[garywakeling]

Golden Hour theme on 27th. In rare case of bright weather that would be midday Can't promise that theme.

I'm in with M85/2. I decided this already long a go. I have interesting month coming and want to have good glass to capture it. I'll be on vacation for most of the month. only 4 work days , and I'll have two weeks trip to Italy to Deaflympics before Xmas. So high hopes of seeing the sun more than I have this month. Weather typically takes turn for a bit better during December also in Finland which make things photographycally more interesting.

You can do it Ismo with your new skis ......

[Grippy]

Merry Christmas all!

January thread is up:

Single in January 2020 - PentaxForums.com

Hmm. Time to quickly buy a new and interesting lens 😁
A Chrissie present for myself

[iheiramo]

You can do it Ismo with your new skis ......

Thanks for heads up. There's a slight chance for clouds to open a little tomorrow at midday, so we'll see

[W412ren]

Golden hour! - You've got yo be kidding

Flat and grey skies this morning, flat and grey skies now; golden hour is 1505-1605 here in Fareham - flat and grey skies forecast for then too!
Still, I'll wait until 3pm and see what happens.

[Y.goussyra]

Golden Hour , good theme

[Minimonster]

As for golden hour today, I didn't see any sun at all. Just grey mist and drizzle all day.

[Cerebum]

And to you, fulla.

(It’s a Merry KP-mas here)

Lordy Lordy. I remember my first weeks, agonising over which grip (medium) and deciding what to set as what try setting the exposure fx button as exposure lock you have so many customisables to fiddle with. But the it is glorious. Merry Christmas

[Tsuken]

Lordy Lordy. I remember my first weeks, agonising over which grip (medium) and deciding what to set as what try setting the exposure fx button as exposure lock you have so many customisables to fiddle with. But the it is glorious. Merry Christmas

No extra grips in my box - just as well I’m happy with the small one.

Already set an fx button as AE 8) I think I used whichever one is set to do the level; I don’t turn that off, so I don’t need a button for it.

Biggest thing so far is getting used to where the AF button is, and refraining from hitting the green button all the time. I’m getting better.

Loving the function dial, though I do wish I could set it to change the AE metering mode. :/

... edit ... duh; AE is one of the standard ones for the function dial; I simply hadn’t investigated anything other than the three custom settings ... dum-dum xP

Thanks man, and merry Christmas to you too

[iheiramo]

Day of the slopes, so had time. I tried to catch up with comments. I think I got thru 10 days. Better than nothing.

[garywakeling]

Well another month down and time to review the lens. I chose this lens as it has the honour or being the first Pentax lens designed for a digital SLR. Reviews are generally not very positive, I think perhaps some of the later FAJ kit zoom lenses may have lessened the perception of the FAJ lens designation. Coming as the kit lens with the horribly named *ist D camera. Whilst not being a DA lens as such it was optimised for the crop sensor of the APS-C sensor. Being an FA lens it does cover the full image sensor on the full frame K1 as well. Back when this lens was released super wide was considered 15mm and zoom lenses starting around 24-50mm were available, however not very common. The performance of the lens has surprised me in the ease of use and quality of the images. 18mm gives a nice wide view and most full frame film cameras used a 35mm lens as a standard traditionally in the point and shoot era. The sharpness falls off a little on the edges, however you have to go searching the image to find it.
There is slight vignetting that can occasionally show itself however it is easily eliminated in software. The minimum focal distance is close enough to get those close up wide angle shots. I think that for the price it is a bargain and more than adequate as a substitute for the 15-30mm 2.8.

Here are a few of my favourite images from the month

[Benz3ne]

Another month whereby I burnt out around 2/3 of the way into the month. Could easily have squeezed out some more pictures but, simply, didn't.

No surprises that this lens, the D-FA 100mm f/2.8 Macro WR, is astoundingly capable and sharp, and makes a good medium-telephoto on the K-70 too. It does fail in that it doesn't feature a limiter so sometimes, not often but sometimes, hunts for focus throughout the entire range. That being said, it does quick-shift so you can get close, tap that back-button and it'll snap into focus appropriately quickly. It'll also sometimes 'hunt' a little bit for the finer aspects of focus, almost as if it's in AF-C mode, but again this isn't very often. Manual focus is nice, and with all macro lenses takes some effort to nail the finer aspects of focusing, especially at wider apertures where the DoF is narrow. Bokeh is very pleasant and visibly rounded regardless of aperture (from my experience). It is possible to force starbursts but this isn't the forte of the lens by any means. CA is present at wider apertures, but is very easily dealt with, especially in Lightroom where there is a specific 'lens correction' profile for it.

