Aspiring Birder in Retirement
Been lurking for a couple months, so about time now to introduce myself. American living in Texas, but still feeling Californian, where I grew up. Travelled to India in 1967 at age 24 as a Peace Corps Volunteer with a Minolta camera of the era that took great photographs, mostly transparencies. Some years later, while working in Indonesia and based in Singapore, I traded the Minolta for a painting in Bali. That led to the purchase in the early 1970s of a Pentax Spotmatic F with several Takumar prime lenses, 28, 50, 70 and 135mm plus a 2x teleconverter to get some distance with the 135mm lens. The year 1974 was spent travelling in every SE Asian country except Vietnam (obviously) photographing Hindu and Buddhist temples (an interest from my years in India) ... and people! Oh, the people are so photogenic ... and pretty much you didn't have to ask permission back them. What a time! After returning to the States in 1975 I mostly gave up photography except later for a couple digital point-and-shoots I used for work (before cell phones).
Fast forward to 2019. Retired. Studying some mathematics and economics to keep me busy while my wife, a Texas Master Naturalist, is out watching birds and planting trees. Then the idea struck me: get a new SLR and photograph the birds that Pauline is identifying. We could spend more time together. After surveying the camera market I just couldn't resist the nostalgic urge to own another Pentax, this time a K-70 kitted with 18-135mm and 55-300mm zoom lenses. My next purchase was a 1.4x rear converter to boost the 55-300 up to a FF equivalent of 630mm at the far end, which is decent for an aspirant like myself, but still not enough for an experienced birder.
Lo and behold, soon after my Pentax Pauline purchased a Lumix ZS80, which despite of (or because of) its 1/2.3" sensor is a remarkably good birding camera with a 24-720mm FF equivalent focal range. And the Lumix has something that the Pentax doesn't have, one lens that does it all, distant birds and nearby culture (buildings, forests, people, whatever) that give the excursion some context. In Asia changing screw-mount lenses seemed simple to me then. But exposing a sensitive digital sensor to dust while changing an awkward (to me) bayonet-mount lens in the field (literally "in the field") is nerve racking and to be avoided. I lusted after the Tamron 18-400 lens, which, as we all know, is not available in a K mount. Maybe it's not the lens to be publishing wildlife photographs in National Geographic, but it's acceptable for an aspiring birder nevertheless.
So, my next purchase was the Pentax 18-270mm lens, which is a rebranded Tamron 18-270mm lens, which, interestingly, is now unavailable, its market having been cannibalized by the wildly successful Tamron 18-400. But the Pentax 18-270 plus the 1.4x rear converter supplies a FF equivalent focal range of about 40-580mm, which adequately suits my purposes (birds, culture, no lens changing). This combination produces good-to-excellent photos most of the time in good light, which is usually the case in birding. Some of the time autofocus doesn't lock on and some of the time the image is soft. But sticking with f/11, the sweet spot for the 18-270mm lens, helps. Big and expensive prime telephoto lenses are not an option for me ... yet.
There is an addendum to this story. Pauline is rapidly progressing as a photographer. Last week we purchased a 32MP APS-C Canon 90D with a Tamron 18-400mm lens for her. At the far end with a 1.6 crop factor that's 640mm with plenty of pixels in the sensor for cropping out distant subjects, a serious piece of birding kit. I'd really like to have that future with a Pentax camera (a KP successor maybe), but, after reading this forum for the last two months, that seems a distant future. Meanwhile I'm sticking with my K-70 (still lots to learn) and hoping against hope that there will be a Pentax 18-400mm lens. Why not? Pentax did it with the 18-270. How many more of those could there be to sell?
So, that's my Pentax story. I enjoy and appreciate this forum and visit lmost every day sniffing for news. If you're interested in photographs taken with the hodge-podge Pentax birding kit I've described you can find me on flickr as Noel Zinn. All the best.
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Originally posted by Des 
Post #1 by ndzinn
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