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My camera has hot pixels! February 19, 2009

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I know LCDs can get hot pixels but I didn’t know cameras could get them.

According to Ken Rockwell, hot pixels are a fact of life for every digital camera.

I only noticed the hot pixels from my camera because of 1 particular photo that had a very black part (which, because I was playing with the ISO was actually black and not full of noise). The pixels were just noticeable when I viewed the image full-screen and of course were recognisable as hot pixels when I zoomed in. I could also notice them in one other photo (that was dark but not black).

I haven’t noticed them before but I guess if I go back and look I’ll find them in all of the photos I have with dark bits in the right places.

New Flash June 5, 2007

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So I wanted to get a new flash for Adam’s wedding but at the time all I had read pointed towards only 2 Pentax-brand flashes working in my camera. For around $1000 I’d rather have a second camera but then I’m not a pro. I guess if you’ve got a K10D and some good quality lenses an extra $1000 for a flash is not a big deal.

For some reason, I failed to consider the fact that Sigma (or another third party lens manufacturer) might also make flashes. The Camera Warehouse at the Hyperdome moved so I went and had a look at the new store. They’d previously had a pretty crap range of DSLR stuff so I was pleased to see that they’ve now got a good range of both cameras and accessories. Even more impressive (to me at least) was that they’ve got a cabinet containing lenses, flashes and stuff so you can actually see what they’ve got instead of having to ask for everything (which I hate doing).

Something caught my eye. It was a Sigma EF-500 DG ST (PA-PTTL). The PA-PTTL indicates that it works with Pentax cameras. Strangely, nothing I could find online indicated if this would work with a K100D but it does support the *ist DS (similar hardware) so I figure it’s just a slightly older flash (we always get older stuff here in Australia).

Since I’m paranoid about stuff like this I took in my K100D to test it out. They did have a K100D on display but I also wanted to check out a wide angle converter lens against my lenses so I had it there anyway. The flash seemed to work fine except that it wouldn’t actually fire… oops. They were using batteries that were too flat. A quick change and all was well. The flash moves something in the head to focus the light tight or wide to match your lens. It seems to indicate the 35mm equivalent focal length which makes sense given that the Pentax flash mount hasn’t changed since the film SLR days. The flash goes out to 28mm equivalent which gives me vignetting at 18mm (27mm equivalent). The flash has a super wide mode you activate by flipping out a screen that lets it go to 17mm equivalent. It’s got an AF assist light (something the K100D lacks) which uses a red LED to illuminate the focus spot. It does an awesome job considering I can barely see the light and it much better than the K100D’s built-in flash-based AF assist (which I never use because it’s so bad).

Of course the important features of an external flash are speed and bounce. This one handles both nicely. I was doing portrait photos the other night and the camera’s read buffer filled up before the flash ran out. Seriously, the camera was holding back the flash! Of course, standing back a bit (ie. longer flash times) meant that the flash ran out first. I noticed a strange situation where the camera would take a photo with flash only to have the flash cut out half way through because it ran out of power. As a result, the image was stuffed. This only happened on the fourth shot in a row (holding down the button). It was strange because if the flash is empty the camera just takes a non-flash photo. I would have thought the flash would refuse to fire if it was below a certain threshold. Anyway, it was easy enough to avoid. Just a small delay between shots let it keep up with me. I did notice that since it could keep up with me I could take two photos before people thought to look away. The camera could get off two photos in less time than it takes to do red eye so people just assumed the first flash was a red eye-reduction flash. Bounce was a mixed bag. I suspect I’ll need to practice it before I’ll get consistently good results. I did get some really nice shots that clearly showed off the soft, diffused bounce light but in other photos I just got the top half lit normally and the bottom half dark.

