Some tulip portraits with legacy and new Pentax lenses.

I went down to Wooden Shoe Tulip Fields in Oregon yesterday and spent a couple of hours shooting the tulips. One of the nicer days so far this spring. I used two cameras, my K-01 with the new 16-85mm only and a Sony A3000 that I got just for the fact I can mount just about any lens made to it as it is essentially a NEX body with an slr grip. On the Sony I used an M 50mm f/1.4, A 135mm f/2.8 and a Tamron 1.4 af converter with the 135mm.

These first 5 are from the K-01 16-85mm combo. That lens seems to hold up really nicely until after f/11 as difraction starts softening the images.

These next 8 were taken with the Sony and I'll put what lens was used under each photo.

SMC A 135mm f/2.8 at f/4.

SMC A 135mm f/2.8 at f/5.6.

SMC A 135mm f/2.8 at f/4.

SMC A 135mm f/2.8 at f/4.

M 50mm f/1.4 at 2.8.

SMC A 135mm f/2.8 with Tamron 1.4 at f/11.

M 50mm f/1.4 at f/2 I think.

M 50mm f/1.4 at f/2.8.

A couple of things I noticed while editing the photos from the two cameras:

-  While the Sony has a poor rear screen with low resolution, it's way of showing the peaks on live view made it easier to manually focus than the K-01. You can change the color of the peaks as well as the intensity. Those two things I'm sure they could implement on the K-01 with a firmware update but won't.

-  The images from the 20mp sensor on the sony show a little more detail than the 16mp from the K-01 but there is some noise even at iso 100 whereas the Pentax has none. Also it seems you can recover a bit more info from the raw of the Pentax over the Sony. That 16mp sensor still shines.

Enjoy your spring.

Andrew.