Here are some recent shots taken with one of my brand new birthday presents (I should post it over in the July pick-up thread, keep forgetting!) - a Pentax K30.
The first is the Milky Way as seen from the Southern Hemisphere. It's a 15 sec exposure at ISO 3200, f/2.8 at 17mm (I kind of wanted the satellite dish in the photo, just this once atleast). Focus wasn't perfect and I didn't use mirror-lock, which is a way of saying it's far from perfect but at the time I just wanted to see for myself what I could do with this new camera.
I've built a
Barn Door tracker and am just awaiting my ballhead mount to arrive to complete it. Once it arrives and I have the tracker completed I'll be able to take far longer exposures, allowing either for zooming on DSO or for lengthier exposures at lower ISO. Either way, it's a win win.
The second and third photos were taken today (cold, foggy, wet and wood-smoky morning made for some interesting photo opportunities, particularly of godrays through steam rising off the road in the drive to work). I got close to what I wanted from the spider web picture, but the flowers I was hoping the slats in the fence would be more dramatic to draw your eye into the bottom centre of the picture. ALso, the unbloomed flower at the bottom is more distracting then I thought it would be. Ah well, next time!
Fourth pic is of the rail of the boat we went whale watching on. Didn't quite pull off the shot I wanted (focus of the DOF needed to be a bit further up the picture), but it's still a little bit of fun. Got some wonderful photos of the two Humpback Whales we saw though
The fifth is one my favourite photos from my recent holiday. I saw this guy every evening I went walking along the beach, but caught him and his Pelican mate on this evening pretty well.
Sixth is a Pelican checking himself out (not really, but I tried to capture it as though that was what was going on!)
Last is my dog, Toby and the only decent portrait I've ever taken!
I've started taking my camera to work with me (I work in a regional town in NSW, Australia), and on my walk to work I pass Kangaroos, common ducks, deer, sheep, a thousand different parrots and a number of other interesting things to practice taking photos with.