qualities.

Fast forward five years, and my opinion has softened. With the K-1, and experience with truly big, heavy DFA* lenses, the DA*200 feels nimble and beautifully balanced. I would go so far as saying it is now my favourite telephoto lens to wield in the field. The build quality is exquisite, the hood is awesome, and the manual focus is nicely tactile. The autofocus is still slow, but it rarely hunts and it's usually deadly accurate.

It's sharp. Even wide open if you *nail* focus (which is no easy task with a fast telephoto). It is DEFINITELY, 100%, full frame compatible. Vignetting is negligible at all apertures, and IQ is at least good to the extreme corners. At no time did I find the bokeh displeasing. The fringing is still there, but it was never more than a pixel or two wide, and it was trivial to clean up in Lightroom. All things considered, it is a seriously good lens, which I will be keeping.

My own performance over the month was pretty pedestrian. I missed three days I think, and many of my submissions were safeties at best. I had lofty goals of doing careful comparisons with the long end of the DFA*70-200, the FA645*300, and the DA*300 on FF and the DA*200 on crop - but none of that happened. In my defence it was a cold and wet month, but that's a bit pathetic

But all that said, I enjoyed myself. I got some memorable images, and I truly enjoyed the images coming from you all. See you in September with the rare, strange, but hopefully wonderful Lomography Lomogon 32/2.5 Art.

[Chris_K]

Another month done. The S-M-C Takumar 50/1.4 is a truly amazing lens with extraordinary IQ at low F-numbers. If you get the focusing right it is simply sharp wide-open with no tricks needed in pp. I think that wide-open it is slightly sharper than my Pentax-F 50/1.4 But obviously, the sharpness is not the only thing why those older lenses are so favorable. So there is this dreamy bokeh and color rendering which give a nice 'touch' to the picture. I enjoyed the month a lot and the lens is certainly a keeper.
Some of my faves below. Thank you all for the comments. Big thanks to blackcloudbrew for a discerning look and critique - thanks Tim!

@1.4


@2


@2.8


@4


@5.6


@8

[garywakeling]

Well that was a fun month, the DFA 85mm 1.4, I have been stuck at home with a combination of Covid lockdown as well as helping nurse my wife, who has injured her back and is restricted to laying down while it heals. Being home bound has limited my opportunities to put this lens to the test, however thanks to a convenient focal length, amazing resolving power and pleasing bokeh, I was able to easily obtain a photo for each day. The lens can perform amazingly at portraiture as you would expect and images I have seen produced with it , in the hands of other photographers, have really impressed me.
Oddly I was watching a video from a Youtube photography "expert", they were going over the different systems and while Canon and Nikon each had many chapters, Pentax had a single chapter combined with Ricoh. The take home message was that Pentax was going nowhere in 2020 and do not invest in the system which only had rebadged lenses. I guess this lens, along with the 70-200 2.8, 50mm 1.4 and the DA11-18 hadn't been seen by the expert. I really like where Pentax is heading lately, sure, the speed of releases has been slower than we wanted, but as the road map fleshes out with the 21mm on the horizon, I think the expert might need to rethink. Watching the videos released on the upcoming K-New and the philosophy of sticking to traditional DSLR rather than mirrorless, the new "in house developed " lenses are another sign that Pentax can deliver to still image makers a top quality product at competitive pricing.
But enough of that general talk, back to this gem of a lens. I was going to say this little gem of a lens, however the size is certainly not little. However it balances nicely in the hand and while substantial it was easy to handle and the large focusing ring falls easily to hand making it easy to adjust the focus when the lens is wide open. The resolution is amazing and it can easily be cropped down to the equivalent of a 300mm lens with no loss of detail, sort of like a digital zoom with the camera resolution as the limiting factor. Half way during the month there was a Lightroom profile released which to my eye only changed some slight vignetting, mostly making the photos look worse in my opinion.
The bokeh is smooth and the transition from in to out of focus is very pleasant too. The only slight issue I have with the lens is the minimum focus distance. I would like it to be a little closer, however that is only a minor issue. Now they are going to issue then lens in silver or black, I guess I miss out on the option but the black seems fine on either of my silver or black bodies.

