[rayallen]

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Another wonderful photo Ray! - and I didn't know that .

Thanks, Richard. Happy to help out.

[Dartmoor Dave]

I have to ask what is a ' vanilla ' K10 and hope you find one ?

When something's "vanilla" it's sort of conventional, uncontroversial, and. . . well. . . just normal. So, as a GX-10 user, I've always tended to call the standard Pentax version the vanilla K10D.

The Samsung GX-10, meanwhile, is the "kinky" K10D. The one with the sleeker body and the razzle-dazzle menus and the neckstrap made of leather and chains. The one that all the really sexy lenses want to be mounted on.

So when it comes to replacing my splatticated camera I've got to make a choice. Do I settle down for a cosy pipe and slippers suburban existence with a K10D? Or do I hitch myself to another GX-10 and take another walk on the wild side?

Ah, who am I kidding? It's going to be another GX-10. In the meantime I've got a K-S1 with aperture block failure, with an 18-55mm that I got for £10 and glued the aperture at about f/8 to make it useable. And that's not kinky, it's downright perverse.

[dbs]

When something's "vanilla" it's sort of conventional, uncontroversial, and. . . well. . . just normal. So, as a GX-10 user, I've always tended to call the standard Pentax version the vanilla K10D.

The Samsung GX-10, meanwhile, is the "kinky" K10D. The one with the sleeker body and the razzle-dazzle menus and the neckstrap made of leather and chains. The one that all the really sexy lenses want to be mounted on.

So when it comes to replacing my splatticated camera I've got to make a choice. Do I settle down for a cosy pipe and slippers suburban existence with a K10D? Or do I hitch myself to another GX-10 and take another walk on the wild side?

Ah, who am I kidding? It's going to be another GX-10. In the meantime I've got a K-S1 with aperture block failure, with an 18-55mm that I got for £10 and glued the aperture at about f/8 to make it useable. And that's not kinky, it's downright perverse.

Hi Dave
Interesting
I have seen the Samsung 12 - 24 and that looked rather plain and bland compared to the DA.
Whatever you find / buy keep on shooting I / we miss the ponies

[stevejo]

Ah, who am I kidding? It's going to be another GX-10. In the meantime I've got a K-S1 with aperture block failure

Could the solenoid out of the GX-10 be used to fix your K-S1? If the GX-10 is already pre-disassembled you are part of the way there already.

[Dartmoor Dave]

Could the solenoid out of the GX-10 be used to fix your K-S1? If the GX-10 is already pre-disassembled you are part of the way there already.

I thought about it but I just don't think my soldering skills are up to the job, and hearing that @ChristianRock ended up with a damaged body shell on his K-S1 has been enough to convince me not to try. And I'm sure as heck not planning on spending any money to fix the K-S1.

To be honest, there's a part of me that's getting tired of lugging around even the minimalist amount of DSLR gear that I carry, which is perhaps why I'm feeling so unbothered about having dropped the GX-10. For a while now I've been wondering if a good quality compact like the original Leica X or a Fuji X100 might be better suited to the role I want photography to play in my life these days. After all, back in the nineties I used nothing but an Olympus XA with a fixed 35mm lens for almost the whole decade, and I took some of the best photos of my life.

[ChristianRock]

I thought about it but I just don't think my soldering skills are up to the job, and hearing that @ChristianRock ended up with a damaged body shell on his K-S1 has been enough to convince me not to try. And I'm sure as heck not planning on spending any money to fix the K-S1.

To be honest, there's a part of me that's getting tired of lugging around even the minimalist amount of DSLR gear that I carry, which is perhaps why I'm feeling so unbothered about having dropped the GX-10. For a while now I've been wondering if a good quality compact like the original Leica X or a Fuji X100 might be better suited to the role I want photography to play in my life these days. After all, back in the nineties I used nothing but an Olympus XA with a fixed 35mm lens for almost the whole decade, and I took some of the best photos of my life.

Hey Dave, not sure if you are wanting to invest a bit but I would say that a small K-m with a DA 21mm is the small camera that you would like to carry... a Ricoh GR Digital III or so (CCD) Would be an even smaller option.

