[degral]

The Minolta XE-1 arrived! Overall in nice condition. Only the film advance is buggy. Must need a bit of lighter fluid treatment maybe to get it to return consistently. A nice camera and yes pretty heavy but I must be biased. I still think the Spotmatic F is a nicer camera.

[WPRESTO]

Zoom lenses are excellent as long as you keep in mind primes are much better

Zoom lenses have come a very long way since Voigtlander released the Zoomar in 1959. Below are the full frame and a crop of an image taken with an Olympus 12~100mm zoom at 100mm = the "weak" end of most long range zoom lenses. Would the IQ be better had the image been taken with a 100mm prime? Probably, Would you see the difference instantly on an image posted here on PF? I very much doubt it.

[Lord Lucan]

Vivitar Auto Extension Tubes

I got these from a shop on Ebay for £19 including postage. They look unused, and even came with a Vivitar body cap and a Pentax lens cap. The quality looks good, all metal, and the aperture stop-down works fine even when all three are stacked.

I have an M 100mm macro lens, and I have bought these tubes to copy some old 35mm transparencies with 1:1 magnification on my K-1. It looks as if I can do that with just the 20 and 36mm together. I wonder if the 12mm is of much use generally.

[WPRESTO]

I wonder if the 12mm is of much use generally.

One use I make of the shortest tube = My 200mm f4.0 ED macro has a tripod foot with two knobs, one for rotation, the other for removing the foot completely. Those knobs bump against the overhanging pentaprism and pop-up flash of all modern Pentax DSLRs (re: the lens was introduced in 1984) which prevents the camera from being rotated to vertical orientation. The short extension tubes allows a Pentax DSLR to be rotated to vertical when that lens is mounted. Because the lens is used exclusively for close-up and macro, the loss of infinity focus isn't even noticed.

[Marcus Rowland]

Another crappy job lot, sold as untested. Won't even bother listing the contents because it's mostly junk, the main item I got it for (a Canon Eos 500 with 28-90) is full of fungus, and so forth. Luckily I didn't pay much. Fortunately the other two I'm waiting for are from a charity seller that has never sent me a bad item.

Also nothing useful at today's car boot sale apart from a box of mini-disks and Office 2008 for Mac.

Disappointed after yesterday's jackpot.

[photoptimist]

[
I wonder if the 12mm is of much use generally.
]

Short extension tubes have at least three (occasional) uses (in addition to WPRESTO's spacer use):

1. Macro w/ Wide Angle: 12mm extension on a 15 mm lens gets you to 1:1.25 (A longer tube might put the focus point on or inside the front element)

2. Focus limiter: 12mm extension on 400mm lens limits to the focus out to 14 meters (46 ft) to keep the lens from racking out to infinity

3. MFD improver: 12 mm extension on old 135mm lens can reduce the MFD from 1.5 m (5 ft) to under 1 m (3 ft)

[Wasp]

I was running out of storage space, so I picked up a Western Digital 1.5TB drive today.

[Benz3ne]

I was running out of storage space, so I picked up a Western Digital 1.5TB drive today.

I’ll need to do the same before long I think!

[gatorguy]

I’ll need to do the same before long I think!

LOL... just ordered a pair of 2TB Seagate Backup Plus drives a few minutes ago. Red is cheaper than black surprisingly.

I had a nasty Win10 surprise early this week with a Windows update wiping files. Fortunately that computer was backed up but others I have aren't. They sure will be now.

[Canada_Rockies]

LOL... just ordered a pair of 2TB Seagate Backup Plus drives a few minutes ago. Red is cheaper than black surprisingly.

I had a nasty Win10 surprise early this week with a Windows update wiping files. Fortunately that computer was backed up but others I have aren't. They sure will be now.

I use a MacBook Air as my computer these days, replacing a really nice ASUS 15 inch laptop that had the whole operating system trashed by Windows 10 two months after the warranty expired. The DBMS on which I earn money runs under Windows only, of course, along with my music notation software. I now run Windows 10 in a virtual machine on the Mac OS using Parallels. Both the main drive and the virtual drive are automatically continuously backed up by Mac's Time Machine onto a 4 Gb WD drive in the background. ( I believe there is a similar backup system available for Windows ). Two weeks ago, guess what. Windows went into LaLa land. I lost all of 2 hours working time putting it all back together.

[Fluegel]

WPRESTO,

Zoomlenses have been improved over the years, there is no doubt about that.
Two things are still a bit of a problem: distortion and loss of contrast resulting in less resolution.
The Schneider Kreuznach 140-280 zoomlens for Hasselblad is an excellent lens though.
It is the only non Zeiss lens in existence for the V system.

[monochrome]

I won this 6627 actuations KP on eBay by a margin of $2.84 under my maximum bid of $555.55. $602 is the total after shipping and Pennsylvania 6% sales tax. Hoping it can replace my K3 for birding. The K3’s high ISO images are far too noisy, especially compared with my K5iis. I’m glad I kept most of the spare batteries I’d purchased for the Ks2, which was a mistake I quickly re-sold. Now to sell some lenses and other equipment to pay for the new acquisition.

You’re going to be very happy with your KP and AF lenses. For me, the VF is challenging with MF lenses but I use the K-1 for those anyway.

[mattb123]

I bought a new car today, a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek Limited. My wife got a new job that will require driving around the state a bit so we had to get something newer, efficient, and safe. Seems like a good car for our needs. Cool tech in it for phone integration and safety.

[steamloco76]

Short extension tubes have at least three (occasional) uses (in addition to WPRESTO's spacer use):

1. Macro w/ Wide Angle: 12mm extension on a 15 mm lens gets you to 1:1.25 (A longer tube might put the focus point on or inside the front element)

2. Focus limiter: 12mm extension on 400mm lens limits to the focus out to 14 meters (46 ft) to keep the lens from racking out to infinity

3. MFD improver: 12 mm extension on old 135mm lens can reduce the MFD from 1.5 m (5 ft) to under 1 m (3 ft)

I’ve carried a 12mm tube in my main bag since the early 1990’s when I was using a Tokina AT-X Pro AF 80-200 F2.8 all the time. The big zoom only focused to six feet limiting its usefulness for small subjects. I never thought about it’s ability as a focus limiter.

---------- Post added 03-08-20 at 06:18 AM ----------

You’re going to be very happy with your KP and AF lenses. For me, the VF is challenging with MF lenses but I use the K-1 for those anyway.

I use the ME-053 magnifying eyepiece on all my Pentax DSLRs, which helps a fair amount. Hoping the AF with my vintage F*300/4.5 is useable. The lens worked well in AF on the K-S2 I briefly owned but not so well with my K-5iis or K-3. The longer glass I own is all manual focus.

[WPRESTO]

I bought a new car today, a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek Limited. My wife got a new job that will require driving around the state a bit so we had to get something newer, efficient, and safe. Seems like a good car for our needs. Cool tech in it for phone integration and safety.

If you've never had a Subaru before, something subtle about them you must think about to notice, they have really good forward visibility. Foresters are the best, but even M's little Impresa has excellent visibility from the driver's seat. Something about the size & shape of the window, the shape of the dashboard and the slope of the hood work especially well. The only vehicle we've owned that had forward visibility as good as the Forester was our Chrysler mini-van.