I shot between F2.8 and F8, with most shots int he f4 to 5.6 range.
Can't say where any of these shots are. It was gusty with low light so
most of the shots had motion blur due to the wind. I have to say - I did
not see a huge difference on the LCD on the camera when I focused at f
2.8 and stopped down to f 5.6 or f8. I was expecting to see a
significant difference in DOF.
On 9/1/2012 9:48 PM, J.C. O'Connell wrote:
I would still like to see more DOF on those shots. What aperture setting did
you use?
-----------------
J.C.O'Connell
[email protected]
-----------------
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark
C
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2012 7:27 PM
To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List
Subject: GESO - First Macro Shots with Pentax Q (And First Q impressions)
My Pentax Q arrived on Wednesday, a full day sooner than expected. I had
planned to leave first thing that morning for a business trip, but was
delayed by a few hours and luckily was able to scoop up the camera and
lenses and take the kit with me as I headed out. I had a chance to test
drive it a bit and read the manual while I was away.
When I got home late last night the K to Q adapter was waiting for me.
Earlier today I went out looking for subjects to try with the Q and D-FA
100mm macro lens. I was thinking about the striking spider shots in the
post that Darren shared a while back. and by chance my garden provided
two large spiders to serve as photographic subjects.
So - here are my first macro shots with the Pentax Q:
http://www.markcassino.com/b2evolution/blog6.php/2012/09/01/two-spiders
The light today is quite flat as the remnants of Isaac roll through the
area, and this afternoon we had a pretty good rain, so no other chances
to take the system out.
A few comments on the Q:
- It is small and fun and the image quality is quite good. I'm very
impressed at how well it performs. Noise is much less of an issue than
I expected. The small sensor means low magnification of subject and
therefore lots of DOF, but for macro work that is a boon. I would not
use this as a portrait camera though.
- The Zoom lens is a joy to work with. Nicely dampened action, quality
built. I wish Pentax would build K mount lenses that are this solid.
- Pentax has done a great job of building a standard interface across
cameras. I picked up the Q and was shooting. Everything made sense. The
only thing I needed to look up in the manual was how to activate the MF
assist on the toy lenses.
- The Q with the kit lens or one of the small lenses is pretty much
pocketable. With the zoom, not so much so...
Regarding the lenses that I have (first impressions here) -
Stock 8mm f1.8 lens: Nice and sharp but barrel distortion is off
putting. Yes, I can enable distortion correction but I wish they had
produced a lens with less distortion. Has decent close focusing ability.
5 to 15mm Zoom - a joy to work with and very good results. Great all
round zoom.
Fisheye - I have a hard time focusing this even with MF assist enabled.
Looking at my shots, I always had my finger on the lens's focus ring
(and visible in the shot). Its a super cool ultra wide but takes some
getting used to (at least by me). Its a reminder that ultra wides can be
as difficult to work with as ultra telephotos.
Toy Telephoto - I only took a handful e of shots with this. I did not
see any Holga-like distortions but none of the shots I took were very
sharp. I assume that was operator error - I had not figured out how to
use the MF assist on toy lenses yet when I tried it. I need to give this
a more thorough testing.
I'll probably grab the "wide" toy lens and have a full set of lenses -
it would be nice if Pentax came out with some more Q lenses, but I'd be
surprised if they did.
Overall - this is a really cool and fun system, great IQ with the
attributes that you would expect from a small sensor re DOF .
Do any Q users have a recommendation re a good bag to carry a full Q Kit
in? This used bundle that I bought came with a case logic bag that holds
everything, but everything is jumbling around in the bag. The smallest
35mm SLR bag I have is about 2x too big and has partitions for lenses
that are many times the size of the Q lenses.
Mark
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