Now that I returned the K3.. back to work with the K5 IIs
There's no better way to get over returning a camera than to get out and shoot with what you currently own. In my case that is the K5 IIs.
I love doing photography at night. It offers a totally different feeling than shooting during the day. It's quiet and lends itself to really taking your time to enjoy photography on a different level. Normally it is much quieter at night but on this occasion two competing packs of coyotes were trying to see which group could be the most vocal... but it did add to ambiance of the evening under the stars in west Texas.
This shot was taken last night near Fort Griffin, Texas. There was a half moon providing good ambient light but not enough to turn night into day during a long exposure. This little blacksmith's shop was an unexpected find. I was given access by the custodian of this historical area and was surprised to find the shop to be so complete in period equipment and its 1870s appearance.
There were no lights in this building but I have learned to bring a variety of lights for night work from soft LED floods to little LED contraptions I have made myself as well as a variety of flashlights. I used two of my little handmade LED lights to light the interior of the building, a red and amber LED, powered by a 9 volt battery. The type I used were ultra-bright and designed to run off of a 12 volt battery but 9 volts will run them for over 40 hours continuously.. no kidding, I created my first one and powered it for five days straight on a single 9 volt battery. The exterior of the building was painted with soft light from and LED flashlight with a slight amber filter over the lens.
For the interior lighting I control the intensity of the light in a very low tech manner... toilet paper... you need less light, you wrap toilet paper around it until you get the subdued light you need... this also allows the light to diffuse as well. Toilet paper is a very handy thing to have in the field.
I used the Pentax K5 IIs and the DA* 16-50 for this shot. Set up focus using AF and then switched to manual focus and locked it in. Exposure was 15 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 800. Lightroom was used for initial post-work then I moved the file to Photoshop CS6 for final tweaks, re-sizing and sharpening.
Hope you like it.. I had a great time taking it. Left Dallas at 10am Saturday morning and returned at 4:20am Sunday.. a full night of shooting and enjoying being out of the big city.