So I think I went a little overboard with photos this month, I tried it with teleconverters ( mixed results) , APSC good results and full frame easy to live with. Compared to my older 85mm lenses, the lens really shines with every area an improvement.

My favourites from the month

[iheiramo]

My favourites from the month

Yay, selfie in favorites. Embrace the 21st. Resistance is futile

[iheiramo]

So this is it. End of an era. 3 years, 17 M primes and 34 months of daily shooting. When I started this single in challenge project my plan was to learn the lenses I had and hopefully improve as a photographer. After few months I decided that this was fun and, as I already had quite many M primes, made plans to get them all to learn about differences between lenses in one series. In the end I left out three due to price, rarity and my need for those lenses. I have seen one M20 on sale in Finland, but missed the chance with couple of hours. Honestly tried to get it M400 was on sale before I started this project, but haven't seen it since and as I'm not into birding I didn't want to invest to it. M28/2 still haven't surfaced for sale in Finland during the time I've been interested in vintage lenses. I did get some lenses from outside, but didn't feel the need to go after those three. I did learn a lot during these 3 years. I understand my lense much better. I have better grasp of behavior of different focal lengths. I learned a lot about pp. At first going thru a month was a stuggle. Now it's pretty easy. I'm confident that I can pull out a shot fast when I don't have time search for the shot. I also have better understanding of creating lighting to shoot static objects. Luckily there a still lot to learn, so something to look forward.

M series is not most high... to be honest it's considered the weakest series in Pentax catalogue, but it also make's it the cheapest. That was the reason why my first manual lenses, M50/1.7 and M100/2.8, were from M series. I soon started to gather more, as I was impressed by IQ and rendering they gave. Bang for the buck. It felt real important at that point of my shooting career. There are some really good lenses, some that has some special character and some weaker ones, but SIC has shown that one can take real good shots even with weakest and cheapest M series prime. For internet use all of them are perfectly usable, if you stay in their comfort zone. Still I have my favorites now and doubt that others won't see much action from me in the future. I'm not sure yet if I should keep all of them. The one's I'm willing to let go won't yield much money, so don't know if worth the trouble

Time to turn my melancholic feelings towards the lens of the month. M28/2.8 was a bit of a surprice. My conclusion from APSC round was to keep this lens for starbursts and good PF handling. M35/2 was my go to lens with cropped body and it was a little too close in focal length to find much use. Feels like tables have turned in FF world. June was constant stuggle with M35/2 being too wide and not wide enough. FOV from 28mm on the other hand felt very natural thru the month.

M28/2.8 focus close and infinity focus ain't faraway. A lot of general landscape shooting goes with lens focused to infinity. Real easy to snap away. For landscapes it's good to stop down to get sharp corners, but when shooting something closer lens works fine wide open. Just keep the target in center, as there is serious vignetting and corners are weak. Fringing is still well in control. In this regard I think it's the best in series. At least among the lenses I have. It's also flare resistant. You have to push the lens to extreme to get a small flare. I didn't need to clean any out of my shots this month. Sharpness in overall is good enough. Not in the level of fifties, but nothing to complain about. There are distortations, but in the level that I can live with.

Colors were strong. Clearly stronger than with the lenses from previous months, if that is important. When shooting RAW they are easy to make what you want in pp, that I don't usually pay much attention to them.

There's often comparison between M28/2.8 and 3.5. I think I prefer 2.8 of the two. There are advantages in highlight rendering, PF and flare that make faster 28 more usable for me. 3.5 could be sharper and have some colors better, but the difference ain't big enough to turn my scale in its favor.

