I have a confession to make.

Until recently, I had many thousands of photos I had taken stored in my hard drives. Pixels stored together clamouring to get out of the cramped darkness. At least that is how I think of it. So many in fact, that it was the only reason for me to upgrade my hard drive. Three times.

I share through Flickr, however, I never seemed to getting around to printing/sharing photos. I put this somewhat down to laziness, and somewhat to the copyright hooks that those who advertise photo-books and the like seem to have. I also found the price of printing anything bigger than 5×7's silly.

So one day recently I decided to get a printer, and try to print some of them out. This is not the first time I have done this, but last time I tried, it was 2004. Maybe, just maybe, things had gotten better...

Gearing up

Printers are now ridiculously cheap. Ink cartridges are not. I bought a two cartridge Kodak printer locally, and some 4x6”, and 8.5x11” Kodak paper cheaply off Ebay. I installed the printer (a Kodak C315), and connected this wirelessly. It worked nicely.

Four colour tanks...

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Photography is the art of capturing moments.  For me, most moments are unanticipated, let alone planned.  Being ready is paramount to capturing them.  As I ready to encounter them during my explorations, one lens returns to my camera more often than not, the Pentax-DA 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 ED AL [IF] DC WR.

Mounted to my K-5, it has traveled from the Pacific Northwest to the Canary Islands. It has been backpacking, in my canoe gearbag, and in a loosely closed dry bag, strapped to the deck of my kayak, always at the ready. The lens has a good zoom range and is fast enough for most situations. It also has a reasonable macro capability. The quick shift feature has been wonderful for fine adjustment, particularly for macro shots. However, I bought it because, when paired with the K-5, it can take a splash. Many of my photos are shot from a paddled watercraft of one variety or another, or on hikes in rainforests. Living in the Pacific Northwest, where moisture is omnipresent, weather sealing is a must.

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I will be different in giving my introduction.  No more questions to start my intro some flavor to it. I'll be more straight and direct. According to the info given I need to submit a short piece about what piece of photographic equipment has made the biggest positive impact on your photography. I'll talk about not just how my photographic equipment made a big positive impact on my photography, but as well as how it made a huge impact to my life.

This is the the equipment that made a huge impact to me. The Pentax K-x:

I could say, this piece is truly small but terrible, in terms of its capabilities and features in its level. Being my first equipment and made a way for me in photography Pentax K-x is easy to use. How this equipment made a huge impact in my life will be discussed in the rest of this post.

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When thinking about the item that has been most influential on my photography, I have to start with the Keystone Instamatic I got when I was 8 - because that got the whole photography hobby started for me. The camera is long gone, and so are the pictures I took with it, but it looked something like this:  

I moved on to a Sears (actually a Ricoh) KSX-1000, and then to a K 1000SE (maybe the last K-1000 ever made :-) ). In the process, I proved that, while everyone on the forum says "good glass is forever", cheap glass can last a darn long time, too. :-)  

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Although it wasn't my first DSLR, the Pentax K-7 had the biggest impact on my photography of any camera I've owned.  I bought the K-7 as a birthday present to myself at the end of March 2011, and since then I've managed to crank the shutter count on the K-7 up to 16,803 while my first DSLR, the K200D, languishes on a shutter count of 11,132.  That's an average of 28 photos a day on the K-7!  Why am I writing about the K-7 rather than the K-200D?  While the K-200D brought a massive change to the way I took photos being my first DSLR, the K-7 had the features I needed to be creative in ways that were much more challenging or impossible with the K-200D.

As mentioned in the review elsewhere on Pentax Forums, the K-7 was released in 2009, but I didn't get my hands on it until early in 2011. At 14 megapixels, it was a step up in resolution from my 10 megapixel K200D, but it was other aspects of the camera which I grew to appreciate. Most importantly, it was about creative control. What were the key features of the K-7 which improved my level of creative control over the feature set of the K200D?

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Hello Pentaxians! I started my hobby in photography nearly 2yrs ago. I've always felt I have a creative desire within me, but given I can barely draw a stick man, I've lacked a medium to express it. Then I found photography and the itch had been scratched!

After much deliberating and research, I decided on Pentax as a brand due to its feature set, price and access to legacy lenses. I purchased my 2nd hand Pentax K-x off ebay and away I went. I've since had a lot of fun with my camera and I enjoy the feeling when an image comes together.

I find I now look at the world differently; I see photo opportunities in the most unlikely places. Many a conversation has been distracted as my mind wanders to how those lamp lights behind my friend, who is waffling on about football, would look awesome as a black and white with a long exposure... 

The most influential item in my kit would have to be my Pentax-M 50mm F1.4 prime lens.

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In the middle of the 1960ies I was a quite normal photo amateur, taking snapshots of my family with whatever camera available. One day a friend of mine introduced me to a Pentax Spotmatic camera, and suddenly I understood the difference between taking a snapshot and taking a photo.

In those days a Spotmatic was an expensive piece of equipment, but a year later I could buy one, equipped with a TAKUMAR 1:1.8/55 lens. I began taking photos of buildings, industry products, the sky and stars, and of course, of my family. The “through-the lens” exposure meter system made me a better photographer, and the exchangeable lenses gave me possibilities that I had not experienced before. In the years to come I bought lenses from 28 to 300 mm, until my photo bag became quite heavy to carry. 

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« get yourself a good tripod, you’ll never regret it. »

This is something we often read on forums and blog posts around the web. And it’s true: a good tripod will serve you well, for a long time. But in this article, instead of focusing on the tripod, I want to focus on the tripod HEAD.

In my opinion, getting a high-quality tripod head is even more important than getting a good tripod. While most tripods can hold steady in normal situations, a cheaper tripod head will have all sorts of flaws that will impact your work. I will present my own choice for a tripod head (the Vanguard ABH-120K), but keep in mind that I am not advocating one particular brand or model, but rather presenting the advantages of a high-quality product.  

Why spend a lot of money on a tripod head?

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