Re: OT. OM-5 first impressions

[John Francis]

On Sat, May 11, 2024 at 04:50:59PM -0700, Larry Colen wrote:
> After the weight of my new (13 months) K3III in my handlebar bag caused my 
> bike to fall over and but the Smart Function knob, I looked into OM-5s again. 
>  The price had dropped below my pain point, and since thanks to online 
> shopping there aren???t any convenient camera stores to look at them, I 
> bought on on Amazon, and if I don???t like it I???ll feel no guilt over 
> returning it.
> 
> My one word review:
> Adequate

Hmm.

I was considering getting an OM-5 as a backup/lighter alternative;
I still feel nervous going anywhere with only a single camera body,
even though I'v never yet had a digital camera body fail on me
(and, in 50 years, only had two mechanical failures; once when my
MX motor drive bent a drive shaft in my MX, and once when my PZ-1p
objected to being used in rain, and took some time off to dry out.
I don't count my MZ-S objecting to having its lens mount knocked
off when I slipped climbing down from a photo tower and banged it
hard against an upright - that was entirely my own fault).

I suspect 'adequate' might still serve my purpose, although I will
admit that I was verging towards the slightly newer OM-D E-M5 Mk III.

I'll be interested to see how you feel about it after a week or two.
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Re: For sale Friday, big list to unload

[John Francis]

On Fri, Apr 26, 2024 at 12:32:43PM -0700, l...@red4est.com wrote:
> 
> I'm going to have to look into some of the newer u4/3 bodies. I've gone back 
> to carrying the k3 on bike rides.  There's too much difference in image 
> quality between the u4/3 and the k3iii body for photos I care about and too 
> little between it and my phone for ones I don't.

I have to admit that phones today are pretty darn good cameras.
I don't have a K1, and I don't push the limits of my cameras
too hard, but I'm reasonably sure that the M1X is at least as
good as my K5 (and, most of the time, significantly better)
for anything I ask it to do.

The one thing I do occasionally miss is not having a second body.
But as I only *had* to use a second body once in all the years
(when my PZ-1p stopped working on a rainy day; the MX I had as
a backup wasn't in the least bit bothered by getting rained on)
I'm not losing a whole lot of sleep worrying too much about that.
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Re: For sale Friday, big list to unload

[John Francis]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 11:55:10PM +, coll...@brendemuehl.net wrote:
> 
> Have a 1.7x af Tc for sale that needs to go.

I'm almost certainly going to be clearing out my Pentax shelves soon.
Most of the stuff is pretty old, and probably not of a lot of interest,
but there are several nice items (FA* 250-600/f5.6, A* 300/f2.8, ...).

Basically I've got almost every bit of Pentax gear I've owned except
for my first Pentax - a Spotmatic II with the 50mm/f1.4 - which went
to a good home.  Old film bodies (including 2 MXs), newer film bodies
(a PZ-1p and an MZ-S), and a few digital bodies (*ist-D, K10D, K-5).

There's also a whole raft of lenses of varying quality, and several
less common items (like a motor drive for the MX).

I'll post a full list once I've got round to digging through all the
assorted boxes containing camera gear. 

I've been considering doing this for some time now, but it's hard to
part with gear that has served me well.  But I haven't touched any of
the Pentax items for over a year, and my M1X outfit is a lot lighter
to carry, and gives me a range from 12mm to 300mm focal lengths in
just two lenses and one TC.
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Re: OT: Richard Sandler

[John Francis]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 05:49:38PM -0400, ann sanfedele wrote:
> the guardian doesnt let me in but I just put his name in google with image
> search and got tons of stuff..?? we were shooting the city at the same time
> - the 60's through the 80's .. I've only shown others a very few photos that
> remotely resembled these cringe-worthy records of how it was , in the late
> 60's and early 70's in NY .. most of them are mean spirited showing everyone
> and everything in the worst possible light.. (figuratively).?? They make me
> sad.
> 
> ann
> 
> On 3/22/2024 4:18 AM, mike wilson wrote:
> > https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/feb/27/between-the-streets-shades-of-new-york-in-pictures-richard-sandler-the-eyes-of-the-city

You can't get there directly from that link, but the following longer link will 
take you there (albeit with an ignorable nag pop-up)

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t=web=j=89978449=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/feb/27/between-the-streets-shades-of-new-york-in-pictures-richard-sandler-the-eyes-of-the-city=2ahUKEwj2pKHS9YiFAxWUAzQIHbsTDp4QFnoECCAQAQ=AOvVaw1_Tww7kF6jUvybWtZoIqLY


It's nice living near San Francisco!  Some months ago I visited the de Young 
museum
when they had an exhibition of Ansel Adams photographs, and now (until July 
21st)
they're showing photographs from Irving Penn, including a special section 
featuring
images from San Francisco's "Summer of Love".
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Re: PESO, scratching that itch

[John Francis]

On Tue, Feb 06, 2024 at 07:30:47AM +, Bob W PDML wrote:
> I???d be tempted to make a gallery of them and call it Larry Burros???

