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Forum: General Talk
04-03-2024, 01:52 PM
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Like cameras, older models work just as well as they did when they first came out, and folks went wild for them at the time. Newer models offer greater capability in some areas, but they don't change how good the older models were (and still are)...
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Forum: General Talk
04-03-2024, 10:31 AM
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That's very good indeed, especially handheld. Nice job :)
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Forum: General Talk
04-03-2024, 09:59 AM
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That looks immaculate... and quite the handful :D Not a lens for fast action sports or birds in flight, for sure, but on a tripod - and using Live View - you should be able to get some nice shots with it. I have a Soviet MTO-11 catadioptric mirror lens - in the same focal length - that's surprisingly capable if you take time to focus it accurately. I imagine this Pentax lens is at least as good and probably better. Could be a lot of fun when you have a little time to mess around...
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Forum: General Talk
03-25-2024, 10:00 PM
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Awesome! :D It looks mint... Is it new, or just very well cared for?
I'm looking forward to seeing some of your signature shots with this, and learning what you think of it in use...
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Forum: General Talk
03-24-2024, 12:56 PM
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I love the little Industar-50-2 and its Industar-50 predecessor... I own more of them than any other lens, in M42, M39 and L39 variants. The rainbow flare can be exquisite if you get it just right :D
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Forum: General Talk
03-20-2024, 05:49 AM
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Ooooh.... very nice :) Have you bought one or more lenses too, or are you going to shoot adapted glass?
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Forum: General Talk
03-20-2024, 02:45 AM
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I'm trying to avoid expenditure on photography right now, as I'm ploughing funds and time into my soon-to-be-commercial film holder project... plus, I'm eagerly awaiting more details on the forthcoming Pentax half-frame film camera, and may well want to buy that.
However, yesterday I dipped into savings (not much, just a little) to buy a user license for Lumariver Profile Designer 2 (Standard edition) software, a camera profiling tool designed by the developer of open-source command-line-based "dcamprof". It provides the same wide-ranging features and options as dcamprof, but accessed via a reasonably well designed GUI and guided workflow - so it's much easier and faster to use.
Until now, I've been using X-rite's ColorChecker Camera Calibration tool and Adobe's DNG Profile Editor to create my profiles. It works well enough, but lacks the flexibility and deep functionality of the Lumariver software.
My main need for this is in creating linear DCP and ICC camera profiles tailored to the specific macro lenses and light sources I use for digitising film negatives. These profiles are key components in achieving negative conversions that faithfully represent the colour characteristics of individual film stocks.
I've only had an opportunity to play with software briefly, but first impressions are very good. In a matter of minutes I'd taken a photo of my ColorChecker Passport with the Pentax K-3 + D FA100/2.8 WR, loaded it into Lumariver Profile Designer 2, set a few options, created both general use (with tone curve) and linear (without) profiles, and applied them to test images in both Lightroom 6 and RawTherapee. The results were excellent!
At GBP £95 after currency conversion and VAT, it's not the cheapest piece of profiling software (considering the X-rite and Adobe tools are free, as is dcamprof) - but I think it'll be money well-spent :)
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Forum: General Talk
01-06-2024, 02:27 PM
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What a great deal! I have the later EX DG version in K-mount, which I understand is very similar - perhaps even identical - in optical formula, but supposedly optimised for digital (maybe just a difference in coatings?). It's a fantastic lens... I bought mine for digitising 120 negatives and it's perfect for that, but also just a really good general-purpose lens; very sharp indeed, and renders nicely. Mine was barely used and "as new", with hood, pouch and box - but I paid more than three times what you did :p You got a real bargain...
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Forum: General Talk
12-31-2023, 01:03 AM
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That's a real beauty. Looks to be in fantastic condition, too. Enjoy!! :)
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Forum: General Talk
12-30-2023, 12:12 PM
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Recently I noticed that decent quality D-Li50 batteries - used by the K10D and Samsung GX-10 - are getting rarer... at least, here in the UK they are. So, I ordered a couple of DSTE-branded D-Li50s, and two same-brand D-Li90s as I can always do with backups for my K-5, K-3 and K-3II. I'd have preferred OEM, but you just can't get new Pentax D-Li50s these days, and the D-Li90s are too pricey so soon after Christmas. DSTE batteries get mixed but mostly good reviews, and they've been around for years now, so I'm hopeful they'll perform reasonably well. Like all other third-party rechargeables, I won't leave them unattended while charging and I'll keep an eye on them for swelling...
