Bruce, Thanks for your kind words. Impressions of the Pentax FA* 400mm 5.6 lens: Firstly, it's a beautiful lens. Feels solid with a metal body. I find it very user-friendly. Very smooth focusing on manual focus, and easy to switch back and forth between manual and auto focus. It turned out to be very important for fine-tuning the focus in this case. Sometimes the auto focus would get confused pointing skyward. Nice compact size and not too heavy. Very sharp picture quality. Sometime I'll have to buy a better slide scanner. Technique I used for the birds in flight: I used my Bogen tripod with Manfrotto ballhead. Mostly crouching on the ground. I set the tripod up low, so as not to frighten off the skittish birds. Adjusted the tension on the ballhead, so there would be some resistance to steady the lens, but for easy panning. Used a relatively large aperature, like F5.6 and F8, with a 81a warming filter to compensate for the grey and cloudy weather. Film was Kodak Elite Chrome iso 200 slide. Figured the birds were pretty much grey tone, so I let the camera choose the shutter speed on spot metering. No exposure compensation. Shutter speed was pretty fast. It was just a matter of sitting quietly, and panning with the birds in flight. Sometimes I would lay on my back with the tripod on my stomach and the camera pointing straight up. You can do all this with this compact Pentax 400. I always stay a half frame ahead of the birds, and then if there is a nice composition, I'd take the shot. Meanwhile switching back and forth between manual and auto focus for fine-tuning. Wildlife photography is a lot of fun. Harald
Bruce wrote: <harald, I must say that I was impressed with your shots of birds in flight. For a first time user of that lens, you did a great job. Would you care to tell us your impressions of the lens and techniques that you used? Bruce Dayton> - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
