[Ira]

However, in using this process, you're toggling a switch twice with each shot, when it was originally conceived 40 - 50 years ago as a switch probably to be toggled only upon changing lenses or occasionally when needing DOF preview. I wonder if there's a risk here of wearing out or breaking that mechanism.
--Dave

I was thinking the exact same thing but didn't mention it because I'm unfamiliar with the mechanics involved.

Like, maybe the A/M switch is the SAFER way to go.

But old habits die hard and I have a feeling I'll keep doing things the way I've always done them.

[Ira]

Now I'm beginning to feel the need for the 85mm f1.8 Super Multi Coated. When will this madness end...

The 85 1.9 Super Tak is no slouch either, and usually much cheaper than the 1.8.

I am also learning, little by little, to LOVE the length on this. Because let's face it--an 85 on our sensors is as close as it comes to 135mm on an SLR, the most popular and useful FL for a moderate telephoto with a full frame film camera.

[Ira]

Pentax k-x
Super Takumar 85mm 1.9

What's that sh**y looking white stuff all over everything?

And folks, that image loses a LOT because Porga used the IMGWIDE tags. Here's the original size:

[Quicksand]

And folks, that image loses a LOT because Porga used the IMGWIDE tags. Here's the original size:

Uh oh. Please do NOT taunt the Mike Cash.

[v5planet]

Wow, that looks WAY better at full resolution!

[johnny9fingers]

Can you use the camera's (K20D in my case) onboard metering with the Tak's?

[fractal]

Pentax k-x
Super Takumar 85mm 1.9

Very nice. The rooftop covered in snow buried in the trees works really well.

[john5100]

Thanks guys, I like how compact the 135 f3.5. The image quality seems great too.

[Ira]

Can you use the camera's (K20D in my case) onboard metering with the Tak's?

Yes--in Av and manual mode.

[Mike Cash]

Uh oh. Please do NOT taunt the Mike Cash.

The Mike Cash is more tired of saying it than everybody else combined is of hearing it.

Until I can save up to buy a wide-screen monitor I guess I'll just have to put up with what amounts to no more than a lack of consideration for the poor. I suppose there is always the option of just putting folks who eff up my screen into my Ignore file. When it finally gets to the point I don't see anybody else then I would know I'm the last one without a wide-screen and I'd break down and get one.

But I think Ira was just yanking my chain.

Pentax K20D
Super Takumar 85/1.9

[theunartist]

SMC Takumar 55 f2



Details

[Jewelltrail]

Mike, I do not have a widescreen monitor for picture viewing and forum surfing. I still use my old CRT monitor, because it is much better for colors & consistent brightness. Anway, it looks like you are currently subscribing to the maxim "When in Rome, do as the Romans," so I'll follow suit here.

My awesome little Super T, 50mm f1.4--@ f8 and handheld @ 1/30th--no crop. I paid $40 for this a couple of years ago--tough to get better IQ for those bucks.

[v5planet]

Beautiful photo Jeweltrail! I love the colors and undulating lines of the hills in the background making their way towards the right of the image. My only quibble is that the top of the silo feels cramped along the top edge of the photo, but it's really just a quibble.


Incidentally, I paid almost 3 times what you did for my 50/1.4 S-Tak, but I consider it worth every penny.

[Jewelltrail]

V5planetBeautiful photo Jeweltrail! I love the colors and undulating lines of the hills in the background making their way towards the right of the image. My only quibble is that the top of the silo feels cramped along the top edge of the photo, but it's really just a quibble.

Quibble substantiated, I plead Nolo contendere, with an explantion. This was travel day home, after 8 days of hiking, camping, & driving in New York & Vermont. I was crusing merrily and making good time, perhaps only a few hundred miles from the potential comfort of my own bed---came around the corner and saw the scene--this happened a hundred times on the way home, perhaps I stopped to shoot 35 of those times. Anyway, out of the car quickly, without my tri-pod even, and a quick shot. Incidentally, what ruined the shot, wasn't so much my framing, but the fact that I had the dam shot crooked. In order to straigthen it in PPing, I lost the little gap I had put into the original composition. Haste makes waste.

Your travel north on the AT must have, at least several thousand times, tapped you on the shoulders, pleading with you to dismount your heavy backpack and supplies, and to search out your Pentax DSLR & Da 35mm Macro, and shoot. You must have wrestled with this conundrum the entire 2000 + miles--How did you ever finish the trip? I would have shot a Terabyte worth of RAWs, December would have come, and I would still have been only in Virginia somewhere. Tell us, please, how in the world did you ever finish that walk of Paradise???

[v5planet]

Characterizing it as a 'walk of Paradise" is very flattering language, indeed, considering the often arduous nature of the hike (on a deadline even!).

To answer your question though... I only took a few thousand photos over the entire length of the trail. Some days I wouldn't take any at all. Sometimes it was inconvenient; sometimes the light was terrible and I hated using the gorilla pod I had brought with me for stability; mostly though, given the nature of the experience, an attempt to record a moment or scene often prevented one's ability to enjoy it. In any event, photography was still very important to me on the journey, but I had to be reasonable with it.

One thing I did, which was absolutely imperative in order to make sure I took any photos at all, was make the camera very accessible. I did not keep it in my backpack. I had a separate holster style pack that easily fit my K-7 with the 35/2.8 attached, along with my "wallet" and cellphone. I got rid of the shoulder mount and made a nylon webbing buckle belt and wore the thing as a psuedo-fanny pack, offset to the left resting over one of the large pockets on my pack's belt. Whenever I wanted to shoot I just slid the holster over a bit, unzipped, grabbed the camera and clickity clickity. I had a large ziplock bag which the camera went into inside the holster while it rained. Regrettably in Maine, in the 100-mile wilderness right before the end, the zippers on the holster pack were destroyed, and I had to shut the bag with an elaborate webbing of paracord. I was very upset at how inconvenient taking photos had become RIGHT AT THE END; though by that point I no longer felt pausing to reach for the camera spoiled the moment, and I would savor the sights and smells and sounds with my eye to the viewfinder.

I take it you were on the AT during your trip? Where all did you go?

[edit] for clarity this absolutely terrible photo of me wearing the latest and greatest in hiker fashion clearly shows my camera bag over my left hip belt pocket. http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs447.ash2/72024_536900905849_17...7_669290_n.jpg

[edit] Jewelltrail, if you're curious ... there was a guy way ahead of me on the trail packing his fancy pants pro-level Canon on the trail, also with a 35mm prime (though on FF, so created what i feel was a more interesting FOV for the backwoods and the scenes in it). He's way more talented than I am, and posted his often stunning results on his blog: http://benbenvieblog.com/?s=appalachian+trail . Anyway, that's the last I'll say about the AT in this thread, before this thread gets derailed into talking about DA Limiteds and gasp, Canon gear.