It’s not an actual holiday unfortunately but it is a community event where every one with a Pentax digital camera is encouraged to take a picture and upload it to http://www.pentaxforums.com/gallery/pentaxium-world-pentax-day-february-2011/
Here are a few I took today for the occasion. P.S. I had to wait for a very long train.
Previously I described the Baby Bessa and it’s workings. Now for some examples. I’ve included the film edge around the image so you can get a full sense of the aspect ratio. The film used was Kodak Ektar 100. I used what could be arguably the best light meter in the world a DSLR, It’s accurate and gives immediate feedback including a histogram.
Here is a comparison crop between a 14Mpixel DSLR image and the Voigtlander unfortunately there is some motion blur in the Bessa image but as this is a typical result I have included it anyway.
Pentax K-7 32mm
This could also be titled the camera that makes you ask “Did I advance the film?” This is a medium format camera that you can actually put in a pocket, as I do. It folds so compactly and flat that it can be easy placed in cargo pants pockets or a jacket. The main drawback to the camera is that the film advance is not tied at all to the shutter, what this means is that you can easily double expose an image or forget that you have already advanced the film and leave one blank. It forms an image on the negative that is 42mmx 55mm with the 55mm comprising the vertical. So you get 16 exposures from a roll of 120 film, at least you would if you remember to advance the film at the right times. The 75mm lens provides an angle of view of about 48 degrees that would be roughly equivalent to a 50mm lens with 35mm film. The compur shutter reaches 1/300 second at it’s fastest and the cocking mechanism is at the lens. The shutter is then tripped using the lever on the right front, this requires the use of the left hand to trip the shutter which is different from what you would expect from any modern camera. And by modern I mean any camera made in the last 60 years. The film advance does move the film forward one frame and then locks, the film is then advance-able again when you slide the film counter lever to the left. The camera opens via a button on the bottom but then requires pressing against the bellows supports until they click into position. The Bellows are folded back in by pressing against the supports in the opposite direction and then gently pushing the bellows back inside.
Camera dimensions Width (128 mm),Height (89 mm), Depth at side (30 mm), Depth at lens (42 mm) Weight (515 grams)
You may have noticed that the image dimensions I provided differ from 4×6 or even the 4.5×6 that you may have found elsewhere but they are the area of the negative each frame takes up and not the actual image size.
In my next post from this camera I will provide some sample images.
When I took this image this previous summer I had no idea that my Uncle had taken such a similar picture from so close a vantage point some 48 years earlier. I have been scanning his slides for him and for the rest of my family and was taken aback by how little this scene had changed. This is particularly true when I compare it to my own images where the world around me changes at such an incredible rate. These pictures also reminded me how photography can be a form of collecting where we try to recreate what we have seen before and want for our own, sometimes I think it’s better not to dwell too much on other peoples images to avoid the pitfall of mimicry.
I didn’t take many images with my Nokia N95 when I visited Seattle but the ones I did pretty much sum up my trip; train,walk,bus,train.
Here are some example images of the Pentax FA50 shot wide open, an F-stop of 1.4, using the K-7 DSLR. Having a lens this fast is nice as it allows you to maintain faster shutter speeds as the light level drops. It also provides a very shallow depth of field that can be used to isolate an element in an image.
I took a day trip to Seattle yesterday, with my Pentax K-7 and some lenses. One of the places I visited while walking from Fremont to the University of Washington was Gas Works Park. It’s an interesting thing they have done here. You would expect a city to want to remove any evidence of a locations industrial past when converting it into a park but Seattle did the opposite. They preserved much of the structure from what was a coal gasification plant. More info about it’s interesting history can be found here.
Here are some more images using the Pentax M50 1.7 and the DFA 100 Macro WR.
I’m planning a day trip and was having some difficulty deciding what lenses to take to use with my DSLR. So today I went to a nearby area and took pictures with one possible lens selection. I took the Pentax DA18-55 WR, a SMC M50 1.7, and the DFA100mm Macro WR. This combination gives me a broad focal range and also one fast prime. While I didn’t mind the manual focusing I would have preferred to have used an A series 50mm that would have provided aperture control through the camera rather than the lens. Otherwise it was a pretty good arrangement.
