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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
09-01-2014, 02:15 AM
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Hello everyone,
As the title says, I am a bit of a beginner, and I need some advice. I will be spending two weeks in Finland in late December, including eight days in Northern Lapland, 300 km north of the Arctic Circle, and I am fervently hoping to come back with some quality pictures of the Northern Lights. I have done some research, both on the forum and on Google (this thread was particularly useful), and I have found that I will need very long exposures (up to 30 seconds apparently), so I have armed myself with a tripod. Still, I am not too comfortable about the idea of 30 second exposure, for a number of reasons, such as wind-induced motion, greater chance of snowflakes falling on the lens, loss of detail of the lights themselves, battery dying fast (according to Wikipedia, temperatures are usually in the -10/-20 °C (14/-4 °F) range) and my wife getting fed up with my time-consuming hobby and running off with a Finn on a reindeer-pulled sleigh.
Onto the actual questions:
1) I am currently equipped with a Pentax K-50 and two lenses: an SMC Pentax-DA L 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL WR and a Tamron AF 70-300mm F4-5,6 Di LD Macro 1:2. I realize the latter is obviously not the right tool for the job, but what I am too inexperienced to judge is: would the former enable me to take some good quality pictures with a more reasonable (say, 10-15 seconds) exposure, or am I asking too much from my kit lens?
2) I am also considering the option of purchasing a new lens, but between the trip to Finland and the camera itself, I've already broken the bank for this year, so my choices are limited to the < 200 € end of the spectrum. Would it make sense for me to buy an SMC Pentax-DA 50mm F1.8? The high aperture is quite attractive, but I am slightly worried that I will have trouble taking pictures of landscapes with that focal length.
3) Weather Resistance. The manual says the K-50 can go as low as -10 °C. Northern Lapland often goes lower, but not terribly so. Will the camera sustain any permanent damage, or can I expect it to go back to normal once it's thawed back to room temperature?
Thanks in advance for your advice.
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Forum: Welcomes and Introductions
05-25-2014, 12:37 AM
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Greetings fellow PFers,
I'm a complete amateur from Northern Germany. I have been fascinated by photography for many years, but only quite recently have I been able to afford a DSLR, and having purchased my first one (K-50 with 18-55 kit lens) just a couple weeks ago, I have much to learn on cameras, lenses and photography theory.
I mostly enjoy natural photography and concentrating on tiny details (such as buds, a drop of rain on a leaf, a ladybug sunbathing on a tree...) and, as I will be spending a week deep into the Arctic Circle in December, I am also looking to learn about night photography as I aim to come back with some poster-quality pictures of the spectacularly beautiful Northern Lights :)
I am hoping this forum will prove to be a richly formative experience to help me get to know my camera and lenses better, and maybe to become a better photographer too.
Cheers,
Fabio
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