One thing I had a big problem with was shadows. Holding the camera normally resulted in good shots because the shadows go down behind the people. The problem came when I took portrait-orientation photos. All of a sudden I had this big light off to the side producing bigger shadows than the built-in flash. If I can get bounce sorted out this won’t be a problem because I can just bounce the light off the roof. Another thought that occurred to me is that I could get someone to hold up a reflector to bounce the extra light back into the shadows. There might even be something that’ll hold a flash correctly for portrait shots (like say, that big metal thing over here).

So… um. yeah. I was writing then I got distracted by The Mirror Project which showed up when I tried to search for “portrait flash”. I guess I got everything down. The flash was $300. The wide angle converter didn’t work (it’s designed for people without 18mm lenses). The lady helpfully informed me that they have a nice ultra-wide Sigma zoom lens for $700 but that’s a little more than I’m willing to spend right now.

Oh yeah, I took photos for my sister’s formal. Just a day after I got the flash and I certainly gave it a work out. Luckily the photos didn’t all die as a result of my inexperience with the new gear :)

2 Birthdays January 8, 2007

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We attended 2 birthday parties on the weekend. It let me give the camera and lenses a workout.

I started off with the 28-90mm lens. I definitely found it to be more useful then the 18-50mm lens. There was one or two times when the wide angle would have been nice but most of the time it was a simple matter to step back a step or two. The real surprise for me was how good and useful the 70-300mm lens was. Obviously it needs a bit of room between you and your subject but with a bit of light (there was plenty of that) it’s able to take very crisp photos. I got shots of the kids running around and they’ve come out great.

My new lens is here January 4, 2007

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My Sigma 28-90mm lens arrived today. It’s about what I expected. The 28mm end is wide enough most of the time and the extra length (over the 18-50) is nice. The lens grows like the 18-50 does too. It starts out long and gets short and what I’m guessing is the “primary” size before getting long again. The 18-50 has a primary area of 28mm. I’m probably going to leave it off of the camera now unless I know I’ll want wide angle action. The 28-90 has a primary area of 50mm which matches my manual prime lens. It won’t be much use for zooming past 50mm in low light but then the other lens isn’t useful past 28 so that’s not a big deal. The biggest problems for me are the plastic mount (I’m so sure that I’m going to break it) and the fact that this doesn’t really let me leave the 70-300 at home when travelling around. If anything, I’ll want to take all 3 lenses with me now. The 18-50 for wide angle shots, the 28-90 for most normal work, the 70-300 for things far away. I’m sure that I’ll manage to get along with only the 28-90 on the camera though if I don’t have the room for the other lenses. I found a cool panorama stitching program called hugin (it’s a GUI on top of the Panorama Tools) so I can always use that to connect multiple images together giving me roughly the same benefit as a wide angle lens. I did this all the time with my digicam but it had a panorama guide mode which isn’t available on my K100D. I’m not sure how important that will prove to be.

The 50mm prime lens is small enough to fit just about anywhere so it’ll probably get dragged around with me. It’s something I’d like to use as long as I’ve got the time to do the extra fiddling required. For holiday stuff that’s not very likely unless there’s stuff that doesn’t move for me to take photos of.

Update 6 January 2007

My camera bag, something I bought for my video camera, can hold all four lenses. That means I can easily take them all with me when I go out. There’s a movable padding wall that I use to separate the camera and the 70-300mm lens. The camera needs to have either the 18-50mm or the 28-80mm lens on and the other one fits in the front zip pocket with the 50mm lens. I’ve got some other crap in the front pocket too (eg. spare batteries). Actually, it’s lucky that the 28-80mm is so similar in size to the 18-50mm because if it was any longer it wouldn’t fit on the camera. The bag has a handle and a strap that lets me carry it in a reasonably comfortable position. Most importantly, I can change lenses on the go because I don’t have to hold the bag.

Automatic iPhoto Import January 4, 2007

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I don’t understand how Apple can claim to have a one-step import in iPhoto. Here’s what I have to do:

  1. Insert my card (iPhoto launches)
  2. Click Import
  3. Click Delete Originals (despite having this set in the prefs!)
  4. Wait for the import to finish
  5. Click the tiny eject icon (if it’ll let you!)
  6. Remove my card

This is just retarded. It’s certainly more than one step! I had a look around but couldn’t see that anyone had done something to make this better so I created something myself, Automatic iPhoto Import.

