Wow, I am very impressed with my K10D more and more each day.....I just picked up an older 3rd party lens the Vivitar Series One 70-210 manual focus lens and am quite happy with its performance.
thanks....believe it or not, I won this lens on Ebay for only $35. It's the Vivitar Series One 70-210mm 3.5 manual focus. I believe it's the second edition of the series one lens which was made by either Tokina or Tamron ( I think Kiron made the first one)...its the second edition lens from 1985 or 1975. Alot of this info is from what I recall researching the lens. I think its worth alot more than $35 but alot of people are just gobbling up Pentax glass only without looking into other very reputable lenses as well. So far this lens has been a godsend for me.
I have just recently got the Pentax-A 50mm 1.4 and 1.7 along with the Pentax -M 100 2.8. While all of these lenses have been great, I have been using my Vivitar Series One the most for action photography and it has been quite a challenge to focus on fast moving objects!
But I really do love this lens and Highly Recommend it...Sharp and gives you very realistic journalistic color....not that oversaturated, overblown colors you see on some of the cheaper glass of today.
While I do like my XT alot, My Pentax K10D has been a much more versatile camera for me. The images it produces and the range of detail it maintains in it's RAW files has been very pleasing to me.....I'm very happy,
If I had to summarize between my XT and K10D, I would say the K10D takes more of a gritty, realistic street tough photo while the XT takes more of a creamy smooth color rich photo. Both are good for effect, but I prefer the K10's ability to capture what I actually saw the way I saw it....if that makes any sense
I, too, am very fond of my K10D. Are you shooting RAW and if so which processor are you using? Even your ISO1600 shots are just tremendous and your use of the Vivitar lens is wonderful. Moved from NJ to FL and your photos are making me miss the Meadowlands.
I think the Series One was one of the best lenses made. I am still trying to find the one made by Kiron. I have severa other Kirons and they are amoung the best around.
Faither, how did you know some of these shots were at 1600?
Most of these shots were Jpegs taken at 2meg size to conserve space on my 1gig card....only toward the end of the game, when I knew I had a few extra shots left, did I shoot in RAW mode. I think the only raw posted here is the Crosby pic which was converted to Jpeg and downsized to 900pixels to post here. I used Photoshop CS Beta 3 to convert the RAW file using its ACR plugin.
Thanks for the compliment, I took about 300 shots at the game and had about 2 out of every 3 images come out a bit blurry or out of focus. It can be quite challenging to try and manually focus action at a sporting event. This was my first time trying to shoot a hockey game.Most of my first period shots were blurry but as I got more practice into the game, I picked up a groove and started getting into a rythme that helped me increase my sharp shot percentages ....(lol, I just created a new photographers stat, SS% )
It was alot of fun, and I certainly now have a much higher respect for professional sports photographers. The next game I can go see, I will now work on improving my composition and timing to get better story telling images while still perfecting my SS%
This is alot more fun than taking stills of leaves and tree branches in my back yard
Hi Lisa,
How easy to manual focus on K10D vs XT?
Does the anti-shake helped you for these hockey shots?
You said 2 out 3 are blurry. Is that due to slow focus or hand shake?
Manual focusing really depends on the lens. Each lens feels a bit different when dialing in the focus. Some are freely loose, some are a bit sluggish, some feel perfectly balanced. The Vivitar series One lens feels pretty much in the middle. It gives just enough resistence to keep it from feel loose. The switch from 2 types of Auto focusing to Manual is right near the lens bracket in the front of the camera...very easy to select on both cameras actually.
In regards to the anti shake, Its really hard to say if it actually helped or not because you really arent aware its doing anything during shooting ( other than the little hand icon that is viewable in the display) I shot most images at 500 and higher speeds. Im sure it helped but I never really did a true test with it on versus off. Shooting stills at home, I do notice that the anti-shake (SR) actually does help steady my shots....especially at speeds under 100, where it is very noticeable.
