New Camera Day

[Brad Little]

New Camera Day! Back in the Stone Age, I was a fairly serious amateur photographer, had a decent B&W darkroom (now in a storage closet), but when digital came along, I was slow to get on the bandwagon, though my wife and daughter have had DSLRs for years. I opted for a canon point and shoot, mostly for convenience. So, I've finally entered the 21st C. Since I have a couple of Pentax K mount lenses, I opted for a Pentax K70. (My wife has a Canon and daughter a Nikon, so if I didn't have these lenses I probably would have gone with one of those and a different lens than they have.) Since my 35mm days were all with a manual camera, the learning curve for this one is pretty steep. Fortunately, a Youtube video showed how to set it up for the manual lenses, and downloading a PDF of the manual makes it more easily readable for my old eyes. Looking forward to learning the ins and outs of this camera, probably use guitars as models as I learn, so there will be Guild pics coming.
.

 

[Stuball48]

We are looking forward to your pictures.

 

[dreadnut]

Looking forward to the photos!

When I told my kids about being in the photography club in junior high (light meters, f-stops, darkrooms, chemical baths, etc.) they looked at me like I was talking about Little House on The Prairie.

When we were on our honeymoon in '78, I shot 8 rolls of 36 exposures ea., and I sent them to Kodak Labs in Chicago for processing for quality assurance purposes. Even they lost one roll, LOL.

Old time photography was a different art - you needed to plan your shots and wait for the result. Now, you can just take ten shots, review them instantly, and discard the unwanted ones.

 

[GAD]

You can still do everything manually if the camera supports it. Every one of my guitar pics is shot in manual mode, and plenty of people still plan their shots.

 

[Brad Little]

You can still do everything manually if the camera supports it. Every one of my guitar pics is shot in manual mode, and plenty of people still plan their shots.

Yes, I probably will, too. I did have to go into the settings to enable it, but seems to work ok. One nice feature that I will probably use is the diopter adjustment. I used one on my wife's old Canon AE(?) and it was a help. I will have to get used to the in camera light metering, but should be an easy learn.

 

[Antney]

I miss my darkroom and using a simple 35mm rangefinder. My son uses it now...see pic. I believe Robert Franks iconic book “The Americans” is the pinnacle of 35mm images.

however that being said I came back from a two weeks trip to Italy with about 2000 images to edit...that would not have been fiscally possible with film. Digital photography certainly has its advantages over film, but I personally prefer the undeniable presence and look of a fine photographic print.

I think I read somewhere thanks to the advent of digital photography and phones there are 2.5 billion bytes taken every second. I don’t know how bytes are allocated...is that feasible?

 

[GAD]

There are a couple of digital rangefinder or rangefinder-esq cameras out there. My favorites for the retro vibe are the Fujis and their X100V is highly rated. I was never drawn to the rangefinder thing, but I do have an XT20 that I like a lot for its retro feel. The mirrorless cameras are almost all too small for my big hands, though, so I'll keep using DSLRs until they stop making them.

As much as I love my dad's old Minolta that I learned on, one thing I derive no joy from is manual focus.

 

[Cougar]

...I opted for a Pentax K70....

Wow, that looks like a good one! Congrats!

 

[rampside]

Glad you dove into the digital waters, Brad. Won't be long and you'll be wondering why the heck you didn't sooner.

 

[bobouz]

I began shooting with Pentax SLRs in the mid ‘80s. It took me a long time to convert, but I now have three Pentax DSLRs. Rock solid bodies with great ergonomics.

It’s so true that in a short while, you’ll wonder why you didn’t convert sooner!

 

[Quantum Strummer]

I've always liked Pentax cameras & lenses. Like a lotta people my first SLR was a K1000. I later got into 645 format film with another Pentax rig and still have all that stuff. In my experience the digital-era Pentaxes are all solid performers.

My dad was a rangefinder nut so I grew up with Voigtländers, Contaxes, Kodak Retinas & Leicas…all good German stuff from the 1950s & 60s. I have all of it too except for the big Voigtländer Bessa that's probably still at the bottom of Lake St. Clair off Mitchell's Bay in Ontario after its strap broke c. 1975 while my dad was leaning over the side of our trolling boat to photograph a really nice smallmouth bass I'd caught.

-Dave-

 

[GAD]

K1000 was the rig to have for astrophotography back in the day because it had a quirk where if you slapped the shutter release really quickly it would do a sort of poor-mans mirror lock-up. That's one on the back of my telescope taking pics of the 1994 annular eclipse in NH!

 

[Brad Little]

Nice to see all the Pentax users on here, used to be even Nikon and Canon "purists" admired the Pentax lenses. We still have a rangefinder around somewhere, a Canon, IIRC, as well as a cheap Russian double lens large format. I also have an oddity, a Pentax 110 SLR, three lenses, autowinder and flash. Still worked last time I tried it, looked at it today, and there's still an unfinished film cartridge. I guess there's a small resurgence in 110 fans, may finish the film in the camera and order some more. Pentax claimed it was the smallest SLR ever produced, easily fit in the palm of your hand.

Pentax Auto 110 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org