And I have to say that if you could work on the aperture of your DA 18-55 then there is just no way you can't fix your K-S1 with the instructions on this site. It would be way, way easier, believe me...

[wtlwdwgn]

Back in my days in the travel industry, if a plane couldn't fly because of a mechanical failure we said it had "gone tech". If a plane that was meant to be flying fell out of the sky for some reason, we said it had experienced a "vertical excursion incident". And if the vertical excursion incident left it in a million little pieces, we said it had suffered "energetic disassembly".

Well, I was taking some snaps at a place called Magpie Viaduct yesterday, and my GX-10 experienced a gravity assisted vertical excursion incident. It didn't energetically disassemble, being far too well built for that, but it has most definitely gone tech. Fatally discombobulated, in fact.

To put it bluntly, it's clobbered.

On the plus side, it'll give me an excuse to pick up a vanilla K10D at some point.

I did a quick search on eekBay and found exactly one GX10. No idea as to shutter count but the dealer has a 100% seller rating. I wish you luck finding a suitable replacement.

[Dartmoor Dave]

I did a quick search on eekBay and found exactly one GX10. No idea as to shutter count but the dealer has a 100% seller rating. I wish you luck finding a suitable replacement.

Over here both the K10D and GX-10 are creeping up and up in price, while all the other newer Pentax models are coming down and down. I dunno. . . it's almost as if people are seeing photos taken with those cameras in some sort of an online K10D Club somewhere and deciding that they need some CCD action for themselves.

Hey Dave, not sure if you are wanting to invest a bit but I would say that a small K-m with a DA 21mm is the small camera that you would like to carry... a Ricoh GR Digital III or so (CCD) Would be an even smaller option.

I've been wanting to give one of the early CCD sensored Canon Powershot G series a try for a while, so I think I might pick up one of those. But there's no rush about anything; the K-S1 will do for now. I've epoxied the aperture at f/8 and sawn the aperture lever off the lens so it doesn't catch on the lever inside the camera, and I've taped over all the contacts on the camera mount to make it a fully manual fixed aperture DSLR. Should be fun.

[subsea]

I've been wanting to give one of the early CCD sensored Canon Powershot G series a try for a while, so I think I might pick up one of those. But there's no rush about anything; the K-S1 will do for now. I've epoxied the aperture at f/8 and sawn the aperture lever off the lens so it doesn't catch on the lever inside the camera, and I've taped over all the contacts on the camera mount to make it a fully manual fixed aperture DSLR. Should be fun.

Dave,

My first digital camera was a Canon PowerShot G3, with a 4MP CCD. Having come to this camera after a line of Pentax film SLR camera from the Spotmatic F through a number of them with the last one being a PZ-20, I was quite pleased with the quality of the pictures I got with the G3. And it had a flippy screen.
I must say that the only real use I got out of the flippy screen was when I took airshow pictures with the camera held over my head! Anyway, here are a few pictures that I got with that camera on my first trip to Italy, over the Christmas/NewYear holidays in 2005. As you can see, they were taken under a variety of conditions that show the versatility of the camera. Hope you find them interesting.

[aslyfox]

had a slight problem when I tried out my newly acquired Tokina SZ-X845 80-200 f1:4.5-5.6 1:4 with my K 10 D

it wasn't working at all

[ I had forgotten to to turn the switch to MF ]

but I did figure it out

shot through the window of the enclosure

" Eye of the [ Cougar ] "

pp

You Tube

You Tube

[Dartmoor Dave]

Dave,

My first digital camera was a Canon PowerShot G3, with a 4MP CCD. Having come to this camera after a line of Pentax film SLR camera from the Spotmatic F through a number of them with the last one being a PZ-20, I was quite pleased with the quality of the pictures I got with the G3. And it had a flippy screen.
I must say that the only real use I got out of the flippy screen was when I took airshow pictures with the camera held over my head! Anyway, here are a few pictures that I got with that camera on my first trip to Italy, over the Christmas/NewYear holidays in 2005. As you can see, they were taken under a variety of conditions that show the versatility of the camera. Hope you find them interesting.

