[ChristianRock]

I have an SMC-A 24mm f/2.8 with broken A setting but otherwise perfect, coming my way as soon as the seller receives my (snail mail) payment.

I was on the lookout for the K version but this should work exactly as well and perhaps with even better SMC coatings...

[bigted]

Anyone ever had an experience with this?

When we had an antiques shop and sold on eBay our only negative came from a French buyer who was miffed it took so long for the mail to arrive from Canada to France. She wouldn't pay for a courier and we had sent it airmail directly on the day she paid us..

[tim60]

When we had an antiques shop and sold on eBay our only negative came from a French buyer who was miffed it took so long for the mail to arrive from Canada to France. She wouldn't pay for a courier and we had sent it airmail directly on the day she paid us..

Some individual people everywhere are like that.

[Cerebum]

The "white" aperture solenoid for the (as yet working fine!) K-30 arrived today (expensive to buy in the first place, but now have had to pay nearly another £14 Custom Duty, VAT & RM handling charge on top of that) - and now there's another £90 to have it fitted as I don't have the experience and skill to do it myself, but I WANT that body to be "permanently fixed"! )

I have been hit twice with customs and postal charges with another on the way, however, the imported stuff was still cheaper than over here. I had my k30 fixed a couple of months ago, then stumbled across a cheap K3 so it has become my spare. My point is, it is such a great camera, it was worth repairing. I had mine fixed by Johnson’s (Johnson’s, jonstones lol) photopia. They are the authorised repairer for Pentax. They weren’t cheap but I was prepared to pay for peace of mind of course you do realise that now you have the spare part, yours will now work forever! Murphy’s/sod’s law

---------- Post added 03-27-18 at 11:54 PM ----------

Well, I got my Pentax-m 200mm, £39 in its original box and case and with the original catalogue. I took a couple of photos with it but it fogged up a little because I went from a warm to cold environment. It is now packed with silica gel sachets until I next get it out. I love Pentax-m lenses. There’s something, nice about the whole manual/retro feel. Also, they are 3x cheaper than the comparable Nikon E series I have been trying to get one of those for a friend of mine who has never used vintage glass but I am not paying £50-60 for a 28mm f2.8 that is average at best.

PENTAX RULES

[jeallen01]

I have been hit twice with customs and postal charges with another on the way, however, the imported stuff was still cheaper than over here. I had my k30 fixed a couple of months ago, then stumbled across a cheap K3 so it has become my spare. My point is, it is such a great camera, it was worth repairing. I had mine fixed by Johnson’s (Johnson’s, jonstones lol) photopia. They are the authorised repairer for Pentax. They weren’t cheap but I was prepared to pay for peace of mind of course you do realise that now you have the spare part, yours will now work forever! Murphy’s/sod’s law .....

Well "of course it will" because that'll be a "white" solenoid - whereas I wonder what Johnsons used on your K-30, and ( from what I read in the relevant lo.....ng thread about aperture block issues) I strongly suspect that it will have been the "green" version !

[Cerebum]

Well "of course it will" because that'll be a "white" solenoid - whereas I wonder what Johnsons used on your K-30, and ( from what I read in the relevant lo.....ng thread about aperture block issues) I strongly suspect that it will have been the "green" version !

No, I meant the original solenoid will not fail now you have its replacement hence the "sods law" irony reference. I am well aware of the qualities of the white solenoid. I am also well aware of the likelihood of Johnsons using a green solenoid, if that is the one supplied by Pentax Japan. One point that did come out of the aforementioned thread was that having the repair done by the authorised repairer statistically exponentially reduces the likelihood of a repeat failure, hence my peace of mind reference. Maybe the solenoid will fail again! Maybe something else will kill it before the solenoid does! Maybe I will sell it before anything happens! Who knows, at least I have done everything within my capability to keep the camera going.

[BigMackCam]

I received this in the mail today - a Moody 4pc Screw Extractor Reversible Set, and I'm quite excited (yes, it's a sorry state of affairs... by this stage of my life, I'm excited by miniature tools)...

I was alerted to these by @UncleVanya in another thread (thanks again!), and when I saw them, I had to get some. No matter how much care is taken when servicing a lens, there'll be an occasional screw or two that are really stubborn and end up with damaged heads. For those rare but unavoidable situations where a screwdriver no longer works, I now have this set to help get me out of trouble!

Of course, the best possible outcome would be that I never need them, and have wasted my money - but experience suggests that's not going to be the case

Attached Images

 

[WPRESTO]

I received this in the mail today - a Moody 4pc Screw Extractor Reversible Set, and I'm quite excited (yes, it's a sorry state of affairs... by this stage of my life, I'm excited by miniature tools)...

I was alerted to these by @UncleVanya in another thread (thanks again!), and when I saw them, I had to get some. No matter how much care is taken when servicing a lens, there'll be an occasional screw or two that are really stubborn and end up with damaged heads. For those rare but unavoidable situations where a screwdriver no longer works, I now have this set to help get me out of trouble!

Of course, the best possible outcome would be that I never need them, and have wasted my money - but experience suggests that's not going to be the case

Peter's Rules dictate that the only tool you need for an emergency repair is the one you don't have.

