[Royce Howland]

Just a bit of spring color for the weekend! I photographed this tulip back in March on the dining room table, while getting tired of winter and hoping spring would hurry up and arrive in Calgary. Anybody else enjoying their 645D for closeup work?

Pentax 645D + A 120mm Macro lens @ f/4, and the full set of auto extension tubes. 3 exposures (1s, 2s & 4s) blended with HDR.

Attached Images

 

[Ash]

A fine result Royce.
Very impressive tonal range and sharpness.

[gurtch]

Lovely shot Royce. Did yuu take advantage of the 645D mirror lockup? I love the fact you can lock up the mirror AND auto bracket at the same time. I have used this technique with great sucess. I have not done closeups, but I have used that same lens at f11-f13, for subjects 6' to 10' away, and it is spectacular. Truly one of Pentax's best lenses.
Dave in NJ

[Yamanobori]

Dave, it is funny you talk about mirror lock up. I am really impressed by how soft the mirror is. I really see no vibration from it. Not to say I would not use MLU, but mirror design is amazing.

BTW, how do both of you find manually focusing the A 120mm?

[Yamanobori]

Not really close up, but I was photographing my apple tree the other day. DFA 55mm @ f/5.6

[Yamanobori]

One thing I did to my 645D that I am really happy with is changing the focusing screen to the gridded one.

[gurtch]

Dave, it is funny you talk about mirror lock up. I am really impressed by how soft the mirror is. I really see no vibration from it. Not to say I would not use MLU, but mirror design is amazing.

BTW, how do both of you find manually focusing the A 120mm?

Yamanobori: I agree with your comment regarding the mirror. The medium distance shots with the 120 macro were about 1/125 second with monopod, no lockup and they are as sharp as you could want. The times I did use lockup was for three stop HDR, so the camera was on a tripod. I figured as long as I am using the tripod, I might as well use lockup. Some years back Michael Reichman on Luminace Landscape used a 645NII and did very careful tests with and without lockup. His conclusion after high res drum scans was there was no difference!
Dave

[gurtch]

Regarding focusing the 120: The shots I took were in bright sun light, f11~f13, at distances of 6 to 10 feet, so precise focus was not an issue. Generally speaking, I pick a spot, then sort of rock the focus ring back and forth, and this seems to emphasize when you hit focus.
Best
Dave

[Royce Howland]

Thanks for the comments!

Dave, yes I did use mirror lockup for this, along with the cable release, as I do for most of my multiple exposure sequences. Having the external dedicated MUP control makes it simple. The 645D mirror is very well damped but it's still large and has a lot of momentum in there. Even at the 645D's modest frame rate on a well locked-down tripod, doing AEB bursts is different than single shots handheld. I don't want to make the image blending software have to work harder than it needs to to register the separate frames.

Yamanobori, nice spring shots! The A 120mm is pretty good to focus when lighting is adequate. I sometimes rock the focus back & forth like Dave describes and can nail it pretty reliably. I do miss Live View from my Canons, though...

[Thomas]

Yamanobori, Royce, Great images of spring -- finally!
The 120mm is very sharp even wide open (I noticed your shot is at f/4 Royce)
Yamanobori, the mirror damping is extraordinary. The 645N had no MLU since Pentax thought it unnecessary; it was added to the 645NII. The shutter vibration, on the other hand, seems to be an issue at slow speeds with long lenses.
Here's a 120mm from this morning. I used the 2x magnifier for focus.

[Royce Howland]

Nice one, Thomas. Love the cool green background. Yes, the 120mm is very crisp even wide open. I was going to try the 67 105mm f/2.4 on the tulips for comparison but simply forgot about while I was having fun. Next batch...