drk229 Wrote:Yeah, shooting with the K1000 still. It's kind of a pain because I have to wait to get them developed. I wish I had something digital that wasn't TOTAL crap (I know, it's the shooter, not the camera...but still) and was digital. But the economic times say no-no to buying anything.

I can remember the days of Fox Foto when it would take a week to get your pictures back. Then for a short time I engaged in a service that you mailed in your exposed film, they processed it and mailed it back in five days but you got free film as well. Send them three rolls and you get back the prints and three new rolls.
Then in the late 1980's, One Hour Photo came to town and three day service was also the normal and expected return time. I had a girlfriend who would allow me to take many pictures of her. Swimsuit magazines just exploded onto the scene and all of them had amateur contests. I tried to line up a few girls but when it came time, they were just too apprehensive.
My cousin gave me an old Vivitar ring flash and hotshoe module recently. Gonna try for some better lighting on bugs for macro shots real soon. Use the ring flash on portraits as well and you get some really interesting light. They are sometimes used in fashion photography so I gonna try to get my dogs to look like a still shot from a Robert Palmer video.

So I went down to the land of poisonous nuts today and saw the Dayton Air Show. It was fun except the weather wasn't the most cooperative.


This is what's known as a Heritage flight where they take a modern aircraft and fly it with a warbird. It's pretty neat to watch.


And this is the famous Thunderbird Diamond. Tomorrow I will be seeing the better Blue Angel diamond.

Next time I head to the drags, I should pack a camera of some sorts...

mikoyan29 Wrote:

It is always disappointing when the skies are overcast when you want to take photos of aerial displays. But with digital we can increase saturations and contrast a little to bring some colors in or convert them to monochromes.
I think it best to use a lower shutter speed on propeller driven aircraft so the prop is blurred.
Were these with your Phoenix lens and teleconverter combination? The P-51 and A-10 appear to be sharp but the Thunderbirds...
We had a B-17 and Mustang in our area on display this past weekend but I was unable to get down to see them. But it is coming up on our large airshow season.

drk229 Wrote:Next time I head to the drags, I should pack a camera of some sorts...

Yeah. What lenses do you have for your K1000 now?
It is a good time to perhaps think about your future with photography and specifically which camera system you might like to use most.
I am not discouraging you from having simple fun and deciding which features and advantages that help distinguish camera manufacturers from others. I know that you probably do not have a lot of money right now either and since you are still very young... Oh just forget I said anything.
If you have like a 50mm and a 50-200 zoom anywhere in that range right now you should have a good beginning. As I have said before, there are some not too bad lenses you can find on Craigslist. But usually they are selling a camera and a lens and of course tons more of the other guys compared with Pentax. Any lens that you use on your K1000 with work on any of their digital cameras in manual settings. Any lens with an automatic aperture (A) will work flawlessly in many program modes.

Here is some more macro work I am trying to become constent with:

The lens was my 75~300mm. For about 90% of the show, that seemed just about right. I think anything much more than that would have been too much lens.

The Thunderbirds may not have been as crisp because I think I mgiht have been slightly out of focus.

Anyways, yesterday I was at the Air Show in my neck of the woods and they had the better team.





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Pink and olive drab on a C-47? You don't see that every day. Must be Army Reserves.
Kidding. Reservists deserve just as much respect for helping protect American values.

Actually, it's supposed to be an AC-47 painted in Vietnam tones.

mikoyan29 Wrote:Actually, it's supposed to be an AC-47 painted in Vietnam tones.

I just wanted to mention that I live near Kansas City and my father thought he saw this one flying over sometime last week, coming in from airbase in Kansas - McConnell AFB.
He and I general look to the skies when a remarkable sound is heard, even if that means stopping what we are doing inside and running out to the driveway to try and catch a glimpse of what's overhead. He said he heard the unusual sound of the engines, stepped outside and saw a C-47 around 2,000 feet. I asked if it was desert and green camoflaged and he said he thought it was, though from below they are mostly green, probably.
Our area is schedule to receive an L-1011 coming up from a scrap yard on the west coast or southwest I believe and there are constant repairs, news and occassional flights of an L-649 or whichever, Constellation on permanent display at a downtown airport. We also have nearby Whiteman AFB who handles A-10 and B-2 fly overs at many major outdoor events around the area. The F-18s come out of Topeka. Hueys, UH-1 and CH-47 Chinooks from reserve units. One guy had a reproduction P-51 that he kept at a small municipal airfield a few miles from my house two years ago. Man if that thing did not sound like a Corvette racing in the sky everytime he took it up.
My point is, my father, brother and I are always looking up. And so will the next generation of males in our family.

Oh. And since this is a camera thread. I rocket blasted the sensor and mirror of my camera earlier this week and think I have them clean again. Still some dust on the focus screen from my split prism screen swap outs/tests but that in no way affects the images.

Blasting the sensor is fun.

I don't know if you know the trick but if you set it to f22 or greater and focus on infinity and then take a picture of a light piece of paper or something, you can see where the dust spots are.