I had a couple of red poppies appear in the garden today, and later in the day noticed Josh (ePHOTozine’s technical editor) had uploaded a camera review with pictures taken in a poppy field. I hadn’t realised we had any in the vicinity but this one was just up the road in Anston. So off I pooped this evening with the Pentax K-5 and a bag of lenses. My aim was to takes shots different to my normal one in focus blurred background poppy shots. I had the lens baby (failed), the ultra wide (failed), the macro (failed) and the Tamron 500mm mirror (result)
I’d hope to use the Tamron with the 2x flat field converter to get super compression but it just wasn’t giving me what I wanted, so I reverted back to the 500mm alone (gives 750mm equivalent on the K-5).
So here’s one of the shots. The mirror lens gives unusual Marmite (love or hate) out of focus highlights. In fact it puts a halo around any bright object too. So the stalks took on a new look. I love the scrambled effect it gives.