Posted by mcc on Mar 30 2014 in Michigan, Pentax K3, Botanicals, Still Life
Posted by mcc on Feb 20 2014 in Around The House, Cat Photos, Pentax K3
Posted by mcc on Jan 15 2014 in Landscape Photography, Pictures Of Trees, Midwestern Landscapes, Michigan, Allegan State Game Area, Allegan Forest, Pentax K3
Posted by mcc on Dec 31 2013 in Snow Crystal Photography, Snowflake Photography, Pentax K3
Posted by mcc on Dec 22 2013 in Landscape Photography, Pictures Of Trees, Midwestern Landscapes, Around The House, Pentax K3
We had a little freezing rain last night and this morning everything was decked out in an icy glaze. I first took a few photos around the house, using the Pentax K-3 and DFA 100mm macro. This first one is a bit of holiday cheer, as I put some outdoor Christmas lights in the background (click the images for larger files):
A barberry branch - the bright red berries were gone, but the thorny branches looked nice, glazed with ice:
I’ll probably have a few more shots from the forest to share in the next week or so…
Posted by mcc on Dec 15 2013 in Snow Crystal Photography, Snowflake Photography, Pentax K3
Here are a few new snow crystal images - the first for this season. These were taken with my usual setup with a few changes - the camera has been upgraded from a Pentax K-01 to a Pentax K-3, the lens has been upgraded to a Pentax SMC DFA 50mm f2.8 macro, and the flash has been downgraded from a full service DSLR unit to a simple manual flash with just one power, running through an Olympus Safe Synch adapter to avoid frying the K-3.
We’ve had at least a foot of snow this last week - rather early even for Michigan - so it looks like the season if off to a good start. Click on the images for a larger view:
I made a dumb mistake and accidentally set the shutter speed to 1 second for these next couple of shots (doh!) - fortunately the exposure is almost entirely from the flash, so the effect of motion blur was limited. I did lose quite a few other shots, though. The first of these is 4 images focus stacked, since the crystal was not flat on the glass plate:
Posted by mcc on Dec 05 2013 in Lighthouse Photography, Pentax K3
I had a little time today and a weather front was moving in, so I popped over to the beach at South Haven to see if the high winds would be making some nice wave splashes on the lighthouse there. Waves were indeed crashing and I got a few good shots. I am still experimenting with Ricoh’s Pentax K-3, and it still impresses me. These shots were taken with the K-3, my old Sigma EX 70-200 f2.8 (the non-DG and non-macro version). Hand held in high winds at ISO 800.
The wind was driving clouds in from the west, but there were a few breaks in the cloud cover. As a result the light was highly variable - sometimes the light was in full sunlight, which made the background appear exceptionally dark, other times there was only gloomy overcast everywhere.
Click on the images for larger files.
Here’s one where the sun broke out - more or less just on the lighthouse:
The waves were coming in from the NNW and they didn’t wrap around the lighthouse as much as the would have if they had be coming more due west. But I managed to get a few shots of the lighthouse wrapped in the mist of a breaking wave. Here’s one:
And while I’m enamored by Ricoh’s Pentax K-3 and the great capabilities it offers - these shots reminded me of an old shot from a decade ago, taken with a Pentax Mz-S (a camera I still use), A* 400mm f2.8 and Kodak E-100S film.
Posted by mcc on Nov 10 2013 in Allegan State Game Area, Allegan Forest, Macro Photography, Pentax K3
My Pentax K3 arrived earlier in the week, so this weekend is my first chance to give it a test drive. All I can say is that the more I use this camera, the more impressed I am. Here are a few shots from this weekend - ordered by how well I like them (favorite first) -click on an image for a larger file. These closeups were all taken with the Pentax K3, A* 200mm f4 macro, tripod mounted. Live view, with focus peaking was used to take most of these shots.
Moss
This morning I visited the Allegan Forest, which is crawling with hunters this time of year. In a field that reliably hosts Halloween Pennant and Calico Pennant dragonflies in the early summer, I took a few intimate landscapes. This moss shot is a stacked focused composite of several images.
Yesterday was a very windy day and lots of sprigs of berries, like this, were littering the ground. Not sure where they came from. Unlike the previous shot, this is a single exposure.
More Moss
Another stack focus shot - a different kind of moss.
Didn’t want to adjust anything here…
Eastern prickly pear is pretty abundant in the forest - you gotta be careful where you drop down to take that bug photo.
Berries on moss. These almost look like grapes…
Another stack focused shot - some random leaves on the ground in November…
And lastly - during Saturday’s windstorm my wife and I went to South Haven in hopes of seeing big waves crashing against the lighthouse. Well - you gotta have high winds and they have to come from the right direction to make those big waves. But here is a snapshot of the lighthouse - again in the mode of test driving the K3 - with a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 EX lens. This is the earliest version of the lens, non-macro and non-DG - but it seems to work OK with the K3:
Pentax K3, Sigma 70-200 f2.8.