Originally posted by dcshooter Anyone taking pictures of moving subjects.
It's entirely possible that we don't mean the same thing by "macro" at all. The Canon MP-E 65mm, arguably the best photographic macro lens in the world,
doesn't even have auto-focus! The consensus of everything I've read is that once you're beyond 1:1 (lifesize) macro reproduction ratio, AF is near useless. For instance,
on this page, PF member and extreme macro expert Johan Ingles states: "Believe it or not autofocus is actually usually a waste of time for macro [...]". My own technique is to pre-focus the lens (if necessary), and then move the whole camera until focus is achieved, and that's a pretty common technique, AFAICT.
Quote: K-01 shutter is laggy as hell and is not good for such subjects.
In full manual mode, using the aperture ring to set aperture, I experience no shutter lag. There is a tad if, for lenses that support that, I set the lens to A and, still in M mode, set aperture from the body, but in my experience it's pretty negligible.
Quote: Yes, I have a K-01 and like it, but K-5 and K-3 are much better for macro in general. Even the K-5 with its supposedly stronger AA filter produces much sharper macros than the example you posted.
I'm not sure if you realize that because I wanted to show something that was shot with the gear I posted - this is the gear porn thread, right? - the shot I posted is 4.8:1. The frame is under 5mm wide, and has
not been cropped. It was shot handheld, with a Pentax-M 135mm F/3.5 plus a stacked, reversed 28mm F/2.8 lens. This kind of high-magnification, handheld shot is not a walk in the park, and I'm not going to tell you my result is as good as it gets. But the K-01 is almost certainly not the limiting factor here, and people that get better results at this magnification usually focus-stack, because DoF around 5:1 is a big problem. That said, I'd love to see one of your shots of a live subject at equal or greater magnification, a single frame, shot handheld. Then we can move this discussion to the macro forum so you can give me tips.
Look, Thomas Shahan could school me (and probably you) using just a K200D. (Though I think these days he's using a K-30.) That doesn't mean the K200D is a better macro engine than my K-01, or your K-5/K-3. Skill, technique and lighting matter a whole lot in macro. I do maintain that the K-01 is a perfectly capable macro camera, that it has a great sensor, that you don't want/need AF for (real) macro, and that focus peaking is a feature I find especially useful when shooting high magnification macro. Most of my Flickr "
most interesting" shots are greater than lifesize macros. I intend to keep shooting the K-01 and keep encouraging people to use the K-01 for macro work.
Anyway, as I said, I await seeing one of your own, 4.8:1 or greater magnification, handheld, live subject, single frame example(s).