Juvenile Elegans

Today was my first day shooting with my new/old lens: an Asahi SMC Pentax 50mm f/2 I got from eBay. It arrived a little while back, but the adaptor to allow me to mount it on my Lumix only arrived yesterday.

I was looking forward to trying it out, but apprehensive as well: the need to focus completely manually was probably the biggest thing for me. However, I was quite pleased with the results. I took some pictures of valleys and craggy rocks off Cliff Drive at lunchtime, trying to recall and use what I'd read about hyperfocal distance. Seemed to work; at least, it was all in focus. ;-)

I was also quite chuffed with my effort at snagging a black cockatoo while I was there. It flew over and sat in a tree close-by while I was taking a shot of the scenery. I quickly opened up the aperture, estimated the distance, set the focus using the distance ring, lifted the camera and clicked ... just as the little basket dove off the branch. I caught his wings and tail though, and -allowing for the motion blur - they were reasonably in focus. Which pleased me quite a bit.

However, as I was almost home I encountered a fluttering just above my head, and saw a bird heading away to another part of the tree I was walking beside. Out came the camera, set to f/2, and aperture priority so the camera would adjust shutter speed and ISO for me, and I crept around and then under the tree - where I found this lovely juvenile Crimson Rosella (race Elegans). I estimated distance, set the focus ring, got a blurry picture, fiddled about a bit, clicked again, and here we have the result:

And here's the large result.

I cropped a little, sharpened, and added an overlay layer at about 50% opacity. Very happy, especially considering it was manual focus, under a tree, in the (early) evening.