Our regular Pentax monthly user outing took us to Mandai Orchid Garden. This unique place and tourist attraction has been around since 1951 when the late John Laycock, a founder of the Orchid Society of Southeast Asia decided to acquire some land to keep his growing collection of orchids and later for commercial orchid cultivation. When news of a possible redevelopment with the ending of the lease for the land, it became an obvious location for a group outing to capture some of the many orchids on hand.
Shooting flowers means shooting up close and the choice I had was either to go with the DA 35mmf/2.8 Macro Limited or the DFA 100mm f/2.8 Macro WR. My instincts told me to go with the smaller lens and on-site, the DA 35mm Macro proved to be the perfect lens for the subject.
The wider field of view allowed me to move around quicker to obtain the best composition and as there was no distance limitations, it was easy enough to move up close to the flowers. AF is perfect in this situation, allowing me to shoot quickly in the warm day and take a lot of shots of the many varieties of orchids on hand.
Many traditionalists still cling on to belief that to shoot macro, it has got to be manual focus all the way and preferably with a tripod. Well there's definitely a place for this approach given the wide variation in macro gear and technique, and a lot of it has to do with the subject in hand and the magnification needed. But to steadfastly maintain that this is the only way is something I have serious reservations with. I have found the current crop of Pentax AF lenses with Quick Shift to be invaluable, even in the context of macro shooting. Obviously when shooting handheld having shake reduction built-in on the camera body makes a big difference in the number of keepers.
1 comment:
The garden will be closed by next year 2011. For those who miss the garden, you still can see it online here as a virtual tour:http://bit.ly/OrchidGardenMandai
Check it out.
Post a Comment