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Forum: General Talk
12-18-2023, 07:55 AM
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Oh dear. Well, at least you've made progress on the 20-60. That's bad luck with the 50, and somewhat frustrating - but as we all know, these things happen. I'm sure Panasonic will sort it out...
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Forum: General Talk
12-16-2023, 02:14 PM
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Nice! :) Any photos of the cameras to share? I do love me a vintage gear shot :p
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Forum: General Talk
12-16-2023, 11:56 AM
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Good old Amazon Prime delivery... The 1TB SSD and NVMe USB enclosure arrived at 5pm today, and by 6pm it was cloned, installed and running (and performance tested) in my laptop, with CrystalDiskMark reporting slightly better results than the manufacture's maximum read-write performance claims:
It's not the fastest PCIe 3.0x4 NVMe drive available, but one of the coolest-running. HWMonitor reports a pretty-consistent 40°C idle after warm-up, momentarily peaking at 55°C after a few minutes of sustained load. Pretty darned good for a tightly-packed laptop installation.
The drive didn't come with software, but on SK Hynix' website there's a cloning tool available for download (nothing in the SSD's retail packaging mentions this - I found it by chance), so that's what I used. It's "powered by" Macrium Reflect, and incredibly simple in operation... very basic, but fully automated - and it just works. I needn't have been at all nervous :)
I'll keep the original 512GB SSD to one side - untouched for now, just in case... but in a month or so, I'll install it in the NVMe enclosure, wipe it and use it as a portable drive :)
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Forum: General Talk
12-15-2023, 02:00 PM
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Glad to hear you got a replacement for the 20-60, Jonathan... Out of curiosity, did they give you a new or refurbished lens?
It's interesting that they're cleaning the 16-35 instead of replacing it. I wonder if it's a different problem, or if the damage from outgassing (or similar) is simply less pronounced?
Anyway, the turn-around time on this has been very good, IMHO. Fair play to Panasonic...
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Forum: General Talk
12-15-2023, 12:33 PM
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Another incoming upgrade for my Lenovo laptop...
When I bought it back in 2021, it came with a single internal 512GB M.2 2280 SSD (one of the more modest, average-performing Samsung models aimed at OEMs), and I immediately added a 2TB Crucial MX500 2.5" SATA SSD in the spare bay for data storage. Until recently, the 512GB drive - partitioned and set up for dual-booting Windows 11 and Ubuntu Mate 22.04 LTS - had enough spare capacity, but a few days ago I noticed that my Windows partition was getting tight, even after clean-up, and I figured it's time to fit a bigger system drive...
So, I've ordered a 1TB SK Hynix Gold P31 M.2 2280. From the reviews I've read, it seems to benchmark well for a PCIe 3.0x4 drive (my laptop uses PCIe 3.0x4, so there's no advantage fitting a PCIe 4 or 5 drive), but the main attraction is the power efficiency and cool running under load, which makes it pretty much ideal for a laptop. It should arrive tomorrow, then I need to go through the motions of cloning and extending partitions. It's years since I've done that, so I'm the tiniest bit nervous, but if I muck up I can always re-fit the old drive and start again :p
I'm looking forward to having more breathing space for my Windows partition, and I should see a performance increase too - particularly around load times - as the benchmark figures are considerably better than the Samsung drive currently fitted...
