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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
07-08-2023, 05:12 PM
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nice story, thank you for sharing :)
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
07-08-2023, 04:18 PM
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Now that I am no longer an LX owner, here are some random thoughts regarding my life with that camera.
I bought my first LX, the one that Stephen is now the proud owner of, in 1988. Apparently that was a very good year..
I had grown tired of Nikon and found the F4 to be offensively big and heavy for a 35mm camera.
A friend and mentor suggested I look to Pentax and I ended up letting my Nikon stuff go and I bought an LX, K1000, and A35/2, A50/1.2 and 100/2.8 macro lenses.
And such was my introduction to Pentax 35mm.
Up until them I hadn't used auto exposure, and was somewhat leery about it My first gig with my new Pentax equipment came a few months after getting it.
This was the Sask Music awards in 1988.
I had used the camera fairly extensively prior to this, almost all of it in the studio under controlled lighting conditions, where it performed admirably, so I was quite comfortable using it
I found that I was unable to keep up with the lighting man using manual exposure and I knew I was getting a lot of missed shots that would either be too far under or over to salvage, so I made the decision to switch the camera over to Automatic. I had never done this before. It was literally the first time outside of the factory that the camera was set to Auto and the first time I had used any form of automatic exposure.
I ended up getting pictures like this:
The auto exposure system in the LX came through for me!
I timed my purchase to be after wedding season so that I would be sure of the gear before I needed it for what was, at the time, a good source of income for me. I was photographing weddings on a near weekly basis from mid May to mid September.
By the time wedding season rolled around in 1989 I had the TTL module for hooking the camera to my Metz 60-CT2 and I figured with the LX as my front line camera I was set.
Unfortunately, I quickly discovered an Achilles Heel in the TTL flash circuit. The camera would not trip the flash unless the camera thought it needed flash. If the subject was in strong backlight, the flash wouldn't fire. It's an odd behaviour, since strong backlight is exactly when one wants to use TTL flash.
That took the LX from front line use to secondary use at weddings. It became my available light camera, and got very little use beyond that at weddings I ended up buying a couple more K1000 bodies and they ended up doing almost all of the heavy lifting over the next decade.
As an aside, this saved my LX upwards of 2000 36 exposure rolls of wear and tear.
As an available light camera, the LX performed admirably, though not without its moments.
One time I was shooting a wedding ceremony at the local Catholic Cathedral, an impressive building with impeccable acoustics. I had set up the LX in the choir loft with a 300mm lens to do some pictures of the ceremony from a very nice vantage point.
I took one picture at the wrong moment and the LX shutter ping reverberated rather loudly through the otherwise silent church for what seemed like a very long time.
I had gone on quite a tear buying new gear during the same time I got my LX. A year earlier I had taken ownership of a Pentax 6x7 and a few lenses, and in early 1988 had bought a 4x5 camera, a couple of lenses and an enlarger.
I had taken up the much maligned search for the maximum picture quality that only large pieces of film can give and so by the time I got my LX, as nice as it is, it was destined to not being used all that much.
I was using the 4x5 for landscapes and some product photography, and the 6x7 for the bulk of my studio work. The only work my LX saw after my first wedding attempt was fun stuff in the studio when I was doing model tests, when a client wanted 35mm transparencies for reproduction or the occasional job where 35mm print film made sense. That camera got it's wear marks from riding in a bag, not from getting a lot of use, though I did use it enough to put what appears to be a permanent polish mark on it under the shutter button.
I did use the LX for a Pentax Users Gallery image in July of 2000. The theme that month was Self Portrait, and I used the LX loaded with High Speed Recording film and the A50/1.2 to take the picture below:
Along the way I bought two more LX bodies, a winder and several viewfinders. By that time I was shooting far less professionally, and the recent additions didn't get much use. The finder I used the most was the standard FA-1W, but I did use the Finder Base and magnifying attachment for my small product studio work. I bought the FE-1 Magnifying finder for this as well, and it saw extensive use for when focus was exceptionally critical. I don't recall exactly when I got the waist level finder, but I found the thing to be not what I wanted, so it found a home in the unused equipment bag.
By the early 2000s I was experimenting with digital and was shooting very little film at all. I had shut down my darkroom activity entirely in late 2002 in preparation for a major home renovation project. I bought an *istD the day it was released for sale in 2003.
When I put my darkroom to sleep, I put several hundred rolls of 120 film, close to a thousand sheets of film and hundreds of sheets of Zone VI Fine Art paper as well as a few hundred sheets of various other types of paper in the deep freeze to use when I went back to using the darkroom. By that time, digital was already impacting the supply of B&W material, so I had stocked up against future inability to acquire material I wanted to work with.
