[Racer X 69]

It's Ruka ski resort in Kuusamo and it was a good to be there again. Even if we missed 2 days of skiing due to cold and windy weather. 15m/s winds in -15C are too much for me nowadays. I've grown soft with age. When I was young there was no such thing as too cold weather

It was nice to view your skiing photos.

I have been a downhill skier since 1970. I had to take a break from it when I had my left hip replaced 7 years ago. I'm ready to go back and give it another go, but this season I'm recovering from some corrective foot surgery.

Next year.

If I can afford a lift ticket.

My first seasons many years ago it was $6US for a half day.

This season my local ski resort is getting $74US for an all day lift ticket.

Sheesh!

[arnold]

I have been a downhill skier since 1970. I had to take a break from it when I had my left hip replaced 7 years ago. I'm ready to go back and give it another go, but this season I'm recovering from some corrective foot surgery.

Someone said that if you were meant to ski, you would have been born with a broken leg.

[onlineflyer]

M 100/2.8 on my K-5iis.

[Racer X 69]

Someone said that if you were meant to ski, you would have been born with a broken leg.

I fractured the tibia and fibula in both legs the first time I skied, but didn't find out for 6 months. The ski shop that set the bindings up set them too tight. The night before I went to the slopes it rained, then then froze, so there was a crust of hard ice under a fresh layer of snow.

Fast but tough to ski on for a n00b.

I kept hooking the edges of my skis and falling. The bindings would not release, and my weight imposed considerable force against the bones of the lower legs around the top of the boots. The pain was intense, but at the time I didn't think I had broken the bones.

At the end of the day I loaded up and drove the 2 hour drive home. When I got to the house and stepped out of the car I nearly fell it hurt so bad. The next day I could barely walk. I toughed it out.

Six months later I was getting a bone scan done for unrelated issues. The technician asked what happened to my shins. He showed me the images of the areas where the top of my ski boots would have been. There were thousands of healed cracks, about 3" long, in the area where the top of the ski boots were. I told him, and later the orthopedic surgeon about the incident on the slopes, and they both agreed that I had broken the bones then.

And they were stupefied when I told them I never sought medical attention for it, and was back up skiing the next weekend, and every weekend for the rest of the ski season.

I actually got pretty good at skiing, and never had a lesson until I met Mrs. Racer. I gave her a weekend at a local ski resort for Christmas one year, a room in the lodge on the slopes, private lesson for her (I didn't think I needed lessons, as I had been skiing for about 20 years when I met her). When we met up with the ski instructor, it didn't take long to realize that skiing was not for Mrs. Racer. So she told me to take her place, and she went off to the cozy lodge to sit by the fire and drink hot adult winter beverages.

It was good for me to get that private lesson. The instructor was able to identify some bad habits I had developed and correct them. Since then skiing has been even more fun.

But it would be even more fun with Mrs. Racer!

[arnold]

The ski shop that set the bindings up set them too tight.

I remember trying Skiing (or snow) for the first time without lessons. I had just landed a new job and was fearful of incapacitating myself. Made the bindings so loose they came off every time I fell, which happened every few feet, until I arrived at the bottom of the hill, I was nearly run over many times, and in a foul mood by then, as I had no idea about what to do, and humiliated by young kids flying by.. Grabbing the tow rope back up involved similar falls, and when I finally got going I hung on for dear life until I shut the line down by tripping the cutoff line at the top. I heard a few curses, but when they saw the flames from my eyes and ears, decided not to check what would come out of my mouth. I never went back or tried again.

[iheiramo]

Nice stories. It was fun to read them. As a Finn I have been on X-country skis since I been able to walk, so stepping on the alpine skis just made the going downhill a lot easier. Started snowboarding in the late 80's. Got seriously interested in alpine snowboarding and spend a decade in pro snowboarding around 2000. First as a racer and later as a trainer.

This season my local ski resort is getting $74US for an all day lift ticket.

US is typically cheaper than Europe, but for some reason lift tickets have always been cheaper here. I got my season ticket to Ruka for 400€ (about the same as 2x6 day pass) and the 6 day ticket to limited area on Dolomites was 233.

Here is one more photo by my son. After this I think I'm out of decent pictures and need to start taking new ones. Heavy crop. 100% if you open the link. Still pretty decent in quality in my opinion. And yes, I also tilted it a lot

[Racer X 69]

I got my season ticket to Ruka for 400€ (about the same as 2x6 day pass) and the 6 day ticket to limited area on Dolomites was 233.

Stevens Pass (the ski area closest to me) gets $700 for a 2016/2017 season pass.

[Piotrek K]

M 40 as a birding lens (kind of... ). This was simply the only one I had with me during one day foreign business trip.

[Göran]

M 200mm F4


She was about 1 meter away from me, so it was easy to make the shot, even as an amateur.

... with the same lens ...

[paulh]

M35-70/2.8-3.5

[iheiramo]

Nice one, Paul.

[marcusBMG]

I idly went onto ebay for a desultory look the other day and saw, with 20-odd mins to go on the auction, this:

ASAHI PENTAX AF ZOOM 1:2.8 35-70MM AUTOFOCUS CAMERA LENS

Interesting! Curiosity piqued, I set up a snipe, figuring that either I will be outsniped by a collector, or the other two bids are more speculative, like mine and I am likely to be just ahead of them. And so it proved. Not cheap-cheap but a pretty good price judging from those cited in the reviews.



So here I am, if you are thinking that's not an "M", well that's where its listed in the reviews here on PF! The AF only works on the short lived ME-F camera, so effectively its MF.
"This is a pretty unique lens. It is actually the fastest 35-70mm zoom Pentax ever made. It has a unique red multicoating that I have not seen on any other Pentax lens. At a constant f2.8, it is faster than the Pentax M 35-70mm f2.8-3.5 which this lens derives from." Youngsters review.

The lens is in decent condition, good optically. I took it out for a spin on my K5, usual haunts - the castle etc.







It was interesting to me how using b&w and tweaking the blue slider in LR3 really brought the sky out compared to the colour jpg:






I'm not sure if its definitely better than the tamron adaptall 17A 35-70mm (or its big brother the 01A), I am continually impressed with that, but certainly my pics so far are a firm thumbs-up.
Test composite - landscape at 35mm. Click on the image to pull up the fullsized 4928x3398 2.5MB image.



Notably good at f2.8 I can suggest, a lot of fast vintage zooms offering that f2.8 premium are pretty ropey at that f.

[paulh]

Nice one, Paul.

Thank you! This is essentially the same lens as the one @MarcusBMG used in the above shots, minus the AF mechanism of course. A very good legacy lens, especially for a zoom

[marcusBMG]

And this one in B&W.

[iheiramo]

In the backyard one small stubborn oak has kept almost all leafs thru the winter. Wonder what it will do when spring comes. Tried to take pictures of it, but light was unstable today and made things difficult. This is pretty much what I had in mind:



While editing I realized that this is what I should have been shooting:



Too bad that it was already snowing by the time I realized it, so couldn't go back to take an other one. Have to be satisfied with 100% crop. So much to learn in macro. I just don't have eye for it yet. Taken with M100/2.8.