Pentax K+ Multi-Mount

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Feb 20, 2013

Today, I will introduce the piece of “gear” that has been most influential to my photographic journey to date. It cannot be bought commercially as it is a self-modified piece of equipment. I call it the Pentax K+ Multi-Mount, a modification of my Pentax K-x camera mounting ring that now lets me mount lens from Nikon F-mount, Olympus OM-mount, Contax/Yashica C/Y-mount and Konica AR-mount in addition to all my Pentax-K lenses.

How K+ Multi-Mount was made

On the front, you cannot see any difference from the usual mounting ring because my modifications were done on the underside of it. After unscrewing the 5 screws that held the mounting ring to my K-x and flipping it over, I filed away some of the metal that were previously at the brass-yellow areas seen below using a Dremel tool. The reason is because these areas were thicker than other mounts so I had to file them down by a few millimeters, flushing it with the non-protruding areas of the ring. There was not much precision required (or possible), only steady hands to ensure an even surface after filing, sufficiently deep and smooth enough to mount all the lenses. Some trial and error is definitely required by mounting the different lenses directly on it. Once tested to accept all lenses, it was time to screw it back to my Pentax K-x.

Mastering Exposure using the Pentax K1000

A classic student camera

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Jan 25, 2013

I began my film photography adventure with a plastic Holga camera, but I was unsatisfied with the lack of control on exposure settings. Later I purchased a second-hand Pentax K1000 due to its cheap price. Soon I found myself experiencing a very steep learning curve in the mastering of exposure.

The beauty of the K1000 is it simplicity. So simple that you need only to care about the fundamental aspects of photography - shutter speed and aperture settings. The K1000 keeps you focused on the subject, not fiddling with various camera settings. Because there is no automatic exposure, a K1000 user is forced (or encouraged) to carefully examine the light condition, choose the right shutter speed and aperture value combination, and then click the release button.

Aperture ring of my Pentax-M 50mm F2 on my Pentax K1000

Experience and Lightroom 3

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Nov 30, 2012

Experience and Editing are two major roles that are played in my photography. I say that because I have been with my 18-55 and 55-300 ever since I bought my Pentax K-x. I bought the kit and was somewhat disappointed because of the functionality of the actual camera. I was getting tired of the fact that I had to switch batteries all the time and that It lasted nowhere near as long as a regular Li-on battery. Then somehow I get sensor scratches, that really pissed me off. It irked me more than none other because I'm a landscape photographer and nothing sucks more than not being able to shoot your highest aperture without sensor spots and scratches. So I figured, I'd try and resell it. Turns out, they discontinue the model and now it's worth less than half for what I paid for it ($777 from B&H Photo). Other camera departments were selling the camera kit for $450 new. So I wasn't going to sell my camera for less than that; I would end up with no camera and not enough money to purchase a new one. I decided that I should just stick it out.

To conserve battery, I turned off my camera after every sequence of shots.

And to get rid of the sensor spots at high aperture, I shot either at low aperture or If I really wanted to, I would spot clean every single spot.

This is where Adobe Lightroom became the biggest factor in my photography.  

Trial and Error with Extreme Macro Photography

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Jan 7, 2013

The "piece" of photographic equipment that has been the most influential on my photography would be my extreme macro setup. My interest in macro photography was piqued by browsing macro photos online and wondering, "Why can't I do that?". I was quite stunned with how amazing even the simplest everyday objects looked when magnified - even something as common as a zipper or a screw (shown below). None of the images in this post are cropped or post-processed. The only thing I've done is shrink them to allow me to post them here (please click on the thumbnails to see the full size!).

Zipper	Earring
Chewed Screw	Threading a Needle

So I began trying to use my 55-300mm DA L to take macro photos, this was before I really appreciated the nuances of photography and had an understanding of why the 55-300mm wasn't working the way I wanted (very long minimum focusing distance!). I found a Praktica 80-200mm M42 macro lens at a garage sale for 20 bucks, so that was the next step. This still wasn't enough and I found a used Pentax-M 100mm macro lens locally, so I bought that. Then I tried using teleconverters, close up diopters, extension tubes, and I still wasn't happy! This led me to using reversal rings. I put my 55-300mm kit lens onto the camera and reversed my 18-55mm lens onto it. This led to some amazing magnification, however the plastic body construction caused some "wobble" and made it extremely difficult to focus. What is particularly interesting to note is that anybody with the Pentax K-r kit and both kit lenses can achieve this with a 2 dollar reversal ring from ebay!

Darktable: a RAW-volution

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Dec 9, 2012

A long weekend is over and all memory cards are full with pictures. But now the most time consuming work just begins. After sorting all photos there is a list of RAW- files which is much too long to be fun. For processing of hundreds of megapixels I have been using UFRaw due to a good alternative under Linux. It is hard work opening every single RAW file and tweaking the controls until being satisfied. Before the next RAW file can be done, the actual File hast to be saved. The RAW-volution started when I read about the young but yet very powerful program darktable.  

darktable in lighttable mode