At some point, the deep freeze was unplugged and not plugged back in and my film and paper and a several roasts mingled until the whole thing was a rotten mess, too ugly to look at and worse to smell. I think that was the final nail in film's coffin for me. It was terribly depressing to lose so much raw material that had to a great extent become irreplaceable.
I never did put my darkroom back together, and pretty much stopped shooting film entirely in 2002. I shot a few rolls of film documenting a home renovation project I was doing in 2006. I used an ME Super for that as I didn't want to risk the LX on a construction jobsite. I would have used the DSLR for that, but lacked a wide enough lens for the interior shots. I tried to use up my remaining stock of Kodachrome with my LX bodies in 2005 as I was concerned that processing would become unavailable in the near future.
That was the last film I shot.
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
07-07-2023, 10:32 AM
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Just a minor correction, I sold my 6x7 gear in 2016, and my 645 suffered a rather fatal accident in 1987 and was replaced by the Pentax 6x7.
This is what happens when a Bronica ETRs falls a hundred or so feet onto concrete without a parachute.
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
07-07-2023, 10:23 AM
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awesome - congratulations!
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
07-07-2023, 10:13 AM
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Hi everyone!
I had been saving up my Canadian loonies for quite awhile now with the goal of buying a Pentax LX.
I've been shooting a lot of film lately with my Pentax MX.
However, I absolutely adore the LX modular system and that legacy premium quality Pentax offering.
Also, acquiring the famous LX would give me cool content to make another overview video on my 'PentaxTips' YouTube channel.
Buying and selling used gear locally is primarily how I saved money for this goal of mine - so it takes a long time to save.
When I recently got into striking range of buying an LX, I put an ad on the Wanted Pentax Items forum asking for a body, finder, and strap lugs.
Bonus if it had a grip and bonus if it had a popup waist-level viewfinder.
Actually, and impressive number of members answered my call, but @Wheatfield; gave me an incredible offer that I absolutely could not refuse; an original-owner Pentax LX with complete system, which includes:
Pentax LX (late model)
FA-1W Eye-level Finder
FF-1 Waist-Level Finder
FE-1 Magnifying Finder
FB-1 Base Finder with the FD-1, FD-2, and FC-1 attachments
LX Winder
Accessory Grip B
Lugs and original strap
and 6 focus screens (SA-21, S1, SG-20, and 3x SG-60W)
The camera is in fantastic shape considering it was purchased 1988 and had been put to professional use!
The meter works, shutter shows no stickiness at all speeds, and the current light seals are also in good shape.
The accessories show no wear and are exceptionally bright and clear.
Being an original owner, @Wheatfield knew the entire service history, including being serviced by Pentax Canada in 2002 just before they stopped servicing cameras. Not only did they complete full CLA, but also installed a new-style gold wrapped aperture cam follower and ISO resistors, as well as all new foam, seals, and rubber parts. A new main circuit board custom made by Pentax was also installed. Others have serviced the cameras up into 2006. Apparently, to a great extent it was a camera bag princess!
Also, being a Canadian deal, we were able to forgo international shipping and customs or PayPal fees - extremely ideal.
@Wheatfield informed me that this beautiful system had mainly been in storage, with only occasional use to exercise the mechanisms. It was no longer being put to good use and wanted to see it go to a good person who would appreciated and used the system, since he has other 645 and 6x7 systems as well. He stunned me with a exceedingly generous offer for his LX.
The kit arrived yesterday...
I am absolutely floored.
I slammed a roll of HP5 in and I am loving exploring my new possibilities!
I feel like the luckiest person in Pentax-land and I am smiling ear-to-ear!
Christmas in July!
Thank you @Wheatfield you've truly treated me and you have my utmost gratitude.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-03-2023, 09:22 PM
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Brave, kwb! It isn’t a huge profit, but it’s significant because it’s directly attributable to the business reforms that Pentax has done since last spring.
The point is they had been making good products but making a loss on each one they sold. They didn’t just need to come out with new products, but change their model so that they make money on what they sell.
I feel that Akahane-shacho has turned the ship round to a direction that is demonstrably profitable. That means they are in a good position now to move forward.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-03-2023, 07:03 PM
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Thank you for taking the time to research and post this information :). Japanese is not accessible to me, so this is a useful summary.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
07-03-2023, 05:13 PM
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All, I thought long and hard whether I should NOT post this (more about that later) but I decided that this is a useful and good news that most of you deserve to know, so let's get to the numbers first.
