[Andreas_li]

Hello if you are reading!

I’m a 49 years old new member from Sweden and I will introduce myself by telling how I ended up being a member here.

As a young boy I was never really interested in photography. I was a basketballer and sportsman. As I grew up to manhood I travelled a lot, but always without a camera. I argued it’s better to buy postcards - taken by a professional photographer- than trying to photo shoot myself, geting unfocused photos with chopped off heads. But I do have a big postcard collection.

As I became a parent back in 1999 I and my former fiance bought a camera to document our growing daughter. I don’t remember the brand, it was a compact and mostly used by my girlfriend. When I got my second child in 2005 I bought my first digital. Once again mostly to document the growth of my first son, but also to take some pictures for homepages I was editing.

The camera I bought was a cheap compact with the name Advent MP 5.1. It was the camera with the lowest price in the store. But I came to love digital photography. I didn’t need to pay for developement of unfocused pictures of people with chopped of heads; if I took a bad picture I just deleted it. And you could take experimental photos without destroying a film roll. By the way, shall I mention that the Advent compact had a lense manufactured or at least licensed from Pentax?

So I started taking photos back in 2005 and have taken a lot of them ever since, for the first years with cheap cameras bought on sales. I argued that if I bought an expensive one I would not dare to bring it climbing a rock or crawling in the sand watching a sunset on a beach.

After a few years I ended up always having four or five cameras. A more expensive and better one for special occasions, another for regular daily use, another for visiting the beach or doing excursions where I potentially could drop it and so on. I did at times consider buying a DSLR, but in the end I stayed with the compacts. I thought a DSLR was too big wanting something in my pocket that I could always bring. Most of the pictures I take are just like a documentation of life and I felt it would be too much hassle with a DSLR.

So what absout Pentax? Well, most cameras I did own ended up being Panasonics and Sonys. But for many years (2012-2019) I did have a Pentax X-5 among my other compacts.
And though I liked the X-5, which I had won on a lottery, it was not my favourite. Not at all it was not good, but it was as big as a DSLR and did not fit my pocket.

Just two years ago I felt I needed to upgrade my compact travel zoom, but felt it was a little bit too expensive for me at the time. So I came with the brilliant idea I could sell my old travel zoom at an internet trading site and buy a more recent model secondhand at a small cost. That did work well and I thought like why not upgrade all my cameras the same way.

So, if you are still reading you might start wondering what the heck is this guy doing here among ”pentaxians”. This dude bought postcards in the film era and then he played around with mostly cheap compacts, among which only one was a Pentax. And it was not even the favourite! Well, we’re now actually about to get there.

A year ago I had been devoting myself to try ro ”upgrade” cameras by finding secondhand bargains and selling them with a small profit, trying to get a newer model of a compact camera I wished for at low or no real cost. In this buying and selling state I bought a collection of 13 cameras at an online auction, just to sell them on. It was a collection of pretty old digital compacts, untested and some without battery or loader and I did not intend to keep any of them. I bought them all for like 50 dollars, but I knew at least one of the compacts could be sold for 30 if it worked and another for 25. And one of those old cameras in that collection was a DSLR, so I thought I could profit by selling the collection item by item.

Since I never owned a DSLR I thought I was not in a rush to put it on sale. I could play around with it for a month or so.
The DSLR in the collection happened to be a K-x, and I immediately became very found of it. I liked the feel and grip of it. I loved the mechanical sound of the shutter. It produced nice pictures. I also found it so cool that the camera used the same mount as old non-digitals. Instead of selling that camera I started to look for vintage lenses. The first I bought was a quite awkward MC Chinon 35-70, but I got hooked. Today I have nine different K-mount lenses. The lense reviews was what actually brought me to this site in the first place.

The K-x, a red one, that I got so found of, is no longer in my possession. I sold it with some lenses and instead bought a K-5, which is my current Pentax camera. I do by now also own some other DSLRs, but I use adapters to shoot with my Pentax lenses.

Life is full of chances and what ifs. What if that DSLR in the collection I bought would have had been a Canon or a Nikon: would I have had the same semimagical experience that I had with the K-x? Would I have been joining a Canon forum? Would I have had stayed with my old habit of only using pocket-sized compact cameras? Would I ever by chance have had visiterad this community? A community I now have deciderat to be member of.

[kcmadr]

Welcome!
It’s interesting how we all arrive here. I used Pentax film cameras, so the choice was logical, but the way the cameras feel in my hands is very comfortable, and they just feel *good*.
For however long you’re here, enjoy it.

[Andreas_li]

Thanks

[sergysergy]

The K-x, a red one, that I got so found of, is no longer in my possession .

A red Pentax K-x brought me here about 10 years ago

[Nakedgun]

Welcome!

[hcc]

Welcome to the Forum. You will enjoy it as its members are always very supportive and share constructive comments.
Look forward to see your shots and read your posts.
...from the sunshine state of Australia, down under.

[Andreas_li]

A red Pentax K-x brought me here about 10 years ago

😀 nice to meet you 😀

---------- Post added 10-09-21 at 12:15 AM ----------

Welcome!

Thank you 😃

---------- Post added 10-09-21 at 12:16 AM ----------

Welcome to the Forum. You will enjoy it as its members are always very supportive and share constructive comments.
Look forward to see your shots and read your posts.
...from the sunshine state of Australia, down under.

Thank you…from the cold up north 😛😀

[Kerrowdown]

Welcome to the forum, great intro... feel I've known you for years.

[Andreas_li]

Welcome to the forum, great intro... feel I've known you for years.

Thanks Happy to be part of this community!

[Michail_P]

Welcome to the community! Interesting story. The important thing is that you have finally found the right place to evolve your passion. Greetings from Greece!

[Andreas_li]

Welcome to the community! Interesting story. The important thing is that you have finally found the right place to evolve your passion. Greetings from Greece!

Thanks for welcoming me

[MarkJerling]

Welcome Andreas!
The K5 is a good camera - my daughter now uses mine.
Enjoy your photographic journey.

Kind regards,
Mark

New Zealand

[Andreas_li]

Welcome Andreas!
The K5 is a good camera - my daughter now uses mine.
Enjoy your photographic journey.

Kind regards,
Mark
:aotearoa:
New Zealand

Thanks Mark