Here’s my procedure now:

  1. Insert my card
  2. Wait for the import to finish
  3. Remove my card

Much better!

How does it work? It’s an application bundle built from a script (drag it to Script Editor to see the code). The trick is to have it launch for you when you insert your card. To do this, open Image Capture and choose Automatic iPhoto Import as the application to open. Next, when the script runs it checks to see if my card is there and if it’s got pictures. If so, it imports them into iPhoto, removes them and then ejects the card.

Bugs? Sure. It only works with my card (or rather, any card called “K100D”) with images from a Pentax camera on it (ie. images in DCIM/100PENTX). It doesn’t launch iPhoto unless it’s going to do an import. It’s probably dangerous (removing files is done outside of iPhoto and the import success isn’t verified). All the new rolls are called 100PENTX (you can’t access rolls from AppleScript).

I’m happy with these limitations as long as it does what I want, one-step importing.

New lens December 26, 2006

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I’ve ordered a Sigma 28-90mm lens.

Because the 18-50mm lens is so slow at 50mm, I’ve been using the 50mm prime (with the manual aperture hack, sooo much better than full manual mode even with the dimmer viewfinder) quite a bit lately. It seems to be quite an awesome lens. Despite the manual focus and lack of zoom, I’m really starting to like it (though it’s not so good for group shots due to the crop factor).

So I’ve got the 18-50mm for wide angle (it’s good for 18-28 just not all the way to 50). I’ll have the 28-90mm for “normal” to 2.5x zoom. I’ve got the 50mm for times when I want awesome shots. I’ve got the 70-300mm for big zooming (incidentally, it’s supposed to be the best lens in it’s category, score).

Of the other old lenses, the 28mm might be useful but it’s only got 1 stop more than the 28-90 and it’s not genuine Pentax so it’s not awesome like the 50mm lens is. The 35-105 is junk. The 80-210 is actually very soft (found out trying to take sample pics). I found that you can make it do manual aperture with a lever on it (instead of having to rotate it). For some reason I want to like this lens but it’s just too soft, even at smaller apertures. It looks like there’s dust inside and there was something on the rear element… perhaps I can clean it up.

I’m thinking about getting a tele-converter. There’s an old 2x Km one on ebay for cheap. For a bit more I could get a 500mm lens but it’s 30cm long so I don’t know how much I’d use it. The same company (Opteka) has a massive 650-1300mm lens. It’s incredibly slow (f8-f16) and around 2kg but damn that’s a lot of zoom for not a lot of money. So do I really need longer focal length? I don’t know. I thought of getting the 2x adapter because it was there. Certainly there’s been a few times when I would have liked something longer than 300mm. Of course, the combo will get slow (f11) after around 400mm so it’s not that huge an increase but it is cheap. If I can get the 80-210 lens clear I could just leave it attached to the extender as a dedicated 400mm lens.

I found out today that the focussing screen on the K100D is replaceable. There’s a place (Katz Eye) that makes screens for $100 USD. There’s cheaper alternatives too (people that convert old screens by hand). I have the Pentax ME body here doing nothing… perhaps I could trim it’s screen and put it in the K100D? Apart from the obvious concerns, the metering and AF might get screwed up if the older screen has a different brightness than the newer one. I might just bite the bullet and pay for the “real” one. I’m planning on using the 50mm lens quite a bit so a better focussing aid would be appreciated. There is the AF beep from the camera though and I haven’t had too many issues with it yet so I might wait and see.