[aslyfox]

Peter's Rules dictate that the only tool you need for an emergency repair is the one you don't have.

Peter Principle:

DEFINITION

the principle that members of a hierarchy are promoted until they reach the level at which they are no longer competent.

In other words - you are promoted to a job you cannot do and there you will stay

___________________

Murphy's law

any thing that can go wrong will go wrong
_______________________________________

Finnegan's corollary to Murphy's law

remember that Murphy was an optimist
________________________________________________

Mile Royko's [ Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist ] take on the beer glass on the bar:

glass of beer seen on the bar not full

optimist sees it as half full

pessimist sees it as half empty

cub fan looks at it and wonders when it will get knocked over

[UncleVanya]

They look awesome! I'll be interested to hear if they ever save you from disaster.

[BigMackCam]

They look awesome! I'll be interested to hear if they ever save you from disaster.

They do look good... and they're really nice quality, too - extremely solid... even better than I hoped, frankly. I wouldn't have found these if you hadn't mentioned them, so I'm genuinely grateful!

Will definitely let you know if when I've used them.

[BigMackCam]

A couple of weeks back, I posted about buying a 2012-vintage Panasonic DMC-FZ62 bridge camera from my Dad... I did it primarily to fund his new compact camera purchase, but I can't deny I thought it might be fun to play around with. @normhead gets great results with his Pentax bridge camera, so I figured I'd play with this one, and if I really disliked it, I could always sell it on and get my money back (or near enough).

Well, I've been playing with the camera and it's really remarkably good. I quickly found that the noise reduction needs to be set at the lowest level (otherwise it's brutal ), and sharpening at either +1 or +2 (to combat diffraction), and it's best shot at ISO 400 and below - although it makes a decent fist of ISO 800 and 1600 for certain types of shot, at lower size reproduction.

Tonight, we have fairly clear skies, so I thought I'd try out a moon shot. Since the camera has full manual control, I was able to set it up exactly as I wanted, and I'm genuinely surprised at how well it performed. I've done a tiny amount of post-processing on this - to remove a hint of luminance noise (inc. JPEG artefacts), increase clarity / contrast and add just a touch more sharpening, but nothing much. Straight out of camera, the results weren't hugely different, in all honesty. The biggest issues are JPEG compression and edge sharpening artefacts, but considering the camera, it's done rather well, IMHO.

I've taken worse shots than this with my DSLRs

Of course, it has many, many limitations - but I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it did. ISO 100 shouldn't be a challenge for most cameras, but the lens makes all the difference here...

[UncleVanya]

A couple of weeks back, I posted about buying a 2012-vintage Panasonic DMC-FZ62 bridge camera from my Dad... I did it primarily to fund his new compact camera purchase, but I can't deny I thought it might be fun to play around with. @normhead gets great results with his Pentax bridge camera, so I figured I'd play with this one, and if I really disliked it, I could always sell it on and get my money back (or near enough).

Well, I've been playing with the camera and it's really remarkably good. I quickly found that the noise reduction needs to be set at the lowest level (otherwise it's brutal ), and sharpening at either +1 or +2 (to combat diffraction), and it's best shot at ISO 400 and below - although it makes a decent fist of ISO 800 and 1600 for certain types of shot, at lower size reproduction.

Tonight, we have fairly clear skies, so I thought I'd try out a moon shot. Since the camera has full manual control, I was able to set it up exactly as I wanted, and I'm genuinely surprised at how well it performed. I've done a tiny amount of post-processing on this - to remove a hint of luminance noise (inc. JPEG artefacts), increase clarity / contrast and add just a touch more sharpening, but nothing much. Straight out of camera, the results weren't hugely different, in all honesty. The biggest issues are JPEG compression and edge sharpening artefacts, but considering the camera, it's done rather well, IMHO.

I've taken worse shots than this with my DSLRs

Of course, it has many, many limitations - but I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it did. ISO 100 shouldn't be a challenge for most cameras, but the lens makes all the difference here...

That is a good moon shot. I have not done better with the FA* 300 I think. Even with 1.4 and/or 1.7x converters. Nicely shot. (Mind you I cant see it full res...)

[BigMackCam]

That is a good moon shot. I have not done better with the FA* 300 I think. Even with 1.4 and/or 1.7x converters. Nicely shot.

Thanks At this size - and artefacts aside, of course - I have only a few shots from my Hasselblad HV or A7 MkII + Tamron 150-600 that show slightly better detail. Not by much, though. My K-3 + DA*60-250 + HD 1.4x achieves the about the same.

(Mind you I cant see it full res...)

It's not bad, actually. The maximum equivalent focal length for the lens is "only" 600mm - tame by current bridge camera standards - so the reproduction in that shot isn't much lower than 1:1. Below is a 100% crop before any processing was applied.. OK, it's not stunning by any means, but I really don't think it's bad at all. At 1:2 repro, it's excellent, and even with my DSLRs I try not to go above 1:2...

[UncleVanya]

OK - maybe my FA* 300 has outperformed it but dang that's pretty freaking good. My FA* 300 with 1.4x outperforms my DA* 60-250 with 1.4x but both are very very good.