K200mm f2.5

Just purchased a new lense, new to me any way, she's a K200mm f2.5 which  is still the fastest 200mm lens that Pentax has made and is also the fastest Pentax lens over 135mm. Not bad for a lens released in 1977. I got her for a reasonable price and first pictures tell me I got a deal. Just in time for a road trip/photo shoot early next week in Nebraska. She is heavy, built like a tank, and is fast for hand heald shots.

Read more about this lense at: http://www.pentaxforums.com/lensreviews/SMC-Pentax-K-200mm-F2.5-Lens.html#ixzz1WA0rrd3l
 Here she is on my K10

Sample shots right out of the box.

I love the way that f2.5 blows out the background

This lense is tack sharp, see the cobweb?

Backyard

I happened to look out the window and saw a Tiger Swallowtail and a SpicebushSwallowtail on our Butterfly bush, both on the same bunch, so I grabbed my camera and went out and took the following pictures, never did get them both on the same bush again.

Also enjoyng the Butterfly Bush was this Skipper of some variety

While I was out there I noticed a nice bloom on our Hibiscus and turned around and saw the Naked Lady Lilies were blooming.

Also got this shot of a Humming bird at one of our feeders.

There were 3 of them, chasing each other and darting here and there, managed to get this shot.

Improving Pictures

Another time I was on the road to several locations and at the last minute I was asked to swing by a location and shoot a set up in a quarry, I arrived in mid afternoon and a storm had just passed. The sky was gray and as the afternoon proceeded it wasn't getting any better. So I took some shots of the equipment that was wanted and here are the results.

Not very impressive, so I went to work and sharpened the picture a little, carefully striped out the gray sky, and added a different blue sky with fluffy clouds. What a difference adding a blue sky can do for a picture, it brings out the best of the colors in the picture.

At the same location was another shot they wanted, here is the unaltered shot.

Not at all impressive, so I did alittle Photoshop and achieved these results.

This shot was used in a equipment calendar and in a Job story in a publication.

What I do

People often ask what it is that I do. I tell them I am a professional tourist; I travel the world and take pictures and then come home and "play" on a computer.
One time I wasn't able to go to a location in Venezuela to shoot a piece of equipment, there was a salesman going there, so I met with him and explained what we were looking for, how to shoot it, and told him to literally take 100's of pictures, so I could throw away 99 to get the one good shot.
 He returned with a total of 6 pictures, none of which would work for the piece of literature I was going to prepare.

The best picture, had way too much dust in the air, and we don’t want lots of dust, as it doesn’t promote the image we are after.

The first thing I did was clean the picture up and make it better, the results, while better still wasn't acceptable to the customer.

So I stripped out the back ground and added a different background. In doing so I got rid of all of the dust
                                    
This is the picture that was used in the advertising piece.