I think if I went digging, I might still have my old Argus C3 brick. I know I still have the Vitomatic II rangefinder in there, which I always kept loaded with B&W film, probably Tri-X.
Pentax Cameras are Bargains
- Thread starter Briar Lee
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You can get film online at Amazon and have developed by mail like the old days. k1000s were great old style cameras ... at one time every professional photographer had at least one in their bag.
No need, $70 android stock cameras work fine. I wouldn't know how to load a program anyway and I won't own Apple products.
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Regarding the view-camera that Mr. Adams used to make what was probably his most famous image: Monolith - The Face of Half Dome (1927), it was a Gundlach Korona View 6.5" x 8.5".
Adams was remarkable in what he could get from a negative. It's a shame his "eye" wasn't on par with his skill in the darkroom.
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Photography is a great hobby for all ages. This is gonna encourage me to blow the dust off the old 35mm I have and give it a spin.
I've enjoyed Pentax cameras for many years. These are the three I have left, all screw mount cameras. I never got into the K-mount cameras, as I switched to Nikon in the late 1960s. Still, I couldn't get rid of these wonderful old cameras.
From the left, a Spotmatic with a 50mm 1.4 Super Takumar, an Hv with a 28mm 3.5 Takumar and an H with a 50mm 3.5 Industar.
From the left, a Spotmatic with a 50mm 1.4 Super Takumar, an Hv with a 28mm 3.5 Takumar and an H with a 50mm 3.5 Industar.
Every enthusiast interchangeable lens digital camera new enough to use an SD card, has a mode dial that allows the user to select ISO, shutter speed, and aperture opening.
Many of them have scene modes, for example fireworks on a tripod.
My Olympus has a live composite setting that would be hard to replicate on a phone or compact camera.
To freeze action is easy using an enthusiast camera.
Plus with a devoted camera, you can add flash units, even radio controlled flash units around the room.
My Olympus using a macro lens can do focus stacking, which is taking a series of shots and combining them so the close subject is entirely in focus.
And I can set my Olympus to be utterly silent, using an electronic shutter.
I can use it at night on a tripod to take photos of the stars.
My Olympus has features I’ll seldom use. There are enough adjustments nobody will ever try all the thousands of combinations.
A new one is a two thousand dollar toy that accepts lenses.
It even takes 4K video, but it’s not a video camera.
Olympus (and Panasonic) made the first enthusiast mirrorless cameras and now Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Fuji all have mirrorless, and Samsung gave up and went back to phones. Mirrorless is basically like your Android camera on steroids. You see want you want to shoot on a back screen or electronic viewfinder and click.
On the other hand a Pentax DSLR is like an old Pentax SLR except there’s no film. You frame using an optical viewfinder. The shutter is mechanical only. The mirror flips up and down with each shot.
They are a toy for folks who miss film.
The villains in the old James Bond movies would be taking pictures of James with a Pentax and a three foot lens.
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I used to work for Ricoh (though not in the camera division) who now own Pentax and I'm glad that they decided to keep the brand relevant. If you haven't noticed they just came out with a new film camera. Pretty much a hipster thing, but film, nonetheless. They actually had to ask retired engineers to help them design it.
Occasionally I take one of my old film cameras out and even added a set of polarizing filters to this one.
When I want to take a picture for the sake of the image though, I use my Nikon D850.
Occasionally I take one of my old film cameras out and even added a set of polarizing filters to this one.
When I want to take a picture for the sake of the image though, I use my Nikon D850.
Your Nikon 850 was the last and best full frame Nikon DSLR.
Pentax still makes a comparable full frame DSLR, the K1 Mark II.
And their new film camera is the first new one introduced in about 25 years. Yay!
What makes a dirt cheap 15 year old Pentax K-5 such a bargain for anyone who today doesn’t own a DSLR and wants one is to really get a noticeably better one you must step up to full frame, and Pentax legacy glass is so cheap and plentiful.
