Anyone into cameras?

[singapol]

Your lastest photo is a lot sharper with teleconvertor..I presume this is jpeg and not raw format,straight out of the camera. FYI K50 sensor is APSC so crop factor (magnification) is 1.5 so at 200mm it's 200x1.5 = 300mm
and with teleconvertor it's 600mm. Technically focal length usually used for birding or wildlife. So the image stabalisation is pretty good provided you input the correct focal length in the settings. People say if you use tripod then disable SR (shake reduction - image stabalisation).

[GK]

Yes these are all JPEG. OK,..APSC crop factor; thanks, good to know. Actually I read about this a couple of weeks ago but forgot....full-frame sensor=x1, DSLR APSC=x1.5, micro-four-thirds=x2. Yes, wild life/nature photography is what I have in mind. The image stabilization is amazing. When you first turn the camera on and it detects that there isn't a modern lens attached to which it can communicate it asks for the lens focal length (or an approximate mean for zoom lenses) to optimize the image stabilization, though it seems to do an effective job largely regardless of what value you enter. I believe this works by means of a servo system that mechanically jiggles the in-body lens/prism in opposition to your own shaking? Pretty cool.

Some playing around with the little 35-70mm Sun-brand "C-A-D" lens. This one seems quite nice, though it's fully manual with no "A" setting on the aperture ring. The top photo is at f/3.5 (wide open) aperture and the lower duplicate is at f/16. The difference in depth of field is really obvious. This is at max zoom, so 70x1.5 = 105mm. Fully manual exposure albeit auto shutter speed metering (TVshift).

[GK]

Work took me out into the Coorong today so the camera had its first field trip. It's the middle of winter here now and today was very dark and overcast, the sun hiding behind thick cloud virtually the whole day. Still learning. I made a bunch of photos throughout the day with an ISO setting (1600) way too high even for the overcast conditions. The photos all looked great on the cameras LCD and are fine postcard size but fairly disappointing when viewed in high res on the computer monitor due to graininess. Towards the end of the day I had the opportunity to make a series of photos at much reduced ISO and they turned out much better. The seal pic below was taken ~30 mins prior to sun set at ISO 400 and a fairly wide open aperture. This is with the Sicor 200mm lens. This was the (technically) best quality image I managed to take all day. The level of daylight at that time did not permit decent photos <400 ISO. At 200 and 100 I found it really hard to hold the camera steady enough to prevent blurring. Even at 400 a second shot of the same frame turned out blurry as the seal was moving its head. It's not easy to make very good photos outdoors when it's a gloomy day, but with some more experimentation I should get a better feel for the general settings required. Thankfully the winter solstice is already past.   

[Cubdriver]

Nice shot!   
 
-Pat

[GK]

Thanks

[GK]

Here is a jpeg snippet of the seal photo in full resolution. I think this gives a decent perspective on the "resolving" ability of this old Sicor lens. If the photo was taken on a bright and sunny day permitting a lower ISO setting I'm sure the detail would be better. I've since learnt that this lens was bought new in 1985 for $300. Dunno if that puts it into the budget or premium category for its day. The SUN lens is better, but only 70mm zoom.

I was standing on a barrage a few meters up looking down on the seal. If you look closely you can see a reflection of myself holding the camera in the seals eye.

[GK]

The little "Sun"-brand 35mm-70mm lens this time. For each photo a reduced-size of the entire image is posted along with a full-resolution crop. The closeup flower, frog, lizard and arachnid photos were all taken in macro mode. The variable focal length of this lens isn't very far at its maximum. I haven't actually measured it yet, but anything more than several meters away needs infinity focus, which, taking manual focusing out of the equation, kinda makes it a point-and-click lens as far a focusing is concerned. Thus all of the landscape photos were taken at infinity focus. The infinity-focus image sharpness is obviously not as good as the in-range shots, but I guess that is to be expected. The Sun lens however is much better/sharper/clearer at infinity focus than is the 200mm Sicor that I photographed the seal with, which I guess can be expected. Comparatively, the Sicor lens is poor for landscape photography, but I couldn't have made that seal shot with the Sun lens due to its limited zoom.

So how much am I really missing out on here in terms of resolution or "resolving capability" compared to a modern zoom lens of comparable focal-length specification? For in-focal range and macro stuff it doesn't look to me like it could be very much at all. I'd like to add a wide-angle lens to my collection for better landscape photos. The idea of hunting down some legacy manual K-mount glass for chump change rather than blowing several hundred bucks on a current wide-angle still appeals to me.

