Hi, any other Pentax users booked on the aurora flight out of Dunedin on 23 March?

Enjoy! Hope you get fabulous shots.

Sounds cool.

Hi all,

Still haven't really come back down after the flight last week - it was quite an experience. The flight has gained a fair amount of media attention so you may well have seen some of the amazing imagines captured using things much more exotic than a K-5. Here are three of my images using a DA15 at f4, ISO3200 for 15 section. As far as I could tell I was the only one using a Pentax body although one of the real aurora junkies was using an old Pentax lens (28mm f2 I think) on his flash Sony mirrorless.





Apart from an exposure lift in LR4 the images are straight out of the camera with no noise reduction or sharpening. The slow lens in particular and also the K-5's relatively poor high ISO performance compared to the sheep with their full frame Nikons, Canons and Sonys, meant I had to shoot long exposures which caused a loss of the finer details and textures in the aurora. Nevertheless I am pretty happy with the results and am looking forward to the next flight when I can hopefully pack a K-1 or perhaps even it's replacement.

Ummm I think the K5 can easily hold its ground with ISO against other apsc of the same era. Really only FF will outdo it. Great shots - I wish I was in a position to see the display.

Great stuff.

Slight aside, but yeah the Sony mirrorless cameras are nicely placed to be able to use other lenses. With focus peaking they're pretty easy to use despite not being capable of autofocus. And now they have sensor stabilisation built into the body also, and it works in video mode too. There's a lot to like about the combo.

This flight has gained a lot of media coverage, but rightly so. It's a great idea and you'll take away some great memories from it. Expect the buzz and vibe in the plane was pretty cool too!