EDIT: I also just ordered an inexpensive USB 3.2 NVMe SSD enclosure with cables (to use for cloning), as I realised I don't already own one :p |
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Forum: General Talk
11-29-2023, 01:44 AM
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Hot on the heels of my laptop RAM upgrade, and with memory being pretty cheap right now, I bought 2 x 8GB DDR3L PC3-12800 SODIMM RAM to replace the 2 x 4GB in my old Lenovo M72e Tiny desktop. I'd not heard of the brand, but the memory is SK Hynix, so pretty standard stuff. Ordered yesterday afternoon, it arrived at 7:10am today (thanks to Amazon Prime). I just installed it and it's working perfectly :)
There's really nothing more I can upgrade in this machine. The "pre-loved" dual-core / 4-thread i5-3470T I installed some time ago (to replace the G645T) is the fastest 35W TDP CPU compatible with the motherboard, and RAM is now maxed out. The inexpensive Kioxia 240GB SATA SSD I previously fitted still has ample free space, as I don't store much data locally - it's just dual-boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, with a few commonly used apps such as Libre Office, RawTherapee, GIMP and some utilities.
For a PC that's 10+ years old, it's surprisingly capable and brisk in day-to-day use, and amply powerful for a second machine. It shows its age with more-demanding image processing tasks, but not obstructively so. For RawTherapee and GIMP, working on the 24MP (or less) files from my various cameras, it's quite useable. The downside is that it's comparatively power-hungry - recent 15W CPUs offer similar single-thread performance and more cores with less than half the TDP. Since it only gets used for a few hours a month, though, I don't mind :)
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Forum: General Talk
11-23-2023, 05:41 AM
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UPDATE: I installed my 32GB RAM in the laptop this morning. Getting inside was much easier than expected - I seem to have improved my spudger technique since last time! :p A couple of minutes to remove the bottom half of the case, two more to remove the old 2 x 8GB cards and install my snazzy new 2 x 16GB Kingston FURY Impact cards, then another minute to put the case back together. Booted up showing 32GB - woohoo!! Windows Memeory Diagnostics Tool took a looooooong time to run all its tests, but it didn't detect any problems. CPU-Z shows latency of CL19-21-21-39, which is very slightly better than spec.. So I'm good to go. Not sure how much (if any) difference it will make, but at least I know there's plenty of headroom now :)
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Forum: General Talk
11-22-2023, 12:32 PM
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With the cost of living these days, and the fact that I'm as well equipped as I need and want to be (for photography and most other things), I buy very little hobby-related stuff... but a couple of purchases made their way to me today :)
I'm a huge fan of pre-moistened Zeiss lens wipes. In addition to using them for camera lenses and filters (when a dust blower and soft brush aren't enough), I also clean my spectacles, smartphone, tablet and a host of other things with them. Seems I get through a box of 200 every two to three years, and I bought my previous box in mid-2021. Well, I was getting low, and the price dropped on Amazon for Black Friday Week... just GBP £8, meaning each wipe costs 4p - so another box of 200 now sits in my gear cupboard :)
More significantly... my Lenovo Legion 5i laptop, bought in 2021, came with 2 x 8GB = 16GB RAM installed, taking up both available slots. I'd have preferred 32GB at the time, but 16GB was the maximum available, so hey-ho. It has performed brilliantly in the time I've owned it, but I've never stopped wanting 32GB RAM, just to give it more headroom for my image processing workflow, basic CAD, occasional VMs and the various other apps I often have running simultaneously. During the chip shortage, prices for memory sky-rocketed, so upgrading was out of the question - but now it seems things have calmed down again. With the general price drop and additional discounts, I was able to pick up a 2 x 16GB = 32GB pack of Kingston FURY Impact 3200MHz DDR4 CL20 RAM for a sensible price of under £64 delivered :) Of course, tomorrow I have the job of fitting it - and getting inside the PC was a bit of a hassle last time when I added an extra SSD :o Oh well, fortune favours the brave... :lol:
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Forum: General Talk
06-23-2022, 01:30 PM
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LOL. You folded like a cheap suit :p :lol: Glad you did, though :D
Oooooh. Premium stuff... very nice indeed! :) Congratulations - good score ;)
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Forum: General Talk
06-23-2022, 01:05 PM
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It's not about the cost of the item - it's about the utility and enjoyment. I bet you'll get just as much utility from both of those as I will from the HD FA31 - and possibly as much enjoyment.