[helius]

Not sure why you think that infinity is going to be blurry; most lenses very sharp at infinity. The focusing scale mark for infinity may not be accurate, though. And if the lens is decentered or mounted with the wrong flange distance, it will not be possible to achieve infinity focus.
Depth of field is always going to be deeper with wide-angle lenses compared to teles. That's a basic optical principle. It's also why there's an expectation that landscape pictures are completely in focus everywhere, and portraits have out-of-focus backgrounds. When this expectation is violated, we experience pictures in a very strange way: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_faking

[Cubdriver]

The macro shots look pretty good, but the more distant ones definitely show a lot of softness in the crops - especially the first two showing the trees.

What exposure settings did you use to take them (shutter speed, aperture)?

-Pat

[GK]

Not sure why you think that infinity is going to be blurry;

For the reasons you mention in your following two sentences. Additionally these lenses focus to infinity (or rather have their infinity scale mark) at the end stop; the scale isn't graduated beyond infinity. Modern high-end lenses range beyond infinity to account for variables such as ambient temperature.

[GK]

The macro shots look pretty good, but the more distant ones definitely show a lot of softness in the crops - especially the first two showing the trees.

What exposure settings did you use to take them (shutter speed, aperture)?

-Pat

ISO 200 and f10. I was sent away on a ~4500km work trip on short notice. Didn't have a laptop to download the images to and observe, so I wasn't very adventurous with experimentation. The shutter speed is auto-set ("TV-Shift" light metering) by the camera.
 

[Muxr]

Sorry "SLR" is not a lens mount standard. Each digital camera manufacturer has a different format. And they are ALL incompatible with ALL film camera mounts.
If you are going to get a DSLR camera, get an appropriate lens for that camera to start off.

This is why it's worth supporting m4/3 or Micro Four Thirds. It's the only "open" camera system. Started by Olympus and Panasonic it's also supported by BlackMagic.

It's a small format (compared to 35mm full frame or Medium), so it does have some drawbacks but I find it perfectly capable even for professional work. It has some advantages as well. Due to the aspect ratio the lenses tend to on average have very good edge to edge sharpness, the lenses are compact and Olympus IBIS (in body stabilization) is the best there is, thanks to a smaller sensor.

[Kilrah]

Lenses pretty much never have infinity focus either on the infinity mark nor on the end stop as there has to be some leeway for thermal expansion and manufacturing tolerances. You've always got to actually focus even for infinity shots.

[GK]

That's the thing. The lens through which those photos were made is sharpest for distant subjects/objects at the end stop, which is also marked infinity. It won't get any closer let alone beyond. Ditto for the big Sicor.

However some perspective is needed here. Those full-resolution crops I posted are a quite small proportion of each respective photo. The landscape images I get from this DSLR with my ~30 year old freebie glass is a fair level up from any non-SLR digital camera I've owned or currently own.

My old telephoto glass doesn't leave me wanting as far as the in-focal-range stuff is concerned (especially the macro stuff), so if I'm going to spend bucks on a new (modern) lens it will be specifically for a wide-angle type for the landscape/scenery stuff.

[GK]

but the more distant ones definitely show a lot of softness in the crops - especially the first two showing the trees.

Come to think of it, I shot the first two photos whilst sitting in a tinny (boat) moving at maybe 10 or 15 knots sideways to the scenery. I was standing quite still on terra firma when I shot the other two photos though. Perhaps that might account for some of the additional blurriness of the first two scenery images?

[Cubdriver]

but the more distant ones definitely show a lot of softness in the crops - especially the first two showing the trees.

Come to think of it, I shot the first two photos whilst sitting in a tinny (boat) moving at maybe 10 or 15 knots sideways to the scenery. I was standing quite still on terra firma when I shot the other two photos though. Perhaps that might account for some of the additional blurriness of the first two scenery images?

It definitely could - camera shake tends to be more visible at high magnification (macro shots) and at longer focal lengths (such as the 70mm you were shooting at).  The general rule of thumb I've heard and try to follow is that for handheld shots you should try to use a shutter speed that's the reciprocal of the focal length or faster - 1/50th or faster for a 50mm, 1/100th for a 100mm, etc.  You can of course shoot at lower speeds, but then must be more careful to be still.  And this applies to the focal length for 35mm frame size - since I believe your camera has the smaller sensor that effectively multiplies the effective FL of the lens, that's the number you'd need to use.  Your 70mm acts like a 105mm.

I'm not sure if the you meant the 200 you mentioned earlier as the ISO was in fact the shutter speed, but if it was that could certainly be marginal for steadiness at 105mm from a boat that's under way.

And I too wonder about lens-to-sensor plane distance in your setup - as previously noted, infinity should not be a hard stop - the focus point should be a hair shy of the physical stop of the focus ring travel.

-Pat