Yes, mirrorless is better, no question.
But there was a cool factor with the clack clack clack paparazzi grade DSLRs that can’t be explained any more than the potato potato potato sound of a Harley.
I do miss film and sometimes wish digital was never invented.
I have tried to keep going with film, but it is now too expensive, and the results seem not as good as they used to be.
I did try a Box Brownie once. The film was expensive, the processing cost was astronomical. The end result was eight very poor photos.
I have tried to keep going with film, but it is now too expensive, and the results seem not as good as they used to be.
I did try a Box Brownie once. The film was expensive, the processing cost was astronomical. The end result was eight very poor photos.
While I was on active duty, the Coast Guard didn't have a standardized camera systems program. Each public affairs office had what ever systems the senior enlisted person decided they needed. Some were Canon systems, most were Nikons. I was first taught using Pentax because the office still had one and the other guys didn't like to use it.
I had one photography instructor say I had a flippant attitude when I gave him a simplified breakdown.
1. Look at the scene and decide what you want to be a "true" white when you make the print.
2. Look at the scene and decided what you want to be a "true" black when you make the print.
3. Properly process the film. (Don't under or over develop the film).
4. Make your print to get both the true white and true black at the same time. All the other "grays" should fall in the zone.
I agree. I've looked at a lot of Ansel Adams landscapes and thought they were okay as far as subject matter and view. His darkroom work was untouchable though. I've known a number of instructors in the past who would wax poetically about how great the Zone system was and then spend hours complicating how to use it.
I had one photography instructor say I had a flippant attitude when I gave him a simplified breakdown.
1. Look at the scene and decide what you want to be a "true" white when you make the print.
2. Look at the scene and decided what you want to be a "true" black when you make the print.
3. Properly process the film. (Don't under or over develop the film).
4. Make your print to get both the true white and true black at the same time. All the other "grays" should fall in the zone.
A couple of my old b/w prints. (Shot available light with a Nikon F2)
Oh god yeah. That was my camera for years the K1000. Some idiot dropped it on concrete while taking a picture off of the top of a four story parking garage. It didn't really effect it. I understood why all the old hands called it a workhorse camera. It's got a few dents. I bet it still works even though I haven't had great access to a dark room in a damn long time.
digital just doesn't look right to me. I don't feel it's wrong. But weirdly the older style seems more organic and real to me some how. Strangely black and white does too so it's a bit weird and illogical.
strange note. I don't have a smart phone the camera is the only thing I like about them. I don't want access to the internet. I feel like everyone spends too much time on their phones and it seems like people have traded happiness for easy dopamine hits.... But I do have a dumb phone (commonly called flip phone) and after having the same phone for years one day it got an update and strangely it takes good pictures now in a limited way.
I had a flip phone for years. Then in 2017 we got rid of our computer, so I got a smartphone to access places like this. My family and friends know to call the landline, but clients call my cell phone.......and my 86 year old dad sometimes.
Smartphones now dominate photography, capturing 92.5% of all photos, compared to just 7.5% taken with conventional cameras. In 2023, a staggering 1.8 trillion photos were taken annually, meaning 5 billion daily or 57,246 every second. The average person stores around 2,795 photos on their phone's camera roll.
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When we graduated high school in 1976 Marty’s parents were wealthy enough to buy him a new Camaro Rally Sport and a new Canon AE-1. That was the first real camera I ever saw besides a wealthy cousin’s fifties Leica.
Phone cameras then were all Kodaks.
The first digital camera was invented by Kodak in 1975.
What hurts the Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras, the digital AE-1s, is about fifteen years or so ago, they kind of hit a plateau in development when Olympus and Panasonic made the first mirrorless ones.
Pentax is the last DSLR left, of graduation present grade DSLRs. Canon and Nikon only make the very highest and lowest end DSLR cameras.
They actually can’t keep these in stock, I read:
This is a grey market monochrome (black and white) K3 Mark III
Just the gadget to play Ansel Adams and his zone method with.
