Originally posted by robbiec Most photographers working in a SOCO role don't have a choice of camera to use, it comes with the job. Same with non freelance photo journalists. Looking at the Pentax videos for the K-3iii and it comes across as weighed more towards artform than recording an event. That's my opinion and reading of it. I could well be wrong.
Christmas 1966 - my sophomore year at Purdue University - I and a friend were wandering around downtown Lafayette IN when we saw a snazzy looking "CB&Q" locomotive in a hobby store window.
The conversation for the next several blocks was something like {over and over again}
me: "I never saw a prototype locomotive like that"
him: "Tyco wouldn't just make it up" {Tyco was the model manufacturer}
A few months later, Jim Boyd {who supplied many of the photos used for covers of magazines devoted to railroads back then} showed some of his slides at Purdue, and I came to realize that photos were more reliable than my memory was - so I began taking photos of what I saw. This began as just photos of railroads, but that next summer I went to Chicago, and discovered that the CB&Q was replacing their 1st generation diesel freight locomotives and re-painting all of them {see photo below - the near model has the freight paint scheme I remember while the back one uses the one they had switched to}
Over time, I noticed that my whole world was changing, so I began to "record the world as I see it, before tomorrow comes and everything changes" - one hobby had led to another.
In the Age of Film I used mostly Kodachrome 25 - now I use JPEG and
choose to follow the same standards used by those who cover the Olympics {I "level", crop, and change brightness / contrast, but nothing substantial}.
Around ten years ago I posted a photo on a web site devoted to a particular railroad - now a tourist line - of a depot I had photographed in 1971.
At the top of a telegraph pole next to the station was an ugly box, which an artist might have 'removed' when he scanned the old slide.
Promptly, another member posted, asking me to post a photo of just the box - he was head of a "Friends" team that was trying to re-create the telegraph system in appearance {not in function},
and he had never seen that box; the website limited the size of posted images, so he wanted to get a better view of just the box. On September 30, 2017, I posted an image at another site of
the last passenger train into Lafayette - this was the 50th anniversary of the event - and another member suggested that the local historical society might like a copy .... and they were thrilled to get it.
Incidentally, I eventually realized that Tyco had combined two paint schemes for that model - the silver paint from the CB&Q passenger units that normally went with understated lettering and the lettering from the CB&Q freight units that normally went with white / light gray paint.
added: and I have had fun for over fifty years taking these photos - isn't that Pentax's ultimate goal?