I might of exaggerated saying that 2 out of every 3 shots were blurry. After sorting out the sharp shots from the blurry/out of focus images, I would say it was more like 60% blurry. But this was totally attributed to my inadequacies as the shooter.
It was my first time using a manual focus lens at a sporting event so I had no idea of the challenge required to be able to push and pull to adjust proper zoom while simultaneously turning the focus ring at the same time to try and lock focus all in real time which constantly required readjustments to the action.
Plus, this is a completely manual lens, so it requires manual exposure readings each time you make drastic changes to the scene or the aperture, iso, ect.
Until I got comfortable with this flow, alot of my pictures were coming out a bit out of focus or improperly metered. I would say late in the first period, after about 40-50 shots or so, I was getting into the rhythm and by the middle of period 2, I was increasing my sharp shooting %
So I would say it was due to slow focusing on my part rather than any hand shaking
i wonder how much blurriness was caused by SR. the lens isn't sending focal length information to the camera. only AF lenses do that. that means that unless you shot at one focal length and set the camera to that value when you mounted the lens, SR can make images more blurry.
BTW, there is a thread on DPReview discussing this one as an example of the superb sharpness of K10D JPG captures.
Thanks Herb...as always, your very helpful in providing insite. I'll try and take some shots with SR off to see if there's actually a difference. Do you notice if the SR actually helps you if you arent exactly at the focal length that you have set with your manual lenses? Also I was wondering if the camera is asking for exact focal length of the lens or the the lens x 1.5. Meaning when I attach a 50mm manual lens, should I set it at 75 SR or 50?
I have posted a few more shots including the full uncropped Crosby image that I posted earlier. You can see that I almost cropped close to 70% of the image to get that closeup...I guess the trade off is the increase in fuzziness.
i haven't tried any manual focus lenses on my K10D. i only own several 50s and the A35-105/3.5. they are for my manual film bodies as i have much better AF equivalents. i got rid of the rest of my manual focus lenses. other people who have tried lying on the focal length setting have shown that you need to be fairly close to the correct focal length, 10% or so, to get good SR performance. more than 20% or so off and you have a permanently blurry lens if you are shooting at low shutter speeds. at 1/500s, you may not see much in the way of problems, but if you have to shoot at 1/60s with a telephoto, you will see it.
you have to enter the actual focal length of the lens. that is what the lens would report if it were an AF lens.
Bibble Pro has a beta version that is a pre-release (meaning it is not an officially released version) available that will now do the K10D raw files. They are at bibblelabs.com. Go to their forums:
Folks, Here are some more samples from a few different lenses. I shot a few pics using the following lenses, the Pentax -A 50mm 1.4 manual focus, the Albinar 28mm 2.8 manual focus, and the included 18-55 Kit lens. I really dont remember which is which....but perhaps that could be fun to try and figure them out The exif files are there so it should be pretty obvious once you view them. It was a really dreary day today...but sometimes I like that as a nice alternative.
After seeing those pictures I went online and bought a Series 1 myself. Except, I am lazy so I got it with AF. I hope my results come close to yours. I was wondering what camera you were using. I have a K10D and love it but when i saw you write your shot these at 2MP I was wondering if you were shooting RAW and then in-camera processing these down to 2MP/
Gerald, maybe someone else can tell you about the newer Vivitar Series Ones with AF. I don't know if they are the same lens quality...but I'm not sure since I've never used one.
The hockey shots were all just 2mb jpegs...no RAW processing
The newer scenery pictures on the previous page were ALL RAW and extracted to small 900pixel size for internet viewing. These images were taken with 3 different lenses.
1 excellent manual focus Pentax-A 50mm1.4 lens
1 mediocre autofocus 18-55mm kit lens
1 subpar manual focus third party Albinar 28mm 2.8 lens
Jerry, the newer Vivitar Series 1 lenses are noticeably worse than the older manual focus ones. i'm not sure where the changeover point is, but Vivitar had an excellent reputation in the 70's. by the 90's, they had gone quite a bit downhill. they used to do design work and contract out their manufacturing. now, i am not sure they design anything.
