[Sandy Hancock]

Joan and I walked off the ship at 0820 on Friday 23rd, and we just arrived home at 2100 on Sunday 25th. That time time has been wholly taken up by transit tedium:
Two hours sitting on the dock waiting for a car to pick us up from the ship.
Half hour drive to the airport.
Two hours in the airport foyer before our check-in desk opened.
Three more hours in a gate lounge before boarding.
Fourteen hour flight from Seattle to Dubai (over Baffin Island, Greenland and probably the North Pole).
Seven hours waiting in Dubai for our connection.
Another fourteen hour flight to Adelaide.
Half hour drive home.

Not that I'm looking for sympathy - it was a great trip

I only mention it by way of an excuse for having no photo for the 24th or 25th, and only a crappy safety for the 23rd. I work first thing tomorrow morning so I'm going to bed now. I'll re-boot with the K 200/2.5 tomorrow, and catch up with comments in the next day or so.

[iheiramo]

I'll head out for the weekend today after work and don't take computer with me. Therefore I'll post Friday and Saturday shots on Sunday.

...And so Sunday becomes someday. My computer won't start. It worked fine on Friday and now blue screen of death is all I manage to get out of it. Need to take it to support tomorrow, as I can't do no work until it is running again.

I got the shots. Will get to pp and postimg once computer is running again.

[Sandy Hancock]

Hi Ismo. I waved as we flew overhead, but you may have missed it!

I just checked the map. We flew between Svalbard and Iceland after leaving Greenland, so actually a fair way from the North Pole. Bummer.

[blackcloudbrew]

Joan and I walked off the ship at 0820 on Friday 23rd, and we just arrived home at 2100 on Sunday 25th. That time time has been wholly taken up by transit tedium:
Two hours sitting on the dock waiting for a car to pick us up from the ship.
Half hour drive to the airport.
Two hours in the airport foyer before our check-in desk opened.
Three more hours in a gate lounge before boarding.
Fourteen hour flight from Seattle to Dubai (over Baffin Island, Greenland and probably the North Pole).
Seven hours waiting in Dubai for our connection.
Another fourteen hour flight to Adelaide.
Half hour drive home.

Not that I'm looking for sympathy - it was a great trip

I only mention it by way of an excuse for having no photo for the 24th or 25th, and only a crappy safety for the 23rd. I work first thing tomorrow morning so I'm going to bed now. I'll re-boot with the K 200/2.5 tomorrow, and catch up with comments in the next day or so.

Rest Sandy your work is done.

[robgski]

That time time has been wholly taken up by transit tedium:

That is one itinerary packed with a lot of waiting, but little time for rest. I look forward to seeing more pictures from your trip.

[iheiramo]

Apparently windows had done some update while I was gone and messed up everything. I hope it starts to work after reinstalling everything. That is assuming there is nothing broken inside. I have a substitute computer from work, which is actually more powerfull than my own, but need to install photo editor to continue.

[Sandy Hancock]

I've now missed three days in a row, so I'm going to bow out and recharge the batteries for September. So I'll sum up now.

The K 200/2.5 is the fastest 200mm lens Pentax has ever made. Not surprisingly then, it is a big, heavy lump of glass. It has a 77mm filter and it's rather front heavy. Even on the K-1 and a Peak Design Slide sling, it was never a particularly comfortable carry. On the other hand, the retractible built-in hood is nifty, and locks into the fully extended position with a pleasingly soft click. The focus ring is very nicely damped, but despite its ridiculously long minimum focussing distance the focal throw is very long indeed. It is also not particularly sharp wide open, so manual focussing on a DSLR is not easy. Luckily the AF confirmation beep is nicely accurate, so that is a viable work-around.

Optically it is a nice lens. While there is a certain glow wide open, there is still plenty of fine detail in the images. Stopped down it is sharp enough for just about anyone. The teeny-tiny spider entombed in my copy was never an issue. Out of focus rendering is pleasing, but the old coatings do not deal with direct sun at all well. Chromatic aberrations were easily dealt with in Lightroom, but required a little more attention to detail than the usual single click with most modern lenses.

While I was overseas, I substituted the K200 for the more travel friendly FA 135/2.8. In stark contrast it is very compact, reasonably light and hast fast accurate autofocus, with a much more useful MFD. It competently handled even fast action in the at times extremely low light of the ship's theatre. Image quality leaves nothing to be desired - it is sharper at f/2.8 than the K200 and (to my eyes at least) the bokeh is nicer.

To be honest, I can't see myself keeping the K200. The FA135 is a definite keeper - it will make a particularly good partner to the K 28/2.0 and A 50/1.2 as they share the same 52mm filter diameter.

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Last edited by Sandy Hancock; 08-26-2019 at 10:23 PM.

[Tsuken]

Welp ... I don’t have anything like Sandy’s excuse (explanation) for my relative absence. I’m just not in a photography headspace very much. I’ve been making sure I take something every day though - and about to post the last few days.

I thought I’d show this though, of my borked baby Tak:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1qE_krH55W/?igshid=1dgp9xec9t15c

Focus ring was totally frozen immobile this afternoon, but I finally got it spinning again. And how...

[pepperberry farm]

Welp ... I don’t have anything like Sandy’s excuse (explanation) for my relative absence. I’m just not in a photography headspace very much. I’ve been making sure I take something every day though - and about to post the last few days.

I thought I’d show this though, of my borked baby Tak:

@tsumabiken on Instagram: ?So then. Slip-sliding focus ring then. A little earlier it totally locked up. Gave it a bit of the jandal and now it moves alright ;) (Ok,??

Focus ring was totally frozen immobile this afternoon, but I finally got it spinning again. And how...

aye- borked it is....

[Tsuken]

aye- borked it is....

So you can imagine my difficulty in setting it hyperfocal

Squeeze to focus is ok - just makes one slow down

[Sandy Hancock]

I thought I’d show this though, of my borked baby Tak:

Extraordinary. I'll never complain again!

[robgski]

Squeeze to focus is ok - just makes one slow down

As they say, slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Tough break, to be sure.

[garywakeling]

Welp ... I don’t have anything like Sandy’s excuse (explanation) for my relative absence. I’m just not in a photography headspace very much. I’ve been making sure I take something every day though - and about to post the last few days.

I thought I’d show this though, of my borked baby Tak:

@tsumabiken on Instagram: ?So then. Slip-sliding focus ring then. A little earlier it totally locked up. Gave it a bit of the jandal and now it moves alright ;) (Ok,??

Focus ring was totally frozen immobile this afternoon, but I finally got it spinning again. And how...

Wow what a pig to use, congratulations on getting any results from that spinner

[iheiramo]

I have C1 running on the computer again. I used other email to make sure I don't spent any of my licence. Trial period should be a lot longer than my time with this computer.

I'm up to date with posts. Don't have time to catch up with commenting at the moment, but there were some magnificent shots.

[blackcloudbrew]

Gack! No photos today. I'm getting that burnt out feeling at the end of the month again. Tomorrow's another day though.