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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
12-20-2022, 04:24 PM
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I wanted to clarify - I did not originally post "SMC" (my post was moderated). I have an FA AL limited edition 31mm lens which this mode does not work with. Pentax introduced NEW HD FA limited edition lens which is not very much different than the FA AL lenses I have.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-20-2022, 04:10 PM
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They've already sort of eluded to pulling back out of the usual retail outlets - I forget the exact wording. In that case, I'm confident that B&H could use their connections to special order it from Japan.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-20-2022, 01:14 PM
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The Pentax film camera line was either pro or amateur. The professional MZ-S came out around 2001 and cost about $1,400 which is about $2,300 today. The amateur models included the ZX-M and P30T which sold for under $100 and were basically plastic disposable cameras.
---------- Post added 12-20-22 at 03:17 PM ----------
omg - that's so twisted.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-20-2022, 12:49 PM
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Films come and go. Here in New York I can still walk into Walmart or CVS Drugstore and find Fuji or Kodak 400 35mm film. CVS Drugstore still accepts film for processing. If you're looking for B&W or Portra you'll likely wind up at Freestyle, B&H, or Amazon.
Film never went away. It just temporarily fell out of favor until people came to their senses.
Even in the most popular days of film, chromes were always sent out to a mail-order lab since the local 60/30min photo places didn't have the chemistry.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-20-2022, 12:27 PM
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I assume this was the end result of the English translation of the original Japanese press release so you might not want to read too much into the wording.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-20-2022, 06:46 AM
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Obviously. The former Asahi Optical Company makes lenses. Nobody gets rich making cameras. IMHO, a Ricoh camera is just another lens accessory... to sell more lenses.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
12-20-2022, 06:07 AM
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I've been hoarding MZ-S's which I've rescued from Ebay. How I wished Pentax would have kept all the Hyper modes from the PZ-1p/Z-1p. PZ-1p's worked to assist shooting, rather than fighting with me. I'd like to see them dust off the MZ-S design with Hyper modes while adding modern electronics, like the Nikon F6. The F6 had cool features such as a variable rate film advance. You could slow it to a crawl at 2fps for quietly shooting wildlife.
Aside from being super expensive, the F6 required the purchase of an additional MV-1 card reader to store metadata. I would think that recording exposure metadata to be a core feature, not an option. Between the price, options, and Nikon's predatory service reputation I never did buy one.
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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
12-19-2022, 04:47 PM
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Pentax released firmware updates for the K3-iii and K1-ii to add a new color personna, FUYUNO (winter field). They advertise that the updated firmware will present the new option once you attach an HD PENTAX-FA 31mm F1.8 Limited or HD PENTAX-DA 35mm F2.8 Macro Limited lenses. As luck would have it, I have a K1-ii and a 31mm F1.8 Limited lens. I installed the latest firmware, attached the lens, but did not see the new item show up in the menu.
I reached out to Ricoh out of curiosity to see if I was doing something wrong. They responded right away to tell me that I have a "legacy" limited edition lens and not the NEW "HD" limited edition lens. The difference is a new lens coating and rounded aperture blades. The new HD limited lenses are selling for over $1k although, as I type this, b&h has them marked down to the non-HD price.
I admit I'm a bit put off... not being able to avail myself of a feature I didn't know I wanted nor likely to use. It's so unlike Pentax to punish someone for not having the very latest lens. It's akin to Nikon disabling Matrix Metering if you attach a non-Nikon lens. I use them as an example since I've not known Pentax for these types of marketing tactics. They usually bend over backward for their customers.
I already own the complete collection of the The Three Sisters limited edition lenses. It's just... mildly annoying. I wanted to give a shout out to anyone contemplating the purchase of a Limited Edition Lens that you'll be at a disadvantage purchasing a "legacy" lens rather than an "HD" lens, despite the very minor differences, imho.
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Forum: Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Other Camera Brands
05-28-2022, 06:06 AM
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I have recently acquired the Sigma Quattro. This shot was taken with the Landscape color persona, jpg format, ISO 100 with 1 stop under.
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Forum: Ask B&H Photo!
05-11-2022, 12:22 PM
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More than 60% of Kodak film at b&h is listed as temporarily out of stock. Why is this?
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Forum: General Photography
04-15-2022, 04:14 PM
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Those are all good points.
Here's my argument. If I put on a pair of yellow tinted sunglasses, I am distorting reality - it's still "real" yet with higher contrast.
However, if I put on a pair of virtual reality glasses and remove all the ugly utility poles along the highway, take out a few clouds and replace them with blue skies, then add a rainbow as I walk around town with my VR headset on, a line has been crossed.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to turn cloudy days into sunny days with a pair of VR glasses. That would make life in Seattle so much more tolerable. It's just not the reason I shoot photography.
I also hate electronic viewfinders.
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Forum: General Photography
04-15-2022, 09:55 AM
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I still am in the "film era." Most of what is done in a darkroom boils down to brightness/contrast or color adjustments.
Why do we seek out "a room with a view" when a computer can easily reproduce any tropical paradise for us and project it using a faux window? Why do we prefer sitting outside in real sunshine when sun lamps can easily reproduce the same heat and light spectrum at anytime anywhere?
It just seems like the more we use computers to generate and alter photographs the further we distance ourselves from the real world.
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Forum: General Photography
04-15-2022, 07:05 AM
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“The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.” - Alberto Giacometti
The high quality images taken with cell phones serves to demonstrate how stagnant digital camera technology has become. Manufacturers keep improving auto-focus, burst rates, dynamic range, and video but what have they done, really, in the past twenty years to give us better images? i.e. where is my Foveon sensor?
