Or rather, no it isn’t but it very soon will be because I’ve just had the bill for repairing it. FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN EUROS. That’s about as much as it cost new and a new body only in the USA I can buy for FIVE HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS – or less than €400.
Totally ridiculous – and why Pentax couldn’t have pointed this out to me and made me an offer on a new body I just do not know.
But in any case there’s a major sale on in a leading camera supplier in the USA and there is a Canon EOS with lens on offer at $499 (plus VAT when it gets over here) and I’m wondering if that might be the route to go down. They use lithium battery packs instead of AA batteries (and AA batteries was a major selling point) but if I buy a spare and keep it charged up that might be another consideration.
I can then flog all my Pentax gear and use the dosh to buy a decent lens.
The RRP of the Canon is $799 – Body only by the way so this looks like a good price to me
I’m giving this some serious thought.
It was absolutely taters this morning – I dont think that it’s ever been so cold at 09:15 so after breakfast I came back up here and warmed up.
Once I had reached a decent ambient temperature I dressed up – not in fishnets and stockings, basque and high heels Rhys – but in two pairs of trousers, two fleeces, two pairs of socks, my overalls and a coat and then went to seal off the fireplace downstairs so that I can run the woodstove up here.
I had a piece of leftover plasterboard that was a good size and so I trotted off to find the silicone sealant. And you might or might not believe it but it was frozen solid! In a tight-fitting plastic tube. It took ages for it to thaw out.
But it seems to have worked because the small fire that I lit in the stove burnt away to nothing in minutes without the slightest trace of a smell around the house.
I’m going to track down a sack of compressed wood pellets now and see how they burn.
This afternoon I carried on with the battening of the rear wall in the bedroom but the batteries in the power tools kept on going flat so I gave it up in the end. But with the sun shining gloriously and the day warming up (it reached 6.5 degrees in the verandah) and with fully-charged batteries in the house and barn I felt much better.
But once the dusk gathered the temperature plummeted and as I set off for the Anglo-French group it was already minus 4. But still – 18:40 and it was still daylight. So the days are lengthening considerably. It wasn’t so long ago that I was packing up at 16:30.
The roads were gruesome and the return journey was even more gruesome as the temperature has dropped to minus 8. A clear blue sky with thousands of stars and a strong easterly wind. The moment the wind drops the temperature will fall through the floor.
We could well be on course for the coldest night of the year.
And tomorrow we shall all be radio stars!
There you go… You could ask on air about Pentax digital camera repairers. That might elicit some response.
Don’t forget Nikon too and also that B&H might offer you a trade-in on your old Pentax stuff.
For $500 you can get a full Olympus DSLR system: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/601219-REG/Olympus_262090_E_System_E_520_SLR_Digital.html#specifications
I kinda like this camera. I’ve handled it and it handles nicely. It’s also very small and the lenses are very small too. $500 gets you the 14-42mm & 40-150mm Lenses. There’s a 2x crop factor which means they have the equivalent length of 28-84 and 80-300mm. The latter would be great for sport. You’re stuck with f5.6 at the fastest though.
the E30 goes up to 3200 ISO as does the 620. I’d say the 620 would probably be a better bet for $567 (with the 14-42 lens) A longer lens is needed for sport. The 70-300 is $325. There are fast lenses but I don’t think they’re worth the price. Rather than buying a fast lens I think putting the camera on 1600 ISO and using a flash such as the FL 36 at $190 would be a better option.
In terms of reliability, I’m very disappointed that Pentax has continued to be unreliable. In Consumer Reports (a US magazine) Canon and Olympus were apparently rated as the top two for reliability. I must admit I kinda like the Olympus. Oddly enough when I bought my Canons, the only cameras available locally were Canon and Nikon though I did see one place with olympus.
Well I’ve just rung up Pentax and given them a piece of my mind (I’ll have to be careful – I don’t have much left). 2 hours 15 minutes at €80 per hour to change a PCB when they pay a 8 year-old kind 5 cents in Thailand to fit one in 30 seconds.
And the engineer totally denied telling me that he said that it would cost in the region of €250 to repair it and return it (I was staggered at that price!) – that was the icing on the cake!
I told the receptionist that I’d seen Pentax bodies on offer at $500 new (that’s about €375) and if they had told me that my Pentax was beyond economical repair and they proposed me a new body for €375 I would have gone for that.
But they can totally forget their €507.15.
As far as the Olympus goes, f5.6 isnt far enough down. It needs to be much lower than that and I would sacrifice a high ISO for a low F-number – simply to avoid the grainy finish. Lightening the image at ISO3200 will be a much worse finish than sharpening a brighter image at ISO1600 I reckon.
That image I showed you the other day from my Flickr account of my car was shot at 1600ISO, underexposed by 3 stops. Then it was lightened and converted to B&W. It didn’t look too bad. That was taken at f5.6 under street lighting, lit by a single street lamp.