On Jun/26/2023, RI posted FY2022-23 balance sheet to 官報 or the Official Japan Gazette, a newspaper published by the National Printing Bureau to notify citizens all sorts of legal matters. This is not a new development or anything, it's been going on from the start of Ricoh-Pentax merger. Anyway, back to FY 2022-23.
Total assets: ~7.46B JPY as of March 2023 (Current Assets ~5.4B, Fixed ~2.06B, yes it's a small company today). That's ~1.7 billion JPY increase from the previous FY. Still smaller than pre-COVID March 2020 (~11B) but already larger than March 2021 (~5.85B) and March 2022.
Liabilities total: ~7.07B (Current ~6.56B, Fixed ~0.51B).
Shareholders' equity: ~0.39B.
Net profit: ~1.14 billion JPY (about 7.9 million USD) after three consecutive FYs of net loss.
I'll add that shareholders' equity bounced back into positive due to 1.14B profit after two consecutive FYs of negative (yes I've been REALLY concerned for two years).
RI has done countless things in the past while NOT making functional updates to DSLR nor GR for FY20222-23. At least some of these things worked, otherwise they couldn't have pulled this off. Things don't look rosy or anything, but this is the first good quantitative financial news about RI after so many years. They're in the process of morphing into something that is different from their pre-COVID selves, and in that process they're coming back financially, it seems to me. I don't know if this continues or not. We'll see.
OK, now that an important part is out, here's how I obtained this information (you can too) and why I haven't posted anything before. If you're not interested, just skip it as this will be long.
Despite popular belief/rumor in PF, RI would post its balance sheet to Official Japan Gazette in late June or very early July each year (they're legally bound to post it somewhere). Free online version of the Gazette is the most inconvenient source for me as they only keep it online for 90 days, you get each page as one separate pdf, each pdf is just a big image and therefore not searchable at all using letters (e.g. "リコーイメージング" or "Ricoh Imaging"), but I had/have to use that as there's no alternatives. If you live in Japan you can pay 2200 Yens per month for the access to search in the past issues (you'll send your application to one of their 48 branches) or go to large public libraries. Either way, it's mostly out of reach for me except when I go back to Japan. There are third parties who somehow build their own database off of the Gazette and publish for free, I don't know about the legality of that. Information on the Gazette is considered public domain but the Printing Bureau claims copyright to some of the digital contents, so e.g. using a screenshot beyond the personal purpose might be problematic. In addition, if you subscribe to the Gazette's search service you'll consent to the TOS that explicitly prohibits you from using the data and graphics beyond the personal use. Third parties might be buying paper copies to scan in and use OCR to automate the information extraction, which I guess is legal.
That's why I made it a habit to check the free online version of the Gazette everyday in late June. I'll save your time to do what I did, here's the page for RI's FY2022-23 data (top left is RI, no easy auto-translation because it's just a big image and no real character information):
Jun/26/2023 issue, "Extras" section, page 80.
Anyway, I promised myself that I won't post anything about RI's balance sheets unless there is an obviously good news. It would be vulgar and irresponsible of me if I talk about "bad" finances of a company when in reality I have zero understanding of how to read nuances of balance sheet of any company, let alone a 100% subsidiary of a bigger corporation. And anyway how RI is doing in general could be guesstimated from the investor relation events of Ricoh Co. Ltd. (the mothership), so writing "RI itself made a loss" wouldn't have helped anybody except haters and masochists :lol:. And there hasn't been any "obviously good" year before. So I just sat on the knowledge.
This past FY was different. Making a net profit is always good. Total assets springing back toward pre-COVID level (not quite, but they're already bigger than Mar/2021) is great. Shareholders' equity getting back to positive is huge (at least for me). Should I post it? I mean, it seems to pass my own "obviously good" criterion. Will this somehow make a neutral person to stop buying Pentax products? Like, I don't know, maybe the person is shocked that RI is so small and avoid it based on that? Not impossible, but I decided that I shouldn't be worrying about each and every corner case. If you're searching for negative materials in this news, this is not the only source for you, and this is not the worst one either. In other words, you're not affected by this news.
OTOH this will give everybody a glimpse that RI's actions are maybe, sort of, actually working. There's no denying that whatever they did made money for them. So, for those of you who can see positive things as positive, you deserve to hear this news, thus this post.
BTW I'm still sticking to "no post unless obviously good" thing concerning this subject. If you go for third parties (to find out the past data), that's your choice not mine, please don't post about that in this thread. Thanks for reading!
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