Actually, the ME has a penta-prism (instead of the penta-mirrors found in the K100D) so I have been thinking about the possibility of getting it out and putting it into the K100D. I have no idea if this is a sane idea or not. There doesn’t seem to be a culture of hardware hacking in the [D]SLR world, perhaps because most people with a SLR use it for learning/work and not so much play. I’m sure most people would think me nuts to even consider major surgery like this…

Update 29 December 2006

It seems that most SLR people are really against hardware mods, even one that aren’t extremely difficult. However, one guy took the focussing screen from a Pentax ME, used a belt sander to get it to the right dimensions and put it into a *ist DS. His story is over here. I’m pretty sure the K100D has a bigger screen than the *ist DS. I’ll try to find the measurements online so I don’t have to take my screen out and measure it. This is the kind of project I’d want to take a day or two on (not to mention that I have to get the required tools together) so I’ll probably do this in late January when I have a week of holidays.

In the mean time, I think I’ll get myself a Pentax O-ME53. It fits on the viewfinder and gives 1.2x magnification. That more than offsets the smaller image (a result of the use of penta-mirrors instead of a penta-prism) and coupled with the ME’s focussing screen should make the camera much nicer for manual focussing.

From what I’ve read it seems that I can’t actually do much about the “brightness” without manually recalibrating the metering system (how the heck would you do that?). I think that means I’d have problems if I put in the penta-prism, assuming that it’s even possible. I’m having my doubts. My original logic was that the space with the mirrors must be the same size but then the light refracts on the inside of the prism so the space for the mirrors should be ever so slightly smaller than the size of the prism. Combined with the whole “if you stuff up, the viewfinder is dead forever” thing, it’s turning me off the idea. I suppose I could use the “digital preview” button instead of the viewfinder and the AF beep to let me know when it’s focussed (for manual lenses) but it wouldn’t really be the same, would it?

Update 30 December 2006

The Pentax O-ME53 is extremely hard to find. I did find to US stores that sell it but am having problems with my credit card (probably because my bank sucks and disabled international purchases). I have read that the Nikon DK-21M will fit on the viewfinder of Pentax cameras which would be really good since I can get a DK-21M locally for much less than the cost of importing a O-ME53. I’ll just take my camera into a shop to compare the viewfinder size against a Nikon D70s/D50 (both compatible with the DK-21M).

Manual aperture support on the K100D December 23, 2006

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This was added to the end of a previous post but I’ve figured it out a bit more so I’m posting it as an article on it’s own.

The K100D (actually all Pentax cameras produced since 1997) features a crippled KAF mount. Unlike previous mounts, this version is missing the mechanical mechanism that lets the lens tell the camera what the aperture is. If the lens has an A position on the aperture ring (or lacks an aperture ring, like the FAJ lenses), the camera can control the aperture programatically and everything is good.

The first cameras with this mount had major limitations when used with manual aperture lenses. They would work but only with the aperture wide open (which tends to produce over-exposed shots when there’s good lighting due to the maximum shutter speed being exceeded). Later cameras just disabled the lenses altogether to prevent over-exposed shots being taken. The K100D (and at least some of the *ist D models too) defaults to disabling the lenses but you can get them to work by changing some settings and performing an extra step while shooting.

Some history might be in order here…

Long ago when SLR cameras were new the aperture ring was a hardware feature and the camera didn’t know what it was set to. This meant stopping down the lens would also affect the brightness of the viewfinder. While this would have been ok most of the time there’s plenty of examples where this just falls apart. Using the flash is perhaps the most obvious because you need to stop down the lens to offset the harsh light the flash gives off but that means you need to focus with almost no visibility. To improve things, a mechanical link was put in that meant the camera could force the aperture wide open or let it drop back to the selected position. The link also let the camera know what aperture was selected so that when it did it’s metering and stuff, it could take that into account.

So, the part that lets the camera force the aperture open is still present on the K100D but the other bit is missing. This means that the camera cannot adjust for the aperture because it doesn’t know what it is. The extra step you have to take lets the camera drop the aperture down and do the metering. This doesn’t seem to be as good as metering wide open and compensating for the aperture but it’s certainly better than nothing.

