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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-09-2016, 05:22 AM
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I much prefer Eneloops over the D-Li109 in my K-30, mostly because they last longer, though they do seem to give less warning before running out. It's also nice that I can grab another set from one of my flashes in a pinch.
Recently they've also been operating the aperture block far better than the D-Li109.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
12-20-2015, 08:55 AM
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In general, you're going to want a lens with straight aperture blades. An odd number of blades will give starbursts with twice as many points as the lens has blades, while an even number of blades will just give starbursts with points equal to the number of blades, so odd usually looks more impressive.
I hear the smc Pentax-DA 21mm f/3.2 AL Limited (but NOT the current, HD version, as it has rounded aperture blades) mentioned a lot for starbursts. The 21's 7-bladed aperture yields nice 14-pointed starbursts. Here are two of my own shots with this lens, both taken at f/11:
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
04-05-2019, 01:24 PM
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If it had been any version number other than "Ver. 0.41"... :p
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-03-2019, 11:32 AM
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If you're talking about Jun Hirakawa, then it's only fair to note that such well-regarded lenses as the DA 16-85, DA 20-40 Limited, D FA★ 70-200/2.8, D FA 28-105, and D FA★ 50/1.4 were all still made after he left, and even the FA 31/1.8 Limited doesn't have his name on it like the 43 and 77 do.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-07-2018, 11:22 AM
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Oh not again. People really have to learn to stop citing this poem as an inspirational quote about being an independent thinker.
Just look at the entire rest of the poem before the last stanza. It clearly depicts someone who cannot make up his mind, hesitant to commit to one choice for fear of missing out on the other one, wishing he could travel both paths, despite the fact that they look about the same. How is he supposed to know which one is really less traveled?
And even in the last stanza, there's the first two lines which everyone tends to forget about but which make a huge difference to the context: "I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence". Those aren't the words of someone who confidently chose the unpopular opinion and has no regrets. Rather, this is someone who sees himself years down the road trying hard to justify his choice to himself and/or others, clinging onto any slight perceived difference in order to do so, asserting that there really was a "difference" to be made even though he knows there really wasn't.
It sounds more like what someone who was insecure about his choices as a consumer might say when trying to justify his camera purchase in a mature market where it's hard to make a truly bad choice anymore... which is not, I think, the image we want to convey as Pentaxians.
Why not quote those Apple "Think different" commercials from the 00s instead?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
09-28-2018, 08:26 AM
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Having used the Tamron 28-75/2.8 (A09) on a Canon 5D (12 MP 36x24, so not a very demanding sensor at all), I can say that it's relatively small and light (takes only 67mm filters, unlike seemingly all the other f/2.8 zooms), but I don't like how mine renders smeary by the edges (though that may not be an issue for portraits or even street?) and have pretty much stopped using it.
I haven't used any of the others, but I have to believe the DFA 28-105 would be clearly superior to the Tamron even if you don't need the extra reach.
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Forum: General Photography
08-29-2018, 12:07 PM
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Norm -- You seem to be coming at this from the angle of there being no advantage to shooting ISO 400 instead of ISO 100 pushed 2 stops. But no discussion of ISO invariance I've seen has ever argued otherwise.
Rather, the value of ISO invariance is supposed to be in being able to shoot at the lower ISOs and push without any noise penalty, so that you can retain any highlights that might have been lost (in the raw and not just the JPEG, because the ISO setting is (in most cameras?) effected via an analog gain stage) at higher ISOs.
This might not matter much to you or me shooting sunsets, where the highlights are critical and shadow detail is a nice-to-have. But I imagine this would be important to people shooting night scenes where much of the detail is in the shadows, so shadows are critical and unclipped highlights are a nice-to-have. Or maybe astrophotography?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-28-2018, 08:45 AM
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Hey, don't talk about the GR that way. :p
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Forum: Pentax K-1 & K-1 II
03-31-2016, 12:33 PM
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I'm no optics expert, but any feature that allows me to get handheld shots like this and this?