So September I take off from daily shooting. I have some reviews to write. I'll rejoin SIC later, as I have some lenses on table, including two M zooms, waiting to be shot. I'll be back

Wide open:




f5.6:


f8:




f11:

[blackcloudbrew]

Haven't shot the final pic for this month but it's quite easy to do a wrap on the DA 645 28-45 f4.5. I've owned this lens for more than a year now, it's big, heavy, solidly built, expensive (I paid $3,500 for mine), and just fricken brilliant. Given that is and SDM lens with in lens stabilization (keep in mind that the 645z does not have SR), it's got a lot packed into it - hence the significant price for it. I have a thing for wide lenses in general. For along time the widest lens I had for my 645 & 645n was a 45mm lens, which was wide but really wide. When I acquired my 645z, given the 1.3 crop factor, I also picked up the FA 645 35mm, which by itself is a very good lens. What I thought I'd go after was the REALLY expensive DFA 645 25mm lens. I've used one once and it really is amazing but also fairly rarely sold. So..as doing landscape photography is my focus, the DA 645 28-45mm lens seemed like the best way to go.

I quickly found that decision was correct for me for my landscape work on or off of a tripod. I used it quite a bit last fall in the eastern Sierra mountains and got some great results but with the limitations COVID-19 placed on us, I haven't really had the ability to get out there an make this lens continue to earn it's keep. So giving it a workout in a SIC month seemed appropriate as we can move a bit more freely now. That was the case until the 17th when a freak set of thunderstorms left from the remains of a Mexican hurricane hit my area with more than 11,000 lighting strikes. Multiple wildfires broke out all around the San Francisco Bay Area. The smoke from these fires and road blockages to those areas again really limited my ability to get out as I like to as the air quality here has been just awful - and continues to this day. The fires did provide a story to shoot the last half of the month - from a distance of course.

Looking back a my posted work I'm not overly excited with my creativity. But I do like these images.








As far as handling goes for this lens, I find that I'm usually either at 28 or 45mm. The SR system in the lens is, well, just there. When it's on or off, I just don't notice it one way or the other. In fact if the LCD had not had the SR icon on or off, I would have totally forgotten about it. Note to self, gotta run some tests on this to understand it.

I'll end with this, I wanted this lens, I totally happy with it, and I think any one with 645 system should feel much the same even if you have to sell your first born child to afford it. Thank you all for remarks on my posts. On to September!

[Chris_K]

So this is it. End of an era. 3 years, 17 M primes and 34 months of daily shooting

That's a serious achievement! Great job with all the M primes. I have only two (50/1.7 and 28/2.8) but I like them a lot and I really enjoyed my month with M28/2.8. Enjoy your brake!

[iheiramo]

That's a serious achievement! Great job with all the M primes. I have only two (50/1.7 and 28/2.8) but I like them a lot and I really enjoyed my month with M28/2.8. Enjoy your brake!

Thanks, it's been fun. When I undertook this project I estimated it would take around 4 years, but got carried away and brakes started to feel like silly idea

[garywakeling]

Yay, selfie in favorites. Embrace the 21st. Resistance is futile

Oh Ismo, resistance was indeed useless, but with a portrait lens, what else could I do? Now for the next challenge, I don't want to scare you too much, so I think it might be time to try belfies.............
Oh and congratulations are in order for your own challenge of getting through all the M primes on each format. I look forward to your next lens, whatever that may be

[blackcloudbrew]

Another month done. The S-M-C Takumar 50/1.4 is a truly amazing lens with extraordinary IQ at low F-numbers. If you get the focusing right it is simply sharp wide-open with no tricks needed in pp. I think that wide-open it is slightly sharper than my Pentax-F 50/1.4 But obviously, the sharpness is not the only thing why those older lenses are so favorable. So there is this dreamy bokeh and color rendering which give a nice 'touch' to the picture. I enjoyed the month a lot and the lens is certainly a keeper.
Some of my faves below. Thank you all for the comments. Big thanks to blackcloudbrew for a discerning look and critique - thanks Tim!

Well, I try to say what I see. I'm not always right but I try. Thank you though.

BCB

[iheiramo]

I have new Flickr account running: Ismo Heiramo | Flickr

Old shall remain for M series primes only. It's full and I don't want to delete anymore than I already have to fit August.

[pepperberry farm]

I have new Flickr account running: Ismo Heiramo | Flickr

Old shall remain for M series primes only. It's full and I don't want to delete anymore than I already have to fit August.

and followed!