F5.6 is fine. As an example, if you used the FL-36 flash with a guide number of 36 (metric), you would be able to shoot subjects 36 meters away at f1.0 at 100 ISO. At 1600 ISO that would be 1152 meters away at f1.0. Now, at f5.6 that would be 102 meters away at 1600 ISO. The flash synch speed is 1/160th but that means nothing. Most flashes have a high-speed synch setting. Also, while the shutter is 1/160th, the flash fires at 1/1,000th and faster. I don’t really see a major problem there.
Ahhh yes indeed but you said the naughty word – FLASH.
You can’t use flash at sporting events, concerts, that kind of thing. It distracts the performers.
Then you’re stuck with lenses that cost a ton of money…
This is popular at sporting events, for example: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/186152-USA/Canon_2533A002_Telephoto_EF_400mm_f_2_8L.html
If you’re using Canon then you don’t want any lenses from Sigma, Tamron, Vivitar or in fact anybody else but Canon. They just don’t work as well on a Canon body.
The low end Canon cameras just don’t focus as well either.
How would that Nikon do with generic lenses?
Glad the suggestion of blocking the fireplace downstairs has worked. Hope you find something that will give you a decent burn time. How about charcoal?
I haven’t any experience of Nikon AF with different lenses. Generally (and this goes back to my Nikon AIS lenses) I found Nikkor lenses were far better than any of the independents. Buy cheap and regret it. I have heard Sigma stops working after the warranty expires. Tamron is always pretty soft and my Tamron lenses are nowhere near as good as my Canon lenses – they’re poor at focussing and slow to focus. Nikon has an advantage in being able to use older Nikon lenses (but check the specifications of the camera). For example, the Nikon D70 would take AIS lenses but the metering would not work. The D100 would work with AIS lenses but there were restrictions on what you could do (obviously no AF).
Looking at Nikon, the D3000 with an 18-55 VR lens is $549 from B&H. A 200mm manual focus lens with an aperture of f4 is $99. Now the D3000 gives you 1600 ISO and the 200mm lens gives you quite a good reach. Now, will the D3000 allow you to use that manual focus lens and will it allow you to use a manual focus matte screen?
According to Nikon, no but here’s what Nikon has to say:
# AF-S and AF-I NIKKOR: All functions supported
# Type G or D AF NIKKOR not equipped with an autofocus motor: All functions supported except autofocus.
# Non-Type G or D AF NIKKOR not equipped with an autofocus motor: All functions supported except 3D color matrix metering II and autofocus.
# IX-NIKKOR and AF-NIKKOR for F3AF: Not supported.
# Type D PC NIKKOR: All functions supported except some shooting modes.
# AI-P NIKKOR: All functions supported except 3D color matrix metering II
# Non-CPU: Autofocus not supported. Can be used in exposure mode d, but exposure meter does not function.
# Lens with maximum aperture of f/5.6 or faster: Electronic rangefinder can be used.
Now the Nikon D90 looks more promising:
1) DX AF NIKKOR: All functions possible
2) D-/G-type AF NIKKOR (excluding IX NIKKORlenses): All functions possible (excluding PC Micro- NIKKOR)
3) AF NIKKOR other than D-/G-type (excluding lenses for F3AF): All functions except 3D-Color Matrix Metering II possible
4) AI-P NIKKOR: All functions except Autofocus, 3D-Color Matrix Metering II possible
5) Non-CPU AI NIKKOR: Autofocus not supported. Can be used in exposure modes A and M but exposure meter does not function. Electronic range finder can be used if maximum aperture is 5.6 or faster; Color Matrix Metering and aperture value display supported if user provides
Again, it looks promising but isn’t really. So, let’s go back to the D3000 as it’s only the high-end cameras that do the manual focus lenses.
Canon by comparison has no manual focus EF or EF-S lenses as it’s a new mount system that came in, in around 1990.
Current manufacturers of digital SLRs are:
Nikon,
Canon,
Olympus,
Pentax,
Sony,
Leica,
Sigma.
Fuji used to do some extremely nice DSLRs as did Kodak but they both dropped out of the market.
Pentax, as we have just discovered, has not improved from when I used Pentax (some 20+ years ago). Sigma has an innovative Foveon sensor but it’s appalling at high ISOs.
Leica is a niche market camera for people that don’t actually take photographs. It’s like people who buy Bentleys – they buy them and put them in the garage because going out on the street gets them dirty.
Sony took over Minolta’s business and I gather they do quite well but I have zero information on Sony cameras. I also know nobody that uses a Sony camera.
Olympus I have tried. I use Canon digital. I have Nikon manual focus film cameras.
So… There’s your choice…
Olympus, Canon or Nikon.
For all of them you’d really want a 200mm f2.8 lens (preferably a prime lens as they’re faster or perhaps a 135mm lens even). Again, f2.8. Now these are pricey.
The great thing about a 70-300 f4-5.6 is you can take it out as far as 200mm and you’re still at f4.0. They’re a ton cheaper than 70-200 f2.8 lenses and only one stop slower.
The trick with the Canon 70-300 f4-5.6IS is to switch the AF off and then back on after you mount the lens on the camera. That way you can get some really crisp images.