You’ll need to change 2 custom settings before you can do this. The first one lets the camera work with manual aperture lenses. The second setting causes the AE-L button to select the shutter speed (Tv) instead of the default “program line” while in M mode.

So there’s 2 modes that work on the K100D. Av mode does the original behaviour of keeping the aperture wide open and if that’s what you want, it’ll work fine. Just keep in mind that you might end up with over-exposed shots and your DOF will always be small. The only other mode that works is M mode. Normally you’d have to manually select the shutter speed in this mode but the setting you changed above means that the AE-L button will make the camera meter with the aperture dropped down. The procedure is: half-press the shutter button (viewfinder text appears), press AE-L (aperture drops down, shutter speed changes, aperture jumps back up), press the shutter button (photo is taken). Of course you can manually adjust the shutter speed if you think the metering hasn’t done a good job (it always uses the center-weighted mode instead of the segmented mode). The other thing to keep in mind is that on M mode, the auto ISO setting doesn’t work so you should select a higher ISO manually if you are in low-light conditions. Finally, the flash ruins everything. If you’re going to use a flash, set the shutter speed to 180 and crank up the aperture. You’ll have to take some photos (or use the digital preview) to test the results. I think there’s a calculation you can use to determine the optimum aperture based on the distance of your subject but I don’t know what it is.

So here’s what I do when I’m using a manual lens (ie. the 50mm prime).

  1. select the ISO
  2. frame the shot
  3. focus
  4. half-press the shutter button to confirm focus (yes, AF works with a fully manual lens!)
  5. press AE-L to get a shutter speed
  6. If the shutter speed is too low, go back to step 1
  7. take a photo

If I’m taking several photos of something that’s not moving around I won’t bother to press AE-L each time.

The fact that AF works with the manual lens kind of surprised me but the way it works is all driven from the camera so it’s not that surprising I guess. Interestingly, if you have the camera on AF mode you can’t take a photo when it’s out of focus, even if you’ve got a manual focus lens on.

Update 23 December 2006

So there’s another option apparently. I found this on a page that has been removed from the internet (archive.org link).

If you need to use automatic-aperture SMC and SMC-M lenses on your *ist D, there are several tricks that you can employ. None is really nice, but here they are:
  • Stay in Av and shoot at open aperture.
  • Stay in M and use a separate light meter.
  • Calculate. Meter in Av, switch to M and extend the shutter-speed by so many stops as you closed down the aperture.
  • Before metering and shooting, unlock the lens and turn it counter-clockwise about 15 degrees. This allows the aperture to stay closed down to the value selected by the aperture ring, and the meter works properly.
  • Refine the previous method by drilling a second lock-hole into the lens mount of your SMC or SMC-M lens. The new one should be around 9 mm away from the original, and keeps SMC and SMC-M lenses to be locked in their “-15 degrees position,” while allowing SMC-A, SMC-F and SMC-FA lenses to be operate just like intended by Pentax. Be very, very careful when drilling! Lenses are precise optical and mechanical instruments, and even minor modifications require highest concentration and fitting tools. I will try to show an image of a modified lens-mount soon. (Anyone willing to send me an SMC 18/3.5 to experiment with?)

Note that it is not possible to modify an SMC or SMC-M lens to behave as if it were SMC-A. The reason is that the former ones have a logarithmic aperture coupling and the latter a linear one. The *ist D requires linear, so even if you modify the lens mount to simulate the presence of the SMC-A contacts, the aperture will not operate properly. Furthermore, such a modification would simulate an SMC-A lens set to a numeric aperture, and the *ist D requires as minimum and SMC-A lens set to “A”.

The significant one there is the option of mounting the lens at a 15 degree offset so prevent the aperture from being forced open. This restores the ancient behaviour of keeping the aperture separate from the camera which has it’s own pros and cons. On the one hand you can use manual aperture with Av (more automatic than M) mode. On the other hand, the viewfinder will get darker when you stop down the lens. For outdoors or well lit areas this seems like an acceptable compromise.

Lens choices December 20, 2006

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Damn, this is hard!