I have the Pixl-atr, and it's a cool film carrier. Its big advantage over other types - aside from the cost - is flexibility and versatility with different formats. The disadvantage is, it's not the easiest and quickest to use when advancing roll film to subsequent frames. But, if you're happy to work slowly, it's a very good option. The thing I've found annoying is that the configurable inserts can tend to come loose or fall out during handling, so with mine I use bits of electrical insulating tape to hold the pieces in place. Works a treat :D
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Forum: General Talk
06-23-2022, 12:06 PM
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Thanks, Kevin ;)
There's no reason why I couldn't use it on my Sony, as I already have a decent quality K-mount adapter with aperture open/close ring. I guess I will try it at some point. The thing is, though, I'm not (yet) much of a wide-angle photographer. My most-used focal length on APS-C is 28mm, equivalent to 42mm on "full frame". Having said that, looking through my Sony photos, I've taken a fair number at 35mm... and 31mm isn't miles away from that.. And, going back to Pentax, I really do love my HD DA21, despite it being wider than my usual comfort zone. So, yes, maybe I will give the FA31 a try on my Sony :D
Don't keep us waiting too long, eh?! :p :lol:
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Forum: General Talk
06-23-2022, 11:34 AM
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It's been a few months since my last lens purchase, and that was primarily for film digitising rather than general shooting (a Sigma 50mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro). I didn't think I'd be buying any more for a loooooong time... mainly because I'm happy with the glass I own and use, but also because of the economic storm clouds looming. However, thanks to the eagle eyes of forum member @Kevin B123; - plus the sale of my DA*60-250 and HD DA1.4x rear converter - I was able to pick up a brand new HD FA31 f/1.8 Limited for just a small cash adjustment. I collected it from Wex Photo in Newcastle-upon-Tyne this morning :)
I haven't really had a chance to shoot with it properly yet, but I've set up AF fine adjustment for it on my K-3 (around -3 to -4 seems to work best) and carried out some brief tests for de-centering (it looks good). First impressions are positive... It looks and feels just like my HD DA Limited lenses, but with an aperture ring (which, as I'll be shooting it exclusively on my Pentax gear, will stay put in the "A" position). I thought it would be bigger than it is... I'm sure I'd read somewhere that it was quite a big lens, but it doesn't seem that way to me. Looks and feels good attached the K-3. Build quality is nice. Having read plenty of reviews and looked at many photos from the SMC version over the years, I pretty much knew what to expect optically, so there are no real surprises there - except to say, I don't think it will be replacing my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 Art, but sitting along-side it. Even just a few hours playing with the FA31 is enough to demonstrate how different these two lenses are... The Sigma is quite big and bulky, AF is silent but leisurely, resolution is incredibly good in the frame centre even wide open, but the borders and corners never catch up at any aperture. It has a real "signature" look, IMHO. The Pentax lens is smaller and more traditional in look and feel, screw-drive AF is very quick by comparison but has that screw-drive noise (which I don't mind), resolution wide open seems "OK" but it definitely behaves like an older film lens here, with f/2.8 onwards being best if centre resolution is critical. I like the out-of-focus rendering so far, but haven't played with it enough to draw any firm conclusions.
For the price I paid (especially after selling my other gear), I'm really happy to have picked this up. Time will tell whether it becomes a favourite, but either way it sits nicely with my HD DA Limiteds in providing a range of different focal lengths - and doesn't seem out of place with those crop lenses either :)
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Forum: General Talk
04-12-2022, 12:49 PM
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You should set up a forum poll with those choices and go with the majority. My pre-vote is for the wing-suit and Swiss mountains... :lol:
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Forum: General Talk
04-12-2022, 12:48 PM
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Who's been a busy lad?! :lol: Or rather, who's going to be busy :p
I've almost bought a few items individually from Nik & Trick, but their shipping prices have put me off. I guess it's better value when you buy several items from them in one go? They stock some great stuff, and appear to be genuine enthusiasts...
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Forum: General Talk
04-08-2022, 11:57 AM
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I'll be very interested to know how you get on with it. One of the few things I'd really like - and I'd be prepared to sell some (more) gear, photographic and non-photographic, to help fund it - is a dedicated monochrome camera. It looks like there may be a K-3III monochrome version coming in 2023 or later, but conversion of one of my existing bodies - K-5 or K-3 - might be a more sensible approach financially...
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