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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
07-07-2023, 05:25 AM
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KEH has a print catalog? Who knew? On their website they have hundreds of pieces of Pentax gear for sale. DSLRs, film cameras, lenses from a $3000 400mm to a Vivitar 70-150 for $3.
A few weeks ago I was on the ferry from Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island to Tsawwassen, walking around with my K-3 Mark III. A ferry employee in coveralls comes out of a door to the top deck, looks at my camera and says "is that a Pentax?" I said yes, and he said "what kind of film are you shooting?" I said it's digital. He replied "oh, okay, is that the one with the in-body stabilization?" I said yes, he was like "that's cool." We had a brief conversation after that. He obviously wasn't 100% up to speed on Pentax, but it was nice to run into someone with some knowledge of the brand.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
06-06-2022, 09:21 AM
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I was taking some pictures of my 15-year-old's last soccer game of the season, and the older brother of one of the other kids on the team came up to me and says "Wow, I've never seen a Pentax in person! What is that, oh, a K-3. Nice." We started talking and he clearly knew about the brand and was positive about it. He said he shoots Canon, primarily portraits and landscapes, but a little sports, too.
Sometimes you'll read here about people mocking your choice of camera brand, or trying to convince you that their gear is better. But I've never experienced that. My interactions have almost always been more like "Ah, cool, you're into photography, too."
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-13-2022, 08:54 AM
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Walking around Manhattan yesterday and I was behind a dad and his kid, he had a Pentax strap. Getting closer I saw he had a K-5 with a 18-55 kit lens. It had been several years since I saw another Pentaxian in the wild.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
11-11-2020, 07:13 AM
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Some places do both. A lot of stadiums now only allow transparent bags of a certain size like ziplocs. No camera bags, no DSLRs, no umbrellas, no coolers, no bottles. I look forward to the day where events are a kind of reverse ancient Olympics, where it's fans who're naked and the players clothed. For safety, of course. Iris scan for your ticket, embedded RFI chip to pay for nachos, just watch where the hot cheese falls...
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
11-11-2020, 06:59 AM
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Sure, but there's a lot of difference between a KP with a 40XS and a K-1ii and a 150-450. I've seen stadiums that ban tripods, monopods and lenses over 8". That makes more sense than banning all SLRs.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
11-11-2020, 06:09 AM
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That's not always a good thing. There are places that "serious" cameras and photographers aren't allowed, but they won't give a second thought to someone with a compact camera or a smaller mirrorless body with a prime, and they really don't care about phones. I wish I had some better shots of the third-division German soccer game I went to a year ago, but DSLRs were verboten and I had to make do with the phone.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
07-10-2020, 05:03 AM
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That's an APS-C K-3 with a 10-17mm fisheye, isn't it?! Wow. Pentax, part of the deep state.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-01-2020, 09:00 AM
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In my experience I see a swarm of phones, but a fair number of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. I can't remember seeing a film camera in many, many years. Not that I'm specifically looking, usually, but I've never noticed one in decades.
At events at school there will be several hundred parents there. I'll see six, eight, maybe 10 DSLRs, mirrorless, and a few bridge cameras. Again, never saw a single film camera.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-13-2020, 05:06 PM
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I think you're taking that a little out of context. This is a person who has responsibilities for photography, graphics, etc for an engineering and technical organization. It's likely that the camera is owned by the organization, and she had no input into its selection or the 18-200mm lens. She may not actually be a photographer, but might have a degree in graphic design or similar. Taken that way, I don't think it's that unusual that she didn't seem to realize Pentax still makes cameras. It's likely she's never seen a Pentax camera in a store (I've shot only Pentax for nearly a decade and haven't), and didn't really pay attention to reviews or magazines with Pentax coverage.
---------- Post added 01-13-20 at 07:09 PM ----------
But since there are 15 or 20 times more Canon and Nikon users as Pentax most of them could be clueless and there'd still be more bright, thoughtful, talented Canikon photographers than Pentax.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-13-2020, 09:35 AM
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We should extend the same respect and courtesy to others we would like from them. There are countless excellent Canon and Nikon photographers who ended up in that camp for perfectly legitimate reasons. They could have bought into a lower-tier camera because that's what they could afford. They ended up with a camera because that was what was on the shelf at their local store. They needed a good sports/wildlife camera and that isn't Pentax' strength. Maybe they wanted or needed or felt better about a brand with enough presence in the US to have easily available support and repair.
And if you shoot Canon or Nikon you might not be all that well versed in a brand with 3% market share. I certainly don't know the ins and outs of everything Leica or Olympus has to offer.
We tend to get myopic here, thinking that in a just and right world everyone would end up as a Pentaxian because our choices were objectively correct. Maybe they were for us. But not for everyone. Maybe not even for most people.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-12-2020, 07:41 AM
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That was pretty much it. I told her Pentax was kind of rare, but has some unique features like weather-sealed bodies. And her response was something like "oh, okay." I really don't know her photography background, I've had other experiences with our graphics department and they clearly were handed photography as an ancillary duty. Another guy who took my portrait a few years ago didn't know if his camera was APS-C or full frame, took backlit pictures under a vestibule, and then heavily edited the results until they looked very artificial.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-12-2020, 05:54 AM
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I got a promotion at work, and had to have my picture taken for a newsletter article. The organizational photographer had a Canon of some sort, I believe it was a 6D with an 18-200mm lens. I mentioned about being a bit of an amateur photographer and she asked what camera I use. When I said I have a couple of Pentaxes she was kind of confused and seemed to not know that was a thing. And she's about my age, mid-to-late 40s.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
10-28-2019, 04:15 PM
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You can always figure out the optimal settings for what you're trying to achieve then move aperture, shutter speed, ISO to very non-optimal settings. Or just turn off shake reduction and stand on one of those paint mixing devices. Or spatter some dirt on a clear UV filter.