I can only call that the best "marketing ploy" ever.
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Forum: Pentax Forums Giveaways
06-30-2018, 05:52 AM
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Hey Adam,
In light of the fact that the first thread has at least one duplicate post and a number of posts past 50, would it be possible to get a list of the usernames of the people who entered successfully so we know who does and doesn't have to come back for the second thread? Thanks ~
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
05-09-2018, 05:21 PM
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Wait, what? I switched off the main LCD on my K-30 and it doesn't even have a top display at all. The most important stuff was right there in the viewfinder.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
04-17-2018, 07:12 AM
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Sigma and Tamron usually drop the stabilization from K-mount and Sony Alpha-mount versions of their lenses, probably because Pentax and Sony have never publicized a way to synergize in-lens stabilization with in-body stabilization. So if any, there aren't many.
For reference:
Canon = IS (Image Stabilization)
Nikon = VR (Virtual Reality Vibration Reduction)
Pentax = SR (Shake Reduction)
Sony = OSS (Optical SteadyShot)
Sigma = OS (Operating System Optical Stabiilization)
Tamron = VC (Vibration Compensation)
Fujifilm, Samsung, Panasonic = OIS (Optical Image Stabilization?)
---------- Post added 04-17-18 at 10:22 AM ----------
You should know that camera/lens stabilization won't freeze a bouncing subject.
Ironically (since normally this wouldn't help either), what a case like this calls for is better support. :lol:
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Forum: Photographic Industry and Professionals
03-13-2018, 12:31 PM
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I was at a local fandom meetup once where no one had a camera bigger than APS-C; when people started posing for photos in costume and I got out my K-30 with Rokinon 35/1.4 and its 77mm filter size, at least a few people audibly reacted to the effect of "whoa, big lens, get out of the way, this guy knows what he's doing".
And I wasn't even using that lens to provoke that reaction, but simply because it was my best indoor lens. So yeah, size can still be impressive to laypeople.
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Forum: Pentax Price Watch
04-10-2018, 08:51 AM
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A note for clarity: Samyang/Rokinon lenses in Pentax mount also have the A setting for auto aperture, despite stock product photos oftentimes not showing it (because usually they're just using the photo of the Canon or Nikon mount version which would not have the A setting).
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
03-13-2018, 11:06 AM
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Let me start by saying that I've never bought a Sigma lens in my life. However, I have bought all my lenses used up to now (since I don't make money from my photos and don't really aspire to), and that included one Rokinon, a CZJ, and some Contax Zeisses. So I may still fall into the category of "pretty cheap" people Norm is talking about.
I didn't even buy my Pentax to put a Pentax lens on. I don't think I even did any research into the lens lineup before buying my K-30, besides maybe a cursory glance to verify that the selection was decent. So why did I buy it? Because it was unbeatable value for money, a moderately priced body with actual useful features Nikon/Sony/Canon couldn't touch in that range. (I especially miss the weather sealing, now that I've discovered that my 5D won't even turn on at 32°F -- AKA an average winter evening here in New Jersey.)
People just getting into ILCs and trying to decide on their first system are not necessarily going to have any idea what lenses they like, or even what lenses are the best reasons to shoot each system. It's easier to compare specs on bodies, even to get a bunch in your hands and compare how well you get along with them, BEFORE buying, than to compare the output of lenses. I eventually did get three Limiteds -- the DA 21, the FA 43, and the FA 77 -- but they wouldn't even have been on my radar if I hadn't been attracted to Pentax in the first place by the body.
And for a concrete example of filling a hole in the Pentax lineup: I got the Rokinon 35/1.4 for indoors because I'd never be able to justify the cost of the FA 31 Limited... that, and a great deal on one came up sooner than a Sigma 30/1.4 EX. If Pentax had had a normal APS-C lens that fast at a similar price, I absolutely would have bought it in a heartbeat.