I’m basically looking at 3 options right now:

- Pentax/Sigma 28-80/90 ($30-$100). The lack of range would make this a sub-optimal “holiday” lens but at least it’s cheap. It would fill the gap between my 18-50 and 70-300 and 80/90 isn’t too bad. I’ve seen “adapters” that attach to the front of the lens and give it either wide angle (0.42x = 12mm) or telephoto (2.5x = 200mm) but reviews seem to indicate these adapters are mere toys that have crap optics.

- Sigma 18-125 ($269-$450). My cousin has one of these on a *ist DL. I had a quick look and I think I could see a difference in quality so I’d probably keep the 18-50 for close work and reserve this for “holiday” shooting. I haven’t seen any of these on eBay and I’m really confused by the massive difference in price from one store to another.

- Tamron 24-135 ($299-$800). This is not a cheap lens and by all accounts the quality (both build and optics) is above everything else I’ve got (except perhaps for the 50mm prime). The $299 price is for a Tamron-refurbished lens that comes with a warranty. The only problem is that it’s on eBay so it might not wait around for me to make up my mind (or it might get bid up, making it less of a deal).

Something about the Tamron lens is calling to me and at just a little more than the sigma one it’s soooo tempting. Of course, I’m not at all convinced that I’ll make anywhere near that selling my old lenses on eBay so it’ll mean getting approval from Bree. Factored with the potentially short time limit means there’s a low likely hood of me ending up with this lens.

The Sigma lens is the only “digital” one and thus the only one that goes down to 18mm. I’m not so sure that the wide angle will be critical for holiday shooting and if I’m going to get into wide angle stuff, a wider lens (eg. 12-24, 14, 10-17) would be good to have anyway.

I played around with the old lenses some more and noticed that they have really long minimum object distances. The 35-105 is 1.7m while the 85-210 is 2m. After playing with the old lenses for a while they’re not actually that bad to use except for one thing, anti-shake. Every time you twist the zoom you need to go into the menu and select the new focal length. Since the whole point of a zoom is not treat it like a series of primes that just sucks. If there’s enough light you can just turn off anti-shake but when you’re fighting the camera to give you decent shutter speeds it’s so nice to have it.

Playing around has also got me feeling much better about MF. I used it with one of the new (ie. not designed for it) lenses when taking photos of the kids and got good results. If the light had been better the AF would probably have done ok but it’s constant hunting meant that I was missing shots. Given my recent reading about pentaprism vs pentamirrors I wasn’t expecting to be able to do good MF and it was nice to have good shots come out. Mind you I was using the flash which means the aperture was low giving me good DOF. I guess that helps to cover any slight mis-focussing errors.

In defence of the K100D's AWB December 12, 2006

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So practically every review I read on the K100D complained about the auto white balance performance indoors. I wonder if any of the reviewers read the manual? It says quite clearly that AWB handles down to 4000K. Tungsten lights are around 2600K, below the range of AWB.

Note that I’m not defending the camera’s inability to handle lower temps because I wish it would handle indoors shooting better without resorting to a flash or doing manual WB. It’s just that none of the review sites bothered to check the manual, which would have told them not to expect AWB to work indoors.

I found the Sigma 18-125mm lens (Pentax mount) online for $269. Reverse engineering of camera+lens pricing put it at $200 when purchased in a kit so that’s a pretty reasonable price. I doubt I’ll find it any cheaper unless Ted’s is nice enough to let me exchange the 18-50mm one (and I doubt that’ll happen).

Update 15 December 2006

The non-bundle markup is crazy. Ted’s won’t sell me the 18-125mm lens for less than $450. The only consolation they would give is to offer it for $250 if I exchange the 18-50mm lens. Talk about a crap deal!

If I raise enough money, I’ll get the 18-125mm for $269 and if I don’t then I’ll settle for a 28-80mm now (around $30 on ebay) and aim for the 18-125mm sometime later.

