Hi everyone,
I recently started my interest in photography and my dad gave me some of his old collection of photograph equipment, including a Pentax MX, Tokina 70-210mm f/3.5 (aka Vivitar Series 1 v2), Pentax-M SMC 40-80mm f/2.8-4.0 and a third party flash gun from Achiever. I believe the equipment are all about 30 years old, but seem to be well maintained with no obvious signs of fungus.
To make use of the old equipment, I chose to buy a second hand K10D + kit lens from a nice gentleman from this forum. Unsurprisingly, both the old lens fit nicely onto the K10D. Of course, I have to manual focus, use Av priority and manually set aperture on the aperture ring. To my pleasant surprise, the flash gun works on the K10D hotshoe too, but I'm at a complete loss on how to configure it.
I've played around with the K10D but so far I have not been very happy with the quality of my shots. Hopefully I can get some help here to figure out what I'm doing wrong and what I can do to improve. Flash photography has been a nightmare for me, so I will start with some closeup photography.
Taken with the Pentax-M 40-80mm f/2.8-4.0 in Macro mode at 80mm, f/8, 1/640 s, using a tripod with shake reduction on.
As you can see from this 100% crop, the image is far from sharp and there is this white "aura" around the white flower.
What am I doing wrong here?
BTW, I've read something about using the "Green button" for metering when using old manual lenses. I'm at a loss on what this means and how to use it - can anyone explain to me?
Thanks for your help.
I recently started my interest in photography and my dad gave me some of his old collection of photograph equipment, including a Pentax MX, Tokina 70-210mm f/3.5 (aka Vivitar Series 1 v2), Pentax-M SMC 40-80mm f/2.8-4.0 and a third party flash gun from Achiever. I believe the equipment are all about 30 years old, but seem to be well maintained with no obvious signs of fungus.
To make use of the old equipment, I chose to buy a second hand K10D + kit lens from a nice gentleman from this forum. Unsurprisingly, both the old lens fit nicely onto the K10D. Of course, I have to manual focus, use Av priority and manually set aperture on the aperture ring. To my pleasant surprise, the flash gun works on the K10D hotshoe too, but I'm at a complete loss on how to configure it.
I've played around with the K10D but so far I have not been very happy with the quality of my shots. Hopefully I can get some help here to figure out what I'm doing wrong and what I can do to improve. Flash photography has been a nightmare for me, so I will start with some closeup photography.
Taken with the Pentax-M 40-80mm f/2.8-4.0 in Macro mode at 80mm, f/8, 1/640 s, using a tripod with shake reduction on.
As you can see from this 100% crop, the image is far from sharp and there is this white "aura" around the white flower.
What am I doing wrong here?
BTW, I've read something about using the "Green button" for metering when using old manual lenses. I'm at a loss on what this means and how to use it - can anyone explain to me?
Thanks for your help.