See above. Ergonomics, sensor performance, features, ruggedness, all for less -- those are why I chose Pentax, and the Limiteds were purely a bonus. I still don't particularly want any Sigma or Tamron lenses, but if I did, I'm sure it wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable an experience shooting them on a Nikon or Canon as on a Pentax.
I'm not sure why I spent so much time typing up all this -- maybe to try to answer the question "why are such people on the forum"? I don't pretend to be representative of the average new entrant to the Pentax system, and I'm sure some people reading this will consider my aperture block failure to be exactly the cosmic justice I deserved for buying cheap, and I'm sure some other people reading this are getting sick of reading so many first-person pronouns. But just consider it another data point of anecdotal evidence. I can't be the only young beginner amateur who went Pentax for value, can I?
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Forum: Pentax Medium Format
03-13-2018, 06:15 PM
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I've got one photo store within 10 minutes of my house that will develop, scan, and print, and another smaller one that will gladly send your film to be developed and scanned by some other store. Of course, I live in North Jersey, and the first photo store in question is Unique Photo... but there's also plenty of mail-order labs like The FIND Lab and The Darkroom.
Which is why I bought a 12 MP Canon 5D for $300 and put slow but high-quality lenses on it. :p
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Forum: Pentax Price Watch
03-13-2018, 05:54 PM
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I'm getting a little weary of Adorama's ads and advertising "sales" like they aren't just collections of existing rebates that you could just as well have gotten yesterday from them or anyone else. Especially if they don't even take the effort to put together a page of the best deals and the link just goes to a shop search that returns hundreds (sometimes thousands) of items. (And especially if they make you "scratch off" to reveal the real link. Those are the worst.)
Is this sale any different?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
03-06-2018, 05:52 PM
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And cue Kunzite in three... two...
Aren't the Tamron SPs a little big for the "Limited" ethos?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
03-06-2018, 01:37 PM
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Wouldn't it be more appropriate to make a new thread, rather than resurrect one that was almost 9 years old? Seeing a headline like this would make one think that the museum closing was a recent event if one hadn't heard of it before.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
10-25-2017, 05:30 PM
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But at the expense of manual focus precision, one would expect.
Perhaps one of the conscious compromises in the design is lower astigmatism at the cost of greater Sigmatism?
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
08-02-2017, 05:25 PM
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Double-line bokeh, onion rings, cat's eyes, hard polygons -- these all seem like qualities that should be measurable and are usually considered undesirable.
I'm not so sure about rims: soap bubbles or hard rims might be desirable for some and not for others. Same with extended intelligibility in the background transition area like what the Nikkor 58/1.4 G is documented to have here -- I want to say this seems like undercorrected spherical aberration and is most likely to be found together with focus shift, and from what I've heard I'd be curious to see if the Planar 85/1.4 exhibits this as well (Fenwoodian?) -- it might make the background look better but the foreground worse, if those hard rings are any indication.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
06-06-2017, 11:11 AM
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Sounds like you may have turned on Highlight Correction, which disables ISO 100. You can get to it via the INFO button menu.
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Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help
05-30-2017, 10:27 AM
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I can vouch for the Pentax K+ Multi-Mount (PK+MM), which can be found at Adaptist - Home -- used it to put a ZF Makro-Planar on my K-30 for some product shots and it worked well enough. Of course, my main use for it was Contax/Yashica lenses, which is a whole other lot of fun.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
02-19-2017, 09:48 PM
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There is still a lack of affordable fast normal prime lenses for APS-C, even on the road map -- the DA 35/2.4 is not fast and the FA 31/1.8 Limited is not affordable. All we have is the offerings from Sigma (30/1.4 Art) and Samyang (35/1.4). Every other APS-C or 4/3 system except Canon has an affordable first-party fast normal prime, even Nikon and Sony (Alpha) with their similarly long flange focal distances.
Does Pentax plan to ever address this hole in the lineup (they also need a 28mm FF lens; could we see one doubling as both?), or should I stop holding my breath?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-26-2017, 08:39 AM
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