Lens musings December 9, 2006

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So when I purchased my new camera, I did plenty of research on the body but not a lot on the lenses.

The “standard” lens for the K100D is a Sigma 18-55mm f3.5/5.6. In English that means you get nice wide angle shots at a reasonably small aperture and you can zoom all the way to 55 (which isn’t that far at all, barely 2x magnification) but you kill your aperture in the process. Most significantly, this is NOT a good lens for low-light situations unless you’re using a flash or keeping the zoom at 18mm (but that means you have to stand virtually on top of people to take their photo).

There were 2 advertised “dual zoom” kits (both with Sigma lenses). “Wide zoom” had a 18-55mm and a 55-200mm while “mega zoom” had a 24-70mm and a 70-300mm. Now lack of a good zoom is one of the things I hated most about my digicam so I really wanted the extra length on the 70-300mm lens. I asked and they offered me a combo of the 18-55mm and the 70-300mm so I got it.

Perhaps I should have thought about it some more…

You see, I’ve now got a lens that’s good for group shots and other wide-angle stuff but not so good for zooming or low-light. My other lens is poor at portrait work (70mm on a DSLR is like a 110mm lens on a Film SLR) but gets excellent zoom. It seems that I’m missing something in the middle. Something I do remember reading about, the “holiday zoom”. This isn’t a specific size, it’s just a guideline. The ideal lens for holidays can do close ups (at least down to 28mm, “normal” on a DSLR) and reasonable zoom, say 3x (around 85mm on a DSLR). Does that seem familiar? The low-range lens in the “mega zoom” bundle at 24-70 seems awfully close to that.

Of course, even better would have been the Sigma 18-125mm lens that you can get with the K100D (for only $100 more than the 18-55mm). I didn’t see it until after I’d purchased my camera already and I can’t seem to find it for sale by itself. Bummer. Sure the 18-125mm would overlap with the 70-300mm but I’m starting to suspect that’s a good thing. Without overlap, you are forced to change lenses more often. I was at Sea World today and I chose the order to visit exhibits based on which lens I’d need (to try and minimise lens changing). I still changed lenses half a dozen times, definitely something I’d rather avoid at a theme park. A 18-125mm lens would have handled the ferris wheel (just squeezed into 18mm) as well as most of the stuff I did with the 70-300mm lens (I purposely stood back in many places and pointed the zoom over people’s heads).

One of the things that I’d considered was that my dad had an old Pentax ME. I didn’t really expect to get any good lenses from it though. I was there today and my dad gave everything to me (it’s been sitting in the cupboard for years). Not only do all the lenses fit without an adaptor (the ME used a K mount too), there’s some nice lenses in the bundle.

There’s the standard Pentax 50mm f1.7 lens (marked SMC-M, I saw these cheap on eBay but thought I’d need the a screw mount adaptor to use them!). This type of lens is advocated as a perfect portrait lens for a DSLR because it’s cheap (due to being the “standard” lens for Film SLRs) and fast. This particular one is manual focus and aperture. One thing that seemed strange is that when I changed the aperture, it didn’t seem to affect the camera. I guess I need to play with it some more.

Next up is a “wide angle” Pentax 28mm f2.8 lens. Well, it’s not wide angle in a DSLR, it’s “normal” (like the 50mm was in the ME). It’s faster than my 18-55mm lens at 28mm and would also make a good portrait lens. It’s also manual focus and aperture.

There’s a Film SLR’s version of a “holiday lens”, 35-105mm (the same as a 24-70mm lens on the K100D). It’s got some kind of filter on it that seems to have acted like a lens cap (keeping the actual lens clean). It also has a macro mode and is fully manual. Since it has a zoom and a focus ring (and you have to use both), it seems a bit too involved for me. Worse, the anti-shake in the K100D needs to know what the focal length of the lens is and old zoom lenses like this one aren’t able to tell it. Not only would I need to worry about zoom and focus, I’d also need to forego anti-shake or manually set the focal length every time I touched the zoom.