I've taken photographs of lighthouses with my film camera and printed right from the negative. When I look at that photograph I am reminded that I am looking at a real place. It exists in time and space. I can return to that place to find it much like I left it sans some vegetation growth. The photograph connects me with that real place, knowing that such a magnificent view exists. I can take pride that I was able to compose reality and project it onto a piece of paper without altering it.
But, when the computer alters reality it's no longer "photography" to me.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-11-2022, 11:54 AM
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It's always best to get the most up to date contact information from his website, https://pentaxs.com/ |
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-08-2022, 05:26 AM
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I've only dropped one camera, right on the lens. Thankfully it had a UV filter with brass thread on it which took the punishment. The filter was now jammed onto the lens and I needed to remove it with a very large kitchen type pipe wrench. It made this horrific squealing sound as I slowly backed the filter off the lens, like fingernails on a chalkboard. oh gawd I can still hear the filter screaming in my ears. It was the nastiest thing I've ever done to a piece of camera equipment; but, the lens was perfectly fine.
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Forum: Repairs and Warranty Service
04-07-2022, 07:20 AM
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Eric's standard operating procedure is to wait for a good long while if he cannot associate your camera with what needs to be done with it. If he emailed an estimate and receives no response he will wait patiently for a reply. If it has been several weeks, I would email him with the serial number of the camera and sync up with him.
I just had an MX overhauled by Eric within the past two months and was quite impressed with the quality of the workmanship.
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Forum: Film SLRs and Compact Film Cameras
03-01-2022, 10:59 AM
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There are no "camera" companies, only optical companies. Nobody goes into the business of offering a film camera to make money on the cameras. They sell the cameras so you'll buy the lenses. It's why you can buy a fantastic Epson printer with all the bells and whistles for under $200 bucks - because they nail you on the ink. So, since Pentax is doing a great job selling lenses they won't be motivated to go back into film camera production.
What I would like to see is Pentax sell classic camera parts so we can fix up that huge pile of junk on ebay and restore the dirty, fungus riddled, sticky shuttered, dead light meter'd bodies.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-01-2022, 10:38 AM
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This was the deal breaker for me, considering the price.
I have to disagree. I love setting the ISO on my K-1ii to a million billion and shooting by candlelight.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
01-21-2022, 05:52 AM
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First - the "mirrorless camera" with its rolling shutter, electronic viewfinder, snappy frames per second, and 8k video has been around for years. It's just a camcorder, not the "future of photography." The reason I don't use the "photo" button on the camcorder to take photos is because I prefer using a [D]SLR. Canon is being overtaken by Sony and Fuji and wants to keep their market position by dropping DSLR's. This doesn't improve images for photographers, only profits for Canon.
From the description of "workshop-like" manufacturing I'm thinking Alien Bees / Paul Buff. They've been around since the dawn of time selling exclusively on-line, not thru retailers. Their prices are reasonable and service is outstanding. They have a single circuit board and add/remove components for 400, 800, or 1600ws units, keeping a small inventory of each model.
imho, I've always thought of Pentax as an imaging company, not a camera company. They're right to think of the camera as a lens accessory since the magic is in the lens, not the number of features or the number of auto-focus points (groan).
Building cameras using a limited manufacturing model could open the door to selling film cameras again. There's a huge market for the K-1000 right now.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
09-27-2019, 02:25 PM
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I didn't see them mention it being full frame or cropped or if I can use it on my film camera bodies.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
09-11-2019, 04:21 AM
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I do not recommend Spencer's, from past experience.
---------- Post added 09-11-19 at 07:24 AM ----------
Maxmax was kind enough to respond, Sorry, but I don't work on Pentax cameras anymore. The last number I have opened had numerous hardwired connections to the main PCB that made it difficult to get to the sensor without a lot of extra work. |
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
09-10-2019, 03:43 PM
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Cameras are colorblind and only produce shades of grey. They put a colored filter on each of the pixels to break them up into squares of R, G, and B and put those values back together at the expense of resolution. Removing the colored filters makes the camera colorblind again - but, you get a lot more resolution and an extra EV stop in the process.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
09-10-2019, 01:53 PM
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I checked with maxmax and they offer monochrome conversions but don't work on Pentax cameras. Kolari Vision works on Pentax cameras but they do not offer a monochrome option. I wish these two would get together. Is anyone working on Pentax cameras and offering monochrome conversions?
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-29-2019, 03:07 AM
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Pentax has already said they're not going mirrorless, which is not surprising since it was they who introduced the SLR to Japan back in the day. "Mirrorless" is a campaign by Canon to recoup sales lost to cell phone shooters while Pentax is more concerned about image quality than the slight reduction in weight at the expense of loosing the viewfinder and battery life for something which does not take as good of photographs than an SLR.
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Forum: Pentax News and Rumors
08-28-2019, 08:08 AM
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I quit buying lensbaby after they passed the $100 mark. Now they're selling for hundreds of dollars to produce an effect I can do in Photoshop.
Creating the Lensbaby Effect - Photo.net - Articles
Do you know what I can't create in Photoshop? A sharp clean image from a cheap lens. I'd rather spend my money on Pentax LTD autofocus automatic lenses than gimmicks and lomography. If I want to get creative I just buy some cheap skylight filters, Vaseline, clear nail polish, stockings, etc.
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