Vintage camera reviews, repairs and photography blog
I know the orange tip butterfly is not a rare or endangered species, but I’ve seen them flutter by me for the last 4 or 5 years since I’ve been interested in macro photography and I’ve never been able to get a shot of one. That’s why I was particularly pleased when I finally managed to get a half decent shot this morning of an early specimen which fluttered by me. We had been out for a walk when I […]
Read more
I like macro photography, but this post uses a macro photograph to point out a Lightroom 5 post processing technique I’ve started to use a bit which is Radial Filters. This pretty unremarkably picture of a fly was taken a few weeks ago and I’d mostly forgotten about it. But I was looking through the pictures I’d taken and realised that I could improve this one if I could blur the flower a bit and bring the fly into more […]
Read more
This is another in my macro photography series, and this time features a small skipper butterfly. I took this picture in the priors wood area of Stevenage in August this year with what is now my standard macro photography kit consisting of my Pentax K5 and Tamron 90mm f/2.8. To get this picture I cropped from a bigger image to produce this more detailed and closer image. I think the interesting thing about this picture are the small ‘barbs’ which […]
Read more
My favorite lens for macro photography is my 90mm Tamron f/2.8 and this picture was taken with that lens on my Pentax K5 in August this year. This is actually a crop from a larger image, but the resolution is good enough to still produce a good picture. I’m not sure of the species of hoverfly, but I found it sitting on a flower in our back garden as I was searching for subjects one afternoon. I did a bit […]
Read more
I found this little grasshopper in a wooded area of Stevenage called Prior’s Wood yesterday. I could hear the grasshoppers all around as I walked about looking for butterflies. Unfortunately the butterfly population this year seems to be severely depleted, with only a few Marbled White, small Skippers and the common Tortoiseshell, Comma etc about. A couple of years ago I went to the same area and you could almost guarantee some great pictures just by pointing your camera at […]
Read more
I bought a new flash gun for my Pentax K-5 at Christmas which I’ve been experimenting with over the last few months. Today I went out into the garden with my Tamron 90mm lens and a Raynox 250 Close up adapter fitted, to try some macro pictures with the lens set to F/32 to maximize the Depth of field. The shot shown above was my most successful picture, taken of a tiny garden spider sitting on a leaf sunning him(her?)self. […]
Read more
As I was out on my now customary weekend ‘walk with my camera’ I spotted this very bright Orange and Black beetle nestling under a leaf in the undergrowth. I took several pictures, but this is the best as the insect’s face is in focus. I’m beginning to wonder if my Tamron 90mm F/2.8 has a small amount of back-focus as the majority of the other shots were focused slightly behind the head. If this is the case I can […]
Read more
I bought this Tamron 90mm f/2.8 SP di lens about 18 months ago as a 1:1 macro lens to be a supplement to my Tamron 70 – 300mm Macro Zoom. Although the zoom is a nice lens and was remarkably cheap (about £90) I wanted a lens that would produce a full 1:1 macro and be of better quality. Because I owned a Pentax camera, the choice in a Pentax K mount came down to Pentax SMC-D FA 100mm f/2.8 […]
Read more
This is another picture from my walk yesterday. I’m not sure if this is a cricket or grasshopper, but it was about 5mm in length, sitting on a leaf sheltering from the cold and wind ! Tamron 90mm Pentax K-5 iso320 f/9.0 1/60 sec
Read more
Wild flower in Profile I went for a walk with my Pentax K-5 and Tamron 90mm F2.8 macro lens and caught this wild flower in a field about half a mile from my house. 1/1600 F/2.8 ISO 400 Tamron 90mm Pentax K-5
Read more
This is another macro shot, this time taken with a Tamron 70-300mm Maco zoom on a Pentax K200D DSLR. Unfortunately the fly wouldn’t turn round so I could capture him (her?) full in the face but it’s quite a detailed shot anyway. Pentax K200D Tamron 70-300mm Macro Zoom iso800 /250sec f/13 Related articles Hoverfly on flower (simonhawketts.wordpress.com) Macro photography – Scorpion Fly (simonhawketts.wordpress.com)
Read more
This is a Soldier Beetle which I found in the field across the road from our house in May 2012. I believe the Latin name for this variety is Cantharis Rustica. This was taken with a Pentax K-r and a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 1:1 macro lens. In order to hand hold the camera and get enough depth of field to keep the beetle in focus I had to raise the iso to 2200 to get the shot at 1/125 @ […]
Read more
I saw some snowdrops growing in a local patch of grassland a few days ago and took a quick snap on my mobile phone, but resolved to go back another day with my ‘real’ camera. Well, this morning James & I went back and I took some more pictures & used the opportunity to try out the Metz 58 af2 flash gun I got at Christmas as a fill in flash. I have not used a flash much before, and […]
Read more
This image was one I selected from the large backlog of pictures I have sitting in my Lightroom library. I am not feeling well today but I wanted to post an image so I was looking through the set of pictures I took in the garden when I got my Tamron 90mm Macro lens. This one struck me as a good demonstration of the bokeh obtained with this lens. Pentax K-5 Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro 1/100sec iso200 f/2.8 Related articles […]
Read more
These pictures of a garden org spider were taken a couple of years ago (Sept 2010) with a Panasonic DMC-FZ8 compact camera. There are lots of things wrong with these pictures, but they do serve to show one important point – you can get very good macro results with a compact camera. Because the sensor is small and therefore the aperture is small, there is a large amount of depth of field available, which is a positive boon when taking […]
Read more