[lgross1949]

Hi all, I've taken a day or two to look over the forum and am liking what I see!

I've been away from my SLR for a few years and have been missing the quality and the control of my good old Asahi Pentax S1a 35mm. Bought it in 1969 at the PX in Athens Greece. It's the screw mount with no light meter and I always either carried a light meter or made educated guesses at the settings. Along with that I have the Super-Takumar 1:2/55, 1:3.5/28 & the 1:5.6/200. And a Milda Automatic 1:3.8 f=75-205mm zoom.

Well, when the decent point and shoots hit the market I abandoned film and took to the digital age, for better or for worse.

My Sis bought an ist D last year and after seeing the difference in the quality from my point and shoot. (Nikon) I had to get back to dSLR. So, as a starter I found a good deal on a K200d with the 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL II. and also a Sigma 70-300mm DG Macro Zoom.

I bought a M42 screw mount adapter for my old lenses but, haven't had much luck with them as the lenses are slightly loose in the mount. So, I've abandoned that idea for the time being.

Anyway, I'm up against the learning curve again and I know that a lot of it will come back to me but also all of the collective knowledge on the forum will be of vast help in the months to come.

Oh, one last comment. I've also abandoned Microsoft and gone to Linux. (open source, as in all free) There are several very good photo manipulation and album maker programs and I'm not that familiar with FS but I think between Gimp and Digikam you can do many of the same tweeks. I am currently using PCLinuxOS and love it.

Good to be back in the SLR saddle again!
Thanks for being there!

Les

[Ole]

Welcome to the forum! Looking forward to your posts!

[nupentaxian]

welcome, i'm pretty new here too...

[heliphoto]

Welcome to the forum! Congrats on the K200, I love mine.

Those are are some great old lenses, you've got to get them working (at least the 28/3.5 - one of my personal faves). Do you know, is the m42 adapter you have the genuine pentax one? I've heard complaints about the off brand ones (which come with a tool for removal), and have stayed with the pentax brand ones (which come in a green bag) and can be purchased from PentaxWebstore for less than on ebay (generally). A good resource for m42 advice is this blog post and the links at the bottom of the post.

Your history with the light meter will certainly stand you in good stead using these more advanced camera's (esp. with the m42 lenses).

I know LightZone has a linux variant, and has a unique interface for tweaking photos. I found the mac version a tad unstable and ended up shelling out for Adobe Lightroom (great software imho). I've seen people claiming success using windows versions of some photo software on linux using wine, but I've not tried it. I have a server at home running ubuntu, but work on a mac day to day.

Happy shooting...

[lgross1949]

Hi Josh, thanks for the input on the m42 adapter! It is an aftermarket w/ the removal tool. I will most certainly look into the pentax version. I did love those lenses and they are the real deal too!

Oh, I enjoyed your photos too Josh, thanks for shareing them!

So far I've been able to do pretty much what I wanted with Digikam and Gimp. But, as you mentioned I can either use wine or one of the other emulators. I did use Virtual Box for a couple of windows based programs but soon learned that I could live without them.

Thanks all of you for your welcome as well!

Les