Thank you for posting those. They are really beautiful, and they remind me so much of the look that I got with my little Olympus XA in Italy back in the nineties. They look, for want of a better term, non-digital, and I mean that in a very positive way.

Perhaps something like a G3 could be just the antidote I need to the utter revulsion that I feel nowadays when I look at photos taken with the latest top-of-the-range digital cameras. Or maybe one of the later G series with a few more megapixels. I think I'll go looking for some sample raw files to play around with. And don't worry, I'm watching out for a replacement GX-10 or K10D too.

[subsea]

Thank you for posting those. They are really beautiful, and they remind me so much of the look that I got with my little Olympus XA in Italy back in the nineties. They look, for want of a better term, non-digital, and I mean that in a very positive way.

Perhaps something like a G3 could be just the antidote I need to the utter revulsion that I feel nowadays when I look at photos taken with the latest top-of-the-range digital cameras. Or maybe one of the later G series with a few more megapixels. I think I'll go looking for some sample raw files to play around with. And don't worry, I'm watching out for a replacement GX-10 or K10D too.

I particularly liked the second from last because, to me, the CCD colors in those lighting conditions gave it the look of a painting.

[blankmampf]

I took my three newest lenses for a walk today
Not very happy with the 200mm F/3.5, somehow the images just are not very sharp or expressive.
However, I'm falling in love with the chunky 35-100mm Auto-Revuenon.

Just look at this nice bokeh! I actually prefer it to the 50mm F/1.4 in the same setting.



Speaking of, I'm still struggling to use the 50mm wide open at F/1.4, images tend to be out of focus and glowy.
Which makes it only all the more satisfying when you get the focus just right and punch out your subject like this.



Hope you all had a good week, and are ready to face the new Monday

[Kdgparnell]

K10d 35-70f, and 55-300 ED

[rjbrett]

Backyard Nature

What beautiful photos! - love the tulip & the bokeh in the second. It's starting to look like spring where you are!

not very sharp or expressive

When I went looking for older budget teles a few years ago I had trouble finding one I liked, and eventually came to the conclusion that I was as well off going for a more recent standard second hand zoom for that reach. One side benefit, beyond clarity and rendering was the addition of autofocus, which I've found good for quickly locating the focal plane around insects and birds. I remember reading, as you probably have, that a number of Revuenon lenses were quite good as they sourced from other well respected suppliers, as did Porst and others such as Carena. I have a Porst Enna Munchen 35mm that I think the world of. My fastest lenses are only f1.7, but from my experience and what I've read most f1.4 lenses are soft, low contrast, and/or glowy wide open. This was seen as an advantage when many of these older lenses were made and marketed, as soft focus was quite popular and fashionable. I still think it can be an advantage for subjects such as flowers, or aesthetic effect in other compositions, but fixing the narrow plane of focus of these faster lenses on your subject will take some skill and practice. I work with what I've got but am willing to credit luck as much as skill to any success I've had. Many of these will start sharpening up somewhere above f2.

If you are just happy exploring and experimenting with this older, more esoteric, gear, as many of us at times are, it's a lot of fun, and a brilliant way to develop your skills no matter what level you are, and entertaining - Having the mechanical skills and aptitude you might also find the gems I couldn't . If you have specific interests such as birds or wildlife, or low light photography, perhaps there might be another way of approaching what you want to do, for example adding flash or other lighting. I was also surprised when I first started using the tele lenses at how much extra skill was needed to get a decent photo, and even with all the good advice available online (I'm sure you'll have found some) it still needed practice. That did improve the photos I was getting, and my satisfaction with my first few cheap teles. Is it worth thinking about why you want the longer reach or faster apertures before spending too much money? I did see you used the word expressive to describe the quality of the rendering you are looking for, and that may be the strength of many of these older lenses.

(Written while trying to squeeze out that extra ounce of detail in processing from an insect close up using a Pentax A 50 f2 wide open )

In the meantime a rose and bokeh from the K10 & a Riconar 55mm f2.2: