After thinking I bagged a bargain Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7 lens today on eBay, I realised that it was, in fact, the rather more ordinary f/2 version!
Anyway, I dug out some of my old kit and found some M42 mount extension tubes. So I chucked them onto my existing 50mm f/1.4 lens and took a series of 3 images of a bottle of Becks beer before cracking it open and enjoying it in front of the Ghana vs. Uruguay World Cup football game. Here’s the result:
So how did I do it? Well, a tripod is a must. I took three RAW images autobracketed at plus and minus 2 stops. I was forced to go up to f/4, otherwise the depth-of-field was too narrow. I then tweaked and desaturated each image in Photoshop before merging them in Photomatix. The resulting image needed some pretty considerable burning in Photoshop to get rid of some distracting background out-of-focus patches. Above is the result. 
First time I’ve seen an HDR in Black and white.
This angle is a good idea. I love bottle caps. I had a collection until my mom threw it away.
Jeff