[onepentaxfan]

Hi y'all


First I want to tell every one (OK I mean y'all) that I am very happy to join this Pentax community. I will use this space to thank all those people who took the time and effort to share their pictures and write and post that endless stream of marvelous information about Pentax products and photography in general. I will introduce myself by sharing with you my Pentax photography history. It goes like this: Back in 1981 me my mother and my sister went on a touring trip to New York City near Christmas time. At that time my mother had this system to provide us with clothing. On Christmas she gave each of us a fair amount of money to buy clothes for the whole year. She told us that she would NOT give us a single extra penny for clothing until next Christmas and she advised us to spend that money wisely. My sister ran to the stores immediately. That year what I had in my mind was the Nikon FM2 camera my high school had for the school's newspaper reporter. I was not that reporter. Instead of going to a JC Penny I went to one of those NY camera stores to buy the camera of my dreams: the Nikon FM2. I could not afford it. Not even close. Then I told the guy that I was going to buy a Pentax K1000 which was my second choice. I couldn't afford it either. The guy showed me instead a black Yashika with a price tag near identical to the money I had in my pocket. I decided not to buy it. I asked him to show me other Pentax cameras. I finally bought a Pentax MV camera and walked out the store with some extra money to buy a pair of blue jeans and yes, some film rolls. I took all the pictures of my youth with that little camera. Literally thousands of pictures with my relatives and friends were taken with it. I took it everywhere. I still have it and still works perfectly fine.


Time passed. I graduated. Got a job and started to earn my own money. I met my wife and got married. Years later the photography bug stroked me again and I started to look for a camera. I bought a nice Nikon D5100. It takes superb pictures but the body is made of plastic, the lens is made mainly of plastic too and has a fragile articulated screen on the back, so I became quite "protective" about that camera. On that summer my family and I went on a car trip all the way to Washington D.C. One day during the long trip for some reason my wife took my Nikon camera and placed it on the car's floor between her feet while she was reading a book. I didn't like it. We got into an argument about the safety of my camera. After that incident I decided that that I was going to use the Nikon on my own for my hobby and an "expendable" camera for trips with wife and kids. I did some Internet research to find a used camera that I could carry without worrying too much if it had an "accident" . I saw a video on u tube about a guy that takes nice macro pictures of spiders and bugs using a Pentax K200D camera with an old manual lens placed backwards using an adaptor and a flash with a home made diffuser. The pictures aere so awesome. I went further on making an online research on that camera. One guy called it a "tank" camera. When I read that word I knew it was the perfect camera for my purpose. I bought a nice used copy on e bay complete with an 18-55mm auto focus lens.When I first got it it felt so solid in my hands! And it is even weather sealed! It even took the old lens from my youth Pentax MV camera!. Soon I was shooting more pictures with it than with the other Nikon camera. We like to travel. I just wrap it with some bandannas, or an old t shirt, toss it in my motorcycle's trunk and off I go with my wife to visit small Texas towns. One day we went to an antique shop and saw that they had an old Pentax lens behind the show case. I bought it for 14 dollars! I couldn't believe the lady just let it go for that small price. When I got back home I went to e bay to see how much it really was worth and found out that I could buy old Pentax lenses from the 80's not that cheap but at a very affordable prices. I bought two more M mount lenses. That's the way I became an enthusiastic Pentax user. Over time I bought the K3 camera even I don't really need it because after all the hobby of photography is more about taking pictures and experimenting with light settings and such that judging pictures on a computer screen. Anyway I still enjoy my new camera and those better pictures very much.

[MadMathMind]

Welcome! Perhaps we can make a Houston group. There used to be one, but no one has posted on it in 2 years.

Is your post title just ironic or do you happen to live/work down in the Clear Lake area?

[alamo5000]

Maybe one Saturday all of us can get together and have a dinner somewhere. I am not right in Houston but I am in the area.

[Docrwm]

Welcome Aboard!

[Obin Robinson]

Hello from League City! There's plenty of fellow Pentax shooters in the Houston area.


obin

[cooltouch]

Well, howdy from another Houston guy! I live about two or three miles southeast of the 249/SH Tollway interchange. Just moved here a couple of months ago, and still looking around for interesting outdoor areas to explore with my camera.

Count me in, if y'all want to put together a Houston area group. Should we have an acronym? HAPUG? PUOH? Maybe we should get Ricoh in there, too? PRUGH or PRUGOH . . . HARPUG . . . Then there's all those other M42 cameras out there too Fuji -- Practika -- Yashica -- more? Too much alphabet soup, methinks. So back to Pentax -- hey, and Takumar! . . . HAT . . . HAM42UG . . . TUGH . . . PUSET . . . TUSET . . . TUGSET . . .

Enough.

Oh, almost forgot. I too have an MV -- complete with a M50mm f/2. Cute little camera and decent enough if you can live with aperture priority auto only. No special story with mine. It was part of an outfit I bought so I just added it to my Pentax collection, which at the time consisted of only one other camera.

[Kerrowdown]

Welcome here, great intro, enjoy your photography with Pentax.