Last, but certainly not least is a Tamron 80-210mm lens, the heaviest lens I’ve seen to date (these old lenses had more metal and less plastic). It’s amazingly compact compared to my Sigma 70-300mm, barely changing length when zooming or using macro (the 70-300mm can get more than twice it’s original length in macro mode). It’s even got a lens hood built-in (it’s a collar that slides up). Even though it’s not as powerful and manual, I could see myself using it instead of the 70-300mm lens. I was unimpressed with the auto-focus several times today (it would slide right past “focussed”, delaying while my subject moved away) and the Sigma lenses (which are designed for AF) don’t have “nice” manual focus sliders. The sliders on these old lenses are nicer to grip and have more travel so they’re easier to manage. There’s the whole “anti-shake” problem but if I use this lens properly (not like today where I was using the 70-300mm lens most of the time) then I shouldn’t need to change the zoom factor as much.

The macro mode on the 35-105mm and the 80-210mm is different to the 70-300mm. When the older lenses use this mode, it means the subject is really close to the lens (around 5cm) and the zoom is short. When the newer lens uses this mode it means the zoom is long (100-300) and the focus gets to extend further to bring the minimum distance from around 50cm to around 20cm. The end result is that you can do bigger zooms in macro mode on the 70-300mm lens but you can’t get the lens as close. I’m guessing that the older lenses are higher quality than my newer ones (since they were after-market purchases, not “stock” models) and that this is why there’s this difference in implementation.

There was also the camera body, quite beaten up but still working. It’s about half the depth of the K100D and quite a bit lighter. The big zoom lenses don’t unbalance the K100D but they must play havoc with a smaller, lighter body. There was also 2 flashes. A crap looking 1-battery flash and a 4-battery Soltron 133c flash. I got myself 2 new sets of rechargeables today for $40 so my current set could power that. I’m not sure how much difference it’ll make over the built-in flash as it’s not adjustable and seems to sit about the same height above the camera. It may even be worse since it’s missing various contacts the camera expects, hindering it’s integration with the camera’s functioning.

All the lenses except for the 50mm one have leather pouches. Only the 50mm has a lens cap (each pouch has foam on the bottom). There’s only 2 end caps. Everything was stuffed into a metal case with foam padding (that I’ll probably keep using). The camera’s leather bag had deteriorated too much and was thrown away at some point. There was even an unused roll of film in there.

So here’s where it could get interesting…

What I’d really like now is a “holiday lens”. The 35-105mm lens is a surprisingly strong candidate but it fails a crucial test, convenience (ie. Bree can’t use it). That leads me back to the 24-70mm or the 18-125mm lens. With the bigger zoom, I think I’d prefer the 18-125mm and it would be able to completely replace my 18-55mm lens. However, such a beast doesn’t seem to appear on ebay but I have seen a 28-80mm, which would be acceptable.

I’ll probably sell one of the prime (non-zoom) lenses (not sure which yet) and the 35-105mm lens. The 80-210mm is a tougher decision. With a holiday lens for regular use, I’d be able to reserve this for times when I specifically wanted a big zoom. That means working on a particular shot so it would be less of a hassle to setup all the camera’s settings for it. Then again, the 70-3
00mm goes further (how useful that is on a regular basis remains to be seen) and the anti-shake support is automatic. The camera body and the flash (if it proves not to be useful) probably won’t fetch much by themselves. It might be better to package up the camera body with a lens and the flash into a “starter kit” (assuming people still get into SLR photography by buying old Pentax cameras).

Update 10 December 2006

Oops. I’ve been using 1.6 as my digital conversion factor but it seems that Pentax uses a sensor that has a factor of 1.5. I must have picked up 1.6 from reading about Canon cameras (that’s what they use). I don’t think it’ll make a huge difference. It does mean that the 24-70mm and 28-80mm lenses I’ve seen will only be getting just over 2x magnification instead of the 3x I was hoping for (and puts the 18-125mm lens at 3.75x magnification).