What have I done!!!

[Daisy14'sDH]

The title is for all intense purposes, a little on the extreme side. But I've had a very busy weekend. I inadvertantly purchased 1 camera and 3 lenses!

Pentax Super Program
Pentax M 200mm f4
Pentax A 50mm f1.7
Takumar 28mm f2.8

Spent $90, and feel really good about all of them. They all work flawlessly but I don't know about the 200mm. Its pretty big and needs a tripod to get pics focused right. The 50mm is really fun to use, but I truly love the 28mm. I soent the Saturday night playing with it and really like the results.

Now if I could only find a nice wide angle...

What do you hionestly think of these portraits? I know they arent real fancy but what do you expect at a small party?! My friends think I'm the freak in the group now cause my camera is always around my neck. Next party I'll stay sober and see how I do!

 

[VVFF]

Black and white is interesting. There are many ways to process it but it's typically recommended to push contrast more than you normally would.

 

[gokenin]

for $90 that package is a great deal. The M 200 shouldn't need a tripod I have always managed to use it handheld and gotten good results with it. The lens is slow so at night you will definately need tripod. I never manage to find any package deals like that myself

 

[NateNLogansDad]

Very nice! I can never figure out where you put the SD card in them though

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

Would one of you be able to copy those and show me how to make them better... please... I thought I pushed them pretty far!

 

[Groucho]

That is a good buy. The 28mm is a K-mount? Usually "Takumar" is a screw-mount lens, though there were some very early K-mount cheaper lenses with the Takumar name.

The 200mm will probably do much better outside rather an inside at night! Have you figured out how to do stop-down metering with it? (Shoot in Manual mode, adjust aperture on the lens itself, press the Green button to meter.) You don't need to do that with the 50mm as it is an "A" lens - just set the Aperture ring to "A" and it will behave like a new lens except for the manual focusing.

 

[VVFF]

Would one of you be able to copy those and show me how to make them better... please... I thought I pushed them pretty far!

Can you post the original or full resolution versions? RAW if you have it.

www.mediafire.com

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

I will do it in a bit, I'm using DW's laptop as mine is a little locked up! Lol, I'll have it fixed in a jiffy...

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

I sent them to mediafile, now what do I do?

http://www.mediafire.com/?2forzoyhmtw

http://www.mediafire.com/file/2forzoyhmtw/IMGP4032.DNG

http://www.mediafire.com/file/5euytfytkcr/IMGP4023.DNG

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

That was surprisingly easy... lol

 

[VVFF]

Ok, well here is my shot at them that I promised. Ideally it'd be nice to have more contrast between the subject and the background and maybe some eye contact but as you said what can you expect at a party

I'm no black and white expert but I do try...

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

Nicely done! Thanks, I wasa going to crop Jason out of the photo but felt that it was nice haveing him in there with his GF. Next time I will definitely try to overexpose the background like that. My freind Harvey will love that!

 

[VVFF]

Nicely done! Thanks, I wasa going to crop Jason out of the photo but felt that it was nice haveing him in there with his GF. Next time I will definitely try to overexpose the background like that. My freind Harvey will love that!

The background is all about building contrast between subject and background. In that case it worked to brighten the background and adjust the tone curve to bring out Harvey and make him the stand out. Sometimes making the background dark may work best.

IMO your exposure on the girl was right on...Harvey was about .5-.75 underexposed.

I cropped out the BF become he was so close to the camera that it would be difficult to tell who he was and he really just distracted from the in focus gf. I understand that it's nice to have couples together...but sometimes it just doesn't benefit the picture.

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

Ok I tried blowing the contrasts out with this one. Better?

Pentax 50mm f1.7 1/1000 100 ISO

 

[AbbysFamily]

Thats a nice shot... Personally I think it would have been better w/o the person in front of the next cannon? And I'm really kinda surprised at the depth of field with it being f1.7 - I would have thought the background would have been blurred more.

 

[Daisy14'sDH]

I was about 12 feet away from it.

I didnt have much time as the workers were moving rather quickly to get them out of the way. There was 1 city employee there supervising, she was in charge of city "antiquities". I inquired why the job tender was never listed, as its supposed to be, and she told me that they were in a rush to get the job done... I guess thats why they were in a hurry to get them out of there, before all the locals raised a stink...