Pentax 70 2.4 DA - a few samples

I've had this lens for a few days, mounted on Pentax k10d. The first impression was great, a very small and light, but very well built lens (metal). Filter size is just 49 mm, its size is 26x63 mm and it weights only 130 g (even lighter than Canon EF 50 1.8 which weighs 5 g more and is completely made out of plastic). It has also an integrated lens hood (or it it a screw on design, I'm not sure but it was already on a brand new lens). A joy to have for a walkaround lens, I personally don't like big, bulky, heavy equipment.

But when it comes to the image quality, all I can say is, that it's substandard for a fixed focal lenght. It's soft up to f3.5, so I've shot with it mostly on f4 (I usually never go above that, I mostly shoot in the f1.8-f2.8 with fast lenses). So I don't really see the point in buying a fast lens, which is not only soft wide open, but all the way up to (including) f3.5. Besides that it has the noisiest AF motor I've ever hear, pretty annoying. I didn't test it thoroughly, so I can't say much about colours, contrast and bokeh, although my first impression was that they were good.

And at the end we come to the price. It costs over 500 euros in Slovenia, what is in my opinion way too much for the image quality and AF it offers.

Lets get to the photos. All of the colour photos are unprocessed, I just added a bit of USM after resizing. The second and third photo also show low dynamic range of the Pentax k10d. All of the shots were taken in cloudy weather, so there were no harsh shadows/contrast transitions, so therefore blown out parts of the photo shouldn't occur. I never had such experiences with any of Canon (tested the whole lineup) or Nikon (I've mostly shot with D70) Cameras. It's a shame, because k10d is otherwise a nice camera, with a very competitive price (good value). Unfortunately I haven't had luck with the weather, so I had to use ISO 250-800 and AS too (but from what I've seen AS doesn't affect sharpness (much)).


f4, 1/60, ISO 400, AS on


f4, 1/60, ISO 250, AS on


f2.4, 1/100, ISO 800, AS on

Boring days

What to do on those boring, cloudy, cold days...You can always go in a bar with your friends for a cup of coffee or a beer. And take your camera with you so you can amuse yourself and annoy your friends:D. Here are a couple of pics of my dawg S3to, still a part of my Canon EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS test. It was mounted on a 400D - a funny combination, the lens is much bigger and a bit heavier then the camera (without battery grip).

This are the first two photos of him that I've taken. It's funny that they are the best (out of cca 10 shots). On sessions with models it's always the other way around. Yeah, this are candids and some friends get annoyed after a few shots, girls just warm up after a few (20-30) shots.

I got stood up

Yeah, it had to happen to me too some day. Today was the day. And ofcourse it had to happen on a day that everything was planned, weather was nice and the model gorgeous. Murphy. And I'm an understandable person, if she'd at least call or send a sms, that she couldn't make it. It wouldn't be a problem. Ok it would be since the weather is going to be bad for quite some time now. But I would understand. However I can't understand one could be so hypocritical and without any guilt to turn off the phone. And she wanted to be a model (didn't make it although she looks really good), now I don't wonder why she didn't succeed (or at least get a few commercial to shoot etc) anymore.
I'm sorry to bother you with this shit, I promise my next posts will be better, more positive. And I'll be careful in the future (a good thing was we were supposed to shoot in Ljubljana, so at least I didn't drove on the other part of the country for nothing). But I also learned something from that bad experience, every experience (bad or good) is beneficial in some way.

Canon EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS teaser

I got my hands on it today. My first impression is that it's by far the sharpest zoom lens in this range. I know it has the reputation for being ultra sharp, that's why I brought the Canon EF 50 1.8 with me to the city centre (mostly architectural photos), but didn't compare it - I plan to in the next few days. I think they are comparable at 50 mm, we'll see if my assumption is correct by the end of next week when I'll post a complete review, with 100% crops across the focal and aperture (f2.8-f8) range as well as IS tests.


center 100% crop: 17 mm, IS off, shutter speed: short enough;), ISO 100

100% crop: 55mm, IS on (I forgot to turn it off), f2.8, 1/200, ISO 100

Million dollar baby

This is the last session that I had with Tisa. We shot that in Sepetember in (and near) an abandoned slaughterhouse. Unfortunately we couldn't do everything we planned, because Tisa was late and she didn't have her makeup done, so we had to do it on the location. We also skipped the second makeup (which I really needed for some photos, which we didn't take or we did, but they didn't come out as well) and shoot all the photos with only minimal make up (and some water sprinkled on her every few minutes). We rushed a bit, since we had only an hour left to shoot (I planned a two hour session), but in the end I think it came out good. Tisa showed all her talent and beauty, so we were pleased with the results and the feedback from my friends and in on-line galleries was very good. On the other hand it was a good experience too, because we were time-pressed - I'm sure the experience will be useful someday, when something will go wrong, something maybe even more important, something that will have to be done on that day (commercial shooting). I just think my job won't be as easy as with Tisa, because she knows what I want from her (we had many sessions), on a few occasions it seemed like she read my mind:).

Fločo the frog

Yes, the best hairdresser in town again. While I was testing Pentax k10d and a couple of Pentax lenses we went for a cup of coffee in a local bar. He was in the mood for some stupid funny faces (come to think about it, he's always:). I took this shot with the Pentax 70 2.4 DA lens. I know the photo isn't good regarding lighting, although it was shot wide open at ISO 640 I had to use onboard flash. But the point of this photo is to bring a smile on your face not to show a technically perfect portrait. I hope I succeeded.

Another disappointment from Sigma

I tested antoher Sigma lens yesterday in the ZOO, the 70-200 2.8 Macro. And it was just one more Sigma lens with frontfocus issues. I tested 9 Sigma lenses in the last few months and only 5 were without AF issues. Here's a short summary:
-18-200 for Canon: ok
-17-70 for Canon: ok
-50-150 for Canon: minimal frontfocus (but unusable at f2.8 in the 100-150 range on close focusing distance (headshots etc) - because of the shallow DOF, where frontfocus is more visible, image is unusable)
-10-20 for Canon: ok
-70 2.8 macro for Nikon: ok
-300 2.8 for Canon: frontfocus
-8 mm f3.5 circular fisheye for Canon: ok
-30 1.4 for Canon: weird AF issues (read the complete review for details, posted a week ago)
-70-200 2.8 Macro for Canon: frontfocus

It's really a shame that 70-200 2.8 Macro has frontfocus issues, because it's tack sharp at f3.2 (very few Sigma's are). Here are a couple of samples which came out ok (tested on Canon 350D):

f3.5. 1/500, ISO 200

100% crop from the photo above

f3.2


And this is the focus test. I focused on the line below number 50. Frontfocus is quite pronounced (f2.8, 200 mm):