Go to your room.
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Re: Taking aim at my pocketbook

[John Francis]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2024 at 01:16:05PM -0800, Larry Colen wrote:
> I just found out that Samyang makes a 135 f/2 in K-mount.  
> 
> I don't have any specific need for that focal length and speed, though if it 
> was autofocus it could be nice for photographing musicians.  It's just about 
> one stop between and 85/1.4 and a 200/2.8 in length and speed, so in reality 
> I'd be better off just cropping down my 85/1.4.  But, shiny!

I'd guess you'd probably be better off putting a 1.4x TC behind your 85/1.4 
than using a lens that sells for about the same price as the TC, no matter how 
shiny ...
(Ricoh show the HD PENTAX-DA AF REAR CONVERTER 1.4x AW as being compatible with 
the HD PENTAX D-FA* 85mmF1.4ED)
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Re: Thumb drive fart under pressure

[John Francis]

On Tue, Jan 30, 2024 at 07:57:30PM -0500, Rick Womer wrote:
> I???m taking a photography course at the Fleisher Art Memorial here in Philly.
> 
> As per our first assignment last week, I brought in ten .jpg images on an 
> MS-DOS-formatted flash drive, as did my classmates. 
> 
> Three different MS-DOS computers in the classroom did not recognize my flash 
> drive =at all=.
> 
> I don???t know what computers my 8 classmates use, but none of them had a 
> problem.
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> Rick


MS-DOS?  Really?  I believe MS-DOS defaults to FAT16, while Windows went to 
FAT32
a long, long time ago (with, I believe, Win95).  If they really are MS-DOS 
machines
then there may be a reason why they can't read your "MS-DOS-formatted flash 
drive";
the FAT32 partition size limit is 32GB, and today's thumb drives are larger 
than that.

Larger drives will probably use either NTFS or exFAT; Most modern systems can 
read
and write either of these, but it's possible that the classroom computers can 
only
read one of those formats, and your disks (but not, presumably, your classmates
disks) are formatted using the other one.
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Re: Weather

[John Francis]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2024 at 02:56:36PM +, coll...@brendemuehl.net wrote:
> Back in the day 
> 
> I was less concerned for my LF equipment out in the cold and snow than I am 
> for this 35mm-class equipment.

Well, there's a whole lot less to go wrong on a large format camera than on a 
modern setup.

I'm reasonably confident that pretty much every step I took in camera ownership
(Brownie 127 -> Hanimex 35mm -> Spotmatic II -> MX/ME -> PZ-1P -> MZ-S -> K5 -> 
E-M1X)
came with an improvement in weather sealing.  It's easy to find online videos 
showing
people pouring water on an M1X, and Olympus tout their weather sealing as a 
feature.
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Re: Which would you prefer in a lens?

[John Francis]

On Mon, Dec 18, 2023 at 05:09:54PM +, coll...@brendemuehl.net wrote:
> Which would you prefer in a lens?\
> \
> 1\. Best rendering. Detail may not be as fine, but the formation of the image 
> is closer to reality.
> 
> 2\. Some pincushion distortion, but better detail. 
> 
> 3\. Balance in between. Minimal distortion and good detail.

I've never really given this much thought.  Ever since my first Pentax
(a Spotmatic SPII with the 50mm/f1.4) I've found that the weakest link
in my image creation process was usually found behind the viewfinder.

Admittedly I shoot hand-held most of the time - even when I was using
my 250-600 zoom I was using a monopod, not a tripod - so I wasn't really
pushing the envelope of what my equipment was capable of producing. But
it produced images I was happy to have taken.

Arguably the worst lens I used over the years (apart from the 100-300
I used for a while until I switched to an 80-320) was the rather strange
40-80 zoom I bought with my Super Program.  But even with that lens,
which was maybe a bit lacking in sharpness at the edges until stopped
down to f5.6, and also a little soft at either extreme of the (limited)
zoom range, still generally did all that I asked of it.
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Re: Let's test the list!

[John Francis]

On Tue, Dec 05, 2023 at 02:27:11PM -0500, Mark Roberts wrote:
> Are the Server God's happy?

Well, either they're happy or they're asleep ...
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Re: The unending quest

[John Francis]

As far as camera bags go, for the last several decades I've stuck
with a couple of brand names - Lowepro & Pelican.