All-in-all, it's an astoundingly capable lens. I've used it in some light rain, too, where it coped magnificently, and wouldn't hesitate to do the same again down the line. This one is well and truly staying in my arsenal. Below, a few favourites of mine from this month:

[zubzubadoodle]

End of the month with the Pentax M50 f2. I did not get on with this lens. I fount it difficult to get focused correctly, it vignettes badly and occasionally turns what should be a nice photo into something grim and murky. When it works, the colours can be bright and nicely saturated, if a bit on the primary side with not much subtlety. So when it comes off the camera it's going straight to the bottom of the toybox.

[Scout]

Hi all, first I wish you an happy healthy new year,
exempt of disasters of all sorts (bushfires ...), a lot of marvellous shots, and having a lot of fun !


My feedback about the DA 50mm F1.8 plastic :

Very complementary to the DA 35mm F2.4 (both to keep when travelling thanks to their light weights)
Very good to excellent ++ IQ, if not slighly better than the 35mm
Very good portrait and object lens
50mm on APSC (75mm equiv) + F1.8 is very nice for bokeh separation (moreover saves a lot of dark situations)

Modern rendering (like the 35mm) which can be a plus
Very much better than the 35 for manual focusing (less loseness, quite pleasant in fact)

Advantage (compared to wider angles) : forces to look differently and cut in the subject
Drawback : unatural way of looking around (I often want to make multi stitches when I am in front of a scene, not really a landscape lens)
not versatile


Conclusion : it's a keeper, and good for travel situation in my opinion (low light situations), It's not in my favorite range of focals (in between)


Favorite shots of the month :













I'll make a break next month with the challenge, not because I don't like (one of the best exercises), but it takes quite time and energy and it makes me "need" to acquire all your fabulous lenses ...

[Tsuken]

So, this has been a somewhat different "Single In" challenge for me - involving two cameras, and two lenses, though one focal length.

First, the Soligor 35mm f 3.5: If not for the fungus, it would have stayed on for the month - and I would have tried to affix it permanently to my M42 to K adapter. It really is a lovely lens. Great to use, feels reassuringly solid, makes excellent images (as long as there's no flare to display the fungus - which utterly ruins any pic in which it appears).

Second, the Plastic Fantastic DA 35 mm f 2.4: I have loved this lens since I first put it on my K-30. This month it also did not disappoint. Sharp as a sharp thing (if not as eye-bleeding as say my Sigma 30/1.4), renders beautifully, focuses well (albeit I hardly ever focused manually; perhaps I should try that some more in the coming month). Great bit of glass (and plastic), and amazing for the small price.

Third, the KP: OMG O_O I'm still coming to grips with it a bit, as I made a decision to keep away from Auto and P modes. I've spent most of the time in TAv, with the custom functions on the dial set to AF point, exposure compensation, and AF (single/continuous/auto) - though that last might change, as I wasn't super-impressed with my first crack at using AF-C, but I will give it another go. I've noticed some photos to be cleaner than others at the same ISO; I found the same thing with my K-30, but I think it might be a bit more noticeable, with the KP's results generally being so clean that anything that isn't really stands out.

The KP plus the Plastic Fantastic ... OMGOMG I'm loving this combination. Looking forward to a full month of it starting today.

My favourite shots from the month:

Soligor:


Missy-moo by -Occasionally Focused-

Plastic:


Minus man by -Occasionally Focused-


Bricky by -Occasionally Focused-


Tarts for Christmas by -Occasionally Focused-

Plastic on KP:


KP Lori by -Occasionally Focused-


Olaf’s Citroen by -Occasionally Focused-

Ginger maybe by -Occasionally Focused-

End of the month with the Pentax M50 f2.

My feedback about the DA 50mm F1.8 plastic :

Interesting pair of posts - as I have the M50 and have been thinking I might want/need the DA 50. I do like the M; it was the first Pentax lens I bought (for use on my Lumix at the time), I quite like the focal length, and some of the images have been nice - but I also share all your gripes with it.

As for the DA 50 - that sounds ever more enticing.

---------- Post added 1st Jan 2020 at 07:56 AM ----------

[Cerebum]

Well! That was an eye opener! I have owned the Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar for ages but I never really used it. The lens needs a flanged adapter, thankfully I have two it is such a labour intensive lens to use so it slowed me down a lot. Last month I used the KP with the Pentax-M 135mm and it wasn't a great success so I approached this with trepidation. I needn't have worried because, on the silver KP, it was as fabulous as it looked, in fact, it has become my favourite M42 lens.

Happy new year guys. Thanks for all the support and I will see you next month, next year, tomorrow!