I purchased a Pentax 50 mm f/1.8 lens to use as a walk-about lens on the K-5 as an alternative to my Fuji X100 with its effective 35 mm lens.  The Pentax 50 mm lens gives me an effective 76 mm lens.  I needed something that was easy to use with one hand while I had Misty’s leash in the other.  The 50 mm lens on the K-5 makes a smaller and lighter system than when having a zoom lens on it.  I primarily got this particular lens since I often walk slightly before, or after, dawn when the light isn’t very bright.  As you can see from the past two postings, it works well for general landscape pictures in low light and I am quite pleased with it; but, I didn’t expect to be able to use it for wildlife.  Yesterday morning, while walking when it was a little lighter, I noticed a Heron at the edge of the pond.   As you can see below, the Heron is barely visible (in the center at the closest edge of the pond).

The following is the same picture after I crop-zoomed down to a size of slightly greater than 2000 pixels along the longest edge.

As I walked on around the path the Heron took flight and I swung the K-5 up and took a few shots as it flew across the pond.  I took these shots quickly using one hand.  I had the camera in “P” mode so it chose the aperture and shutter speed.  Since the lens is fast, that still meant that the shutter speed was reasonably fast (1/640 sec.) and the aperture gave me reasonable depth of field (f/5.6) at an ISO of 200.  You can see two different pictures of the Heron in flight below.  I used the same crop dimensions as above.

You can click on all the above pictures and then pick the 2000 x 1125 size to see them larger.  As I knew, it isn’t a good lens for wildlife but yet it does have some capabilities … if for no other reason, it gets you close enough to at least identify the bird.

Did you notice the Heron in the fourth fog picture in the previous post?  It’s in the center above the road.