Bower Woods – Red Deer

I spent an hour this morning photographing with the Pentax 645D camera in the Bower Woods of Red Deer. Unfortunately there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the contrast between the shadows and sunlit areas was huge. So I purposely started searching out areas of complete shade or nearly so. I found this quiet spot where the recent rains have created a pond which some years is totally dry. I was able to create an image that held both the highlights and shadows by very carefully adjusting my exposure and referring constantly to the review histogram. I then opened it in Photoshop CS5 and opened up the shadows a tiny bit as well as pulling down the few extreme highlights to a point that looks very close to how I was seeing the area with my eyes. I am rather impressed with the ability of this camera’s dynamic range and being able to hold detail both in the highlights and the shadows. I didn’t have my 5DmkII with me to compare, but it seems that this Pentax camera has the edge in the area of dynamic range and easily in resolution.

 

 

 

 

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]

Marlu Nature Park #3

A 3 image stitch made with the Pentax 645D camera. It was raining steady the whole time we were out which made it rather challenging to compose and shoot this image. I was standing on a steep slope which was very slippery and I needed to have my tripod as high as possible. I stood on my tiptoes to see through the viewfinder. Pentax really should incorporate Live View on this camera along with a tilting screen. Oh, and 10-12 seconds for the review image to come up on the screen is a might too long. 3-4 seconds would be far more tolerable. When shooting landscapes I don’t mind so much, but I am used to having a review image available virtually instantly on my 5DmkII. This camera is very close to my ideal camera with only a few niggly concerns I just talked about. Yes I like it. I like it a lot!!

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]

Marlu Nature Park – Red Deer County #2

Another from todays adventure in the rain. Mike Wanini and I bushwacked for about 4 hours through this really beautiful park this morning in the rain. It felt exotic, almost like being in the rainforest out at the coast. Oh yeah, when trees fall in the forest they make a noise. I heard a big crack and looked up to see a very large branch break loose from near the top of a very tall poplar and watched as it came crashing down. It made me a bit nervous to be hanging around underneath these big old trees!!

This image is a crop from a file made with the 40 megapixel Pentax 645D. I wanted to see how far I could push these files and enlarged this one up to 90″ across and it’s still really sharp – stunning to say the least!

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]

Marlu Nature Park – Red Deer County

Had a chance to play with a Pentax 645D today. The files are really amazing. Pentax removed the anti-aliasing filter on this camera and so there is no added blurring to the files which makes for a stunning amount of detail from it’s 40 megapixel sensor. Can’t wait to really give it a serious workout sometime.

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]