When I was carrying a couple of camera bodies (film or digital)
and a reasonable selection of lenses (28-200 or so on film,
16-250 on the APS-C digitals) together with TCs, flashes, etc.
I usually managed to cram everything into a LowePro Magnum AW.

Now I'm only carrying a single Micro 4/3 body (albeit one that
is a bit larger and heavier than most of it's brethren), and a
pair of zooms (a 12-100 and a 40-150) I've gone back to using
my old LowePro Nova 4.


As far as Pelicans go I've got two - a smaller one (which could
still hold pretty much what I could cram into the Magnum), and
a larger one which could hold all that with room for the 250-600.
Of course that 250-600 comes with its own case (as does my other
big glass, the 300/2.8), so I only needed the Pelicans if I was
flying, rather than driving).
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Re: Stabilized Eclipse Video

[John Francis]

On Sat, Nov 18, 2023 at 04:06:13PM -0500, John Sessoms wrote:
> On 11/16/2023 3:06 PM, Larry Colen wrote:
> > 
> > If he puts music to the video, it should be Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the 
> > Moon".
> 
> I thought about that, but the cut "Eclipse" is only 2 minutes & 6 seconds,
> so it's not long enough ... and I don't have a license to use that music
> anyway.

Can't help you with the license issue, but it's possible that one of the
multiple variants I have of that track might be a somewhat longer version.
I doubt if any of them is long enough for the video, though.

I've been a Floyd fan ever since my University days some 50+ years ago.
I saw the Dark Side of the Moon tour (twice - once in Manchester at the
Free Trade Hall, and then again in Brighton). I've got the original album
(again, twice: the initial release, and I also have the Harvest half-speed
mastered version).  On CD I've got the original Harvest versions, another
one on the Capitol label, and yet another variant from Pink Floyd Records.
Then there's the version on their "Pulse" almbum, and finally there's the
remastered version on the Dark Side of the Moon Experience Edition.
[I've even got the SACD version, although I no longer have a SACD player]
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Re: October Annular Eclipse

[John Francis]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2023 at 05:05:59PM -0500, John Sessoms wrote:
> I made a short video of my eclipse photos from my recent trip.
> 
> https://flic.kr/p/2pfZXbt
> 
> Rough first approximation. The astro-tracker worked fairly well, but there's
> a little bit of drift.
> 
> I'm working on a better version that has all the sun images aligned & I'll
> crop out most of the negative space ... but if I wait until I get it right
> I'll probably never get it finished.
> 
> This is GOOD ENOUGH for now. I'll replace it IF/WHEN I figure out how to do
> it better.

Cool!   I eagerly await the final version.
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Re: Print Scanner

[John Francis]

On Sat, Nov 11, 2023 at 09:32:25AM +0100, Henk Terhell wrote:
> I agree a cheap Epson model photo scanner (like the $100  Epson V39II) will
> do the job.
> However, I don't think scanning of ordinary prints at higher than 300 dpi
> is worthwhile as results will not become better.
> This in contrast with scanning of negatives or slides.

I think 300 dpi might be a bit low.  Many home printers nowadays 
can print at 1200 (or even 2400) dpi, so presumably there's some
extra information available at more than 300dpi on physical media.
That being said, though, I've found scanning at 600dpi to be good
enough for pretty much anything I've done.
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Re: A big day for the official bird

[John Francis]

On Wed, Nov 08, 2023 at 05:11:00PM +, Bob W PDML wrote:
> 
> Sorry to everyone about the bird link - the world seems determined to duck up 
> the internet in every way they can and drive people onto closed platforms.
> 
> B

I did, briefly, see a screen flash up saying something about having verified I 
was on a secure connection, but that was almost immediately followed by the 
page featuring the cormorant.
Other than that, the only other irritation was a pop-up asking if I wanted to 
be on their mailing list, which showed up when I scrolled down to see the rest 
of the page, but the "No" button was plainly displayed.
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Re: Hello all, been a while ???

[John Francis]

On Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 10:22:03PM -0700, Larry Colen wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Oct 22, 2023, at 9:56 PM, Brendan MacRae  wrote:
> > 
> > Very cool! Such fun little cars.
> 
> Did you notice who the older man was in the two photos with the Mk II?
> 
> > 
> > I work at Mini Mania so it???s a career with me, too. All cars, all the 
> > time.
> 
> Not far from Dave Bean, who got a fair bit of my money when I was racing a 
> Cortina. 
> 
> How long have you been there?  I gained a bit of notoriety sometime around 
> 1986, I went to one of their swap meets in San Jose, bought a 40 DCOE, 
> installed it in the parking lot then drove home.
> 
>  A friend of mine in San Jose is trying to sell her late husbands frogeye 
> project car that he bought when he was in high school >40 years ago and it 
> has been garaged since.  In some ways frogeyes are really nice (if you 
> upgrade all of the mechanicals), but I think my favorite is the Mk II.  