---------- Post added 10-28-19 at 07:16 PM ----------
With appropriate application of nostalgia you can convince yourself all kinds of old tech is objectively better.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
10-21-2019, 04:31 AM
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Leaving that space in the market to Fuji, and to some extent Pentax.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
10-20-2019, 06:37 AM
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I don't know if it has anything to do with interest, but they just don't advertise in the US. Combined with almost no brick-and-mortar presence it's almost 100% word-of-mouth and 3rd-party internet sites like this one.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
08-15-2019, 06:51 AM
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Was in Munich, Füssen, Werfen, Großglockner High Alpine Road, Sankt Wolfgang, Salzburg recently. Didn't see a single Pentax. Countless cell phones, a good number of Canikons, no shortage of Sonys, and Olympus or three. But my family's K-3ii and K-30 were the only of our breed.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-18-2019, 04:26 AM
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I don't see a whole lot of difference. The reason I have both is that I dropped the XS (attached to the K-3ii) and it got slightly decentered. I found a great deal on a used 40LTD and picked it up as a replacement. No sense in trying to get the XS fixed when I bought it for about $100.
I haven't ever really compared both since I've never had both in 100% condition, but I never saw any major differences in image quality. It is nice with the LTD to have the hood and quick shift. In any case I love the size and both have been my favored walk-around lens when I want to keep the kit tiny.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-30-2019, 06:54 AM
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Go to elementary school Christmas programs. At least at mine, which I imagine to be typical, there are usually 6-8 dedicated cameras among the several hundred parents. Split pretty evenly between ILCs and bridge cameras. Almost always Canons and Nikons, except me. Also a handful of point-and-shoots. Of course there are a lot more people trying to digitally zoom with their iPhones in the bad lighting.
With a K-3ii, a 55-300 and an aperture around 5.6 I'm usually pushing ISO to 3200 or even higher, so I can't imagine what kind of noise and quality they're getting on phones or even bridge cameras. They're probably shooting 4K video of third graders horrifically playing Jingle Bells on the recorder in near darkness.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
06-23-2018, 04:53 PM
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On the ferry to Vestmannaeyjar in Iceland today. Pouring rain, densely overcast, horrible day for photographing what would otherwise be a beautiful location. But as I'm standing at the railing outside in the cold and wet trying to not get seasick, with my K-3ii, another guy walks up with a huge piece of kit. It's a 645z. I pick up mine and point to the Pentax logo, he says "same camera, mine is a lot bigger". That may be my first confirmed Pentax siting in the wild.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-08-2018, 08:01 AM
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I never said it was just as good. I said it met my requirements.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-08-2018, 07:23 AM
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That's silly, of course I'm not going to argue with the choices of someone who can drop $75k on gear. That's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about regular photo/computer hobbyist people. If you can get an Apple for less than $5k, more in the $1000-1500 range that's still more than I'd pay, but not unreasonable.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-08-2018, 05:26 AM
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Seriously? I truly thought $1500 was a lot to pay for a computer. For $5000 you could buy a completely over-the-top PC, or put together a small supercomputer if you sourced all the components. I may exaggerate a little, but I've certainly built PCs with above-average specs for $750, and those machines served me very well for 5+ years.
For the savings between a decent PC and $5k I could buy most of the Pentax gear on my long-term wife-will-never-sign-off-on-this wish list.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-07-2018, 12:11 PM
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The vast majority of the time my Windows machines just work. When they don't it's more often than not my fault, for doing things like trying to install multiple operating systems. I do like tinkering, but there are times where it gets frustrating. But not nearly enough to pay a lot more for an Apple. I'll keep the difference and buy camera gear.
I spend more time troubleshooting my parents' computer than my own. Maybe I should recommend they go buy an Apple. Except that I'd bet my dad has it in his head that Apples are for granola eating liberals, and he couldn't do that any more than he'd trade in his pickup truck for a Subaru wagon. It took a long time to convince him to use free/open source LibreOffice rather than paying hundreds of dollars for Microsoft Office, probably because only hippies think anything comes for free.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-07-2018, 11:36 AM
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PCs are also the computer for people with a budget. Or people who don't want to spend $1500* for a new computer.
* I'll admit to not really knowing what a new Apple computer costs today. But I do know that I've assembled my own PCs multiple times over the past 30 years and have never approached $1000 worth of components for one system. My kid saved up birthday and Christmas and allowance money and bought a refurbished Windows laptop of reasonable spec for $200. What kind of Apple, used or otherwise, could you get for $200?
And if you're open to Linux, I've installed lighter distros on multiple machines where they run very nicely. This on long-since paid for 6, 8, 10-year-old hardware that Win10 would not run on. I doubt there's any Apple equivalent to that.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
02-05-2018, 05:34 AM
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I am not an Apple person. I own a couple of iPods, and use iTunes sometimes, but Apple is not a brand for tinkerers and experimentation. So I have a PC that dual-boots Windows and Linux. I get the elegance and simplicity of the Apple. But it's not me.
The commercial in question struck me as too clever by half. It would be like Tesla having an ad where nobody knows what this "car" they've heard people talk about is.
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