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When we graduated high school in 1976 Marty’s parents were wealthy enough to buy him a new Camaro Rally Sport and a new Canon AE-1. That was the first real camera I ever saw besides a wealthy cousin’s fifties Leica.
Phone cameras then were all Kodaks.
The first digital camera was invented by Kodak in 1975.
What hurts the Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras, the digital AE-1s, is about fifteen years or so ago, they kind of hit a plateau in development when Olympus and Panasonic made the first mirrorless ones.
Pentax is the last DSLR left, of graduation present grade DSLRs. Canon and Nikon only make the very highest and lowest end DSLR cameras.
They actually can’t keep these in stock, I read:
This is a grey market monochrome (black and white) K3 Mark III
Just the gadget to play Ansel Adams and his zone method with.
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The 850's Expeed is what? four generations old. Expeed (Nikon's propriety software) and pixel size means the 850 is old, slow, has acceptable image capability but, is generations behind the curve. Lots of acceptable manufacturers around but, no other onboard processing is even close Expeed.
The Z9, a mirrorless DSLR is, in my opinion, head and shoulders above the old D850. DSLRs are being left in the dust by the mirrorless cameras available. If "snapshots" are your goal. there are many DSLRs available in various price ranges suitable for such. The latest phone cameras provide exception results. But to compare a D850 to the latest generation of camera bodies... a waste of time and effort.
That’s the point, the DSLR stalled while the mirrorless Z9 kept on going.
When I said best and last Nikon DSLR I plumb forgot about the top end, 20 megapixel $6500 D6:
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The Nikon D6 is a full frame professional DSLR camera announced by Nikon Corporation on February 11, 2020, to succeed the D5 as its flagship DSLR. It has a resolution of 20.8 MP, like the D5. The D6 has a newer Expeed 6 processor that supports burst shooting at up to 14 fps. It has 105 cross type focus points.[1][2]
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Now if you or me had the privilege and honor of shooting the President we’d have to have a D6 or a Canon 1D X Mark III so the other boys wouldn’t be ahead of us.
I owned a Canon 7D Mark II that had a book thick as a telephone book how to run it.
I sold it for $500 to somebody that wanted the last and best APC sports DSLR for proud grandparents.
Ford makes the Mustang, the last Detroit muscle car V-8 with an optional manual transmission.
And if you have more than $100,000 you can buy Vettes, Porches, Ferraris and such with manual transmissions too,,,,I think.
And Mazda still makes the Miata.
Mirrorless is better, that’s why it won.
And mirrorless has the same problem as the DSLRs had, a technological peak.
My 2016 Olympus EM1.2 is so advanced the latest OM Systems OM3 is only incrementally better.
If mine dies I might buy an OM3, which by the way I understand is a sell out home run hit for OM Systems:
I have a whole bunch of nice MFT lenses, you know?
It will be really hard to top a Z9
Nikon Z9 - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
But the Z lenses will last decades.
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…and rearrange it all until it was as she liked it, not necessarily how it was. All of Roy Stryker’s kids did it. Memorable photos, but they were being produced to sell government programs, not as an an ethnography or representation of reality. Read up on Stryker’s instructions to the photographers working for him. Hell, Walker Evans would kick the po’ folk out of the houses just so that he could rearrange everything to his liking!The best medium format digital cameras have maybe 100 megapixels. Ansel’s big view cameras had 1,200 megapixel resolution plus, the tonality gradient of film is better.
Ansel Adams, like Picasso, lived until modern times. If he wanted a new Cadillac he took a photograph and sold it. Seriously.
His talent was his eye, and his darkroom skills.
On the other hand, a Dorothea Lange photograph is one because she’d see a broken down car full of pea pickers and walk right over and strike up a conversation.
She would have loved modern cameras.
As for film vs digital: Nobody except some photographers care what camera, lens, shutter speed etc were used. Viewers respond to the image. Process and intent are meaningless.