Talking of Sprites ...

A couple of days ago I spotted this one parked in a driveway a bock or so away 
from my house.
As soon as I got home and unloaded the shopping I picked up my camera and 
strolled back there.

   https://www.panix.com/~johnf/temp/BugEye.jpg


It turns out that it's owned by a guy even closer to where I live - on the next 
street over!
I'd actually stopped by to talk to him some years ago when I'd spotted him 
working on another
car in his driveway (I don't remember exactly what).
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Re: Good find today (not Pentax)

[John Francis]

On Fri, Sep 29, 2023 at 05:18:50PM +0100, Bob W PDML wrote:
> ???
> > On 29 Sep 2023, at 00:52, John Sessoms  wrote:
> > 
> > ???[???] I don't even think the hole is still there in the wall. [???]
> 
> I looked on street view- the hole???s still there, but the wall has gone. It 
> looks a bit like Blackburn, Lancashire.

Well, at least the holes are rather small ...
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Re: GESO - Mercer Museum

[John Francis]

On Sat, Sep 09, 2023 at 06:45:09PM +0200, Ralf R Radermacher wrote:
> Am 09.09.23 um 18:16 schrieb Rick Womer:
> > Yesterday we took a trip to Doylestown, a well-preserved town incorporated 
> > in 1838, about an hour west of Philly.
> 
> A most peculiar place indeed.
> 
> What do you call the guy in the third and fifth photo? It would be a
> Kasper in German or a Guignol in French.
> 
> Ralf

In the U.K. that would most often be identified as "Mr Punch"
(from "Punch & Judy" puppet shows, and also featuring on the
masthead of "Punch" magazine)
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Re: Ansel Adams in Our Time

[John Francis]

P.S.  I wore my PDML "Photography is simple" T-shirt, and got a couple of 
comments from other attendees.
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Ansel Adams in Our Time

[John Francis]

I've just returned from a trip up to San Francisco to visit an exhibition at 
the de Young Museum entitled "Ansel Adams in Our Time" (courtesy of the Lane 
Collection at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts).

It was great to be able to see original prints made by Adams himself (and even 
to watch a short video of him explaining his process for setting the exposure, 
and for creating the actual print).

Personally I was not particularly impressed by most of the other photographs by 
other photographers included in the exhibits - they mostly served to confirm my 
opinion that very few photographers come anywhere close to Ansel Adams.  But it 
was still well worth the trip, and I came home with a new book to study 
entitled "Ansel Adams - 400 Photographs".
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Re: Are you a photographer if nobody sees your work

[John Francis]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 02:58:55PM -0700, Larry Colen wrote:
> I didn't watch the video, am at work, but based on the text, I think a few of 
> y'all would be interested in this
> 
> https://photofocus.com/found/are-you-a-photographer-if-no-one-sees-your-work/

Silly question.  If I take photographs I am, by definition, a photographer.
I don't really care who else sees them - I take my photographs for myself.
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Re: Pentax Film Camera News

[John Francis]

On Wed, May 17, 2023 at 12:47:12PM +0200, Toine wrote:
> even more surprising news: dpreview is still alive!

That's good news!

I had spotted that the archive wasn't going to disappear,
but I wasn't expecting to see any further news items.
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Re: RIP Dan Matyola

[John Francis]

On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 07:27:23PM -0400, Bruce Walker wrote:
> Facebook alerted me today of messages about the passing of Dan
> Matyola, May 2, 2023, at 81 years of age.

Wow!  That was only one day after his last PESO posted to the list.

I met Dan only once, when he stopped off in San Francisco.
But I always enjoyed his thoughtful comments on the pdml,
and his fascinating in-the-cockpit photographs from his
time serving his country.  I had gathered that he flew
in Vietnam, but hadn't realised he'd been awarded the DFC.
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Re: May PUG is up

[John Francis]

On Wed, May 03, 2023 at 08:10:11PM +1000, Brian W wrote:
> G'day all
> 
> Enjoy the new gallery here:
> 
> http://pug.komkon.org/

I rarely comment on galleries or photo posts
(partly laziness, partly because I find that what I like is
very rarely what most of the other commenters seem to like)
but Toine's "One" just stood out for me in this month's offerings.
I could just see this as an album cover (remember what those were?).

Somewhere buried in the house I'm pretty sure I've got a box of
slides from over 40 years ago which includes a few shots taken
of Auckland's "One Tree Hill" - not with the original tree, of
course, but while the single Pine tree was still standing.
But even if I could unearth a slide I wouldn't be able to
scan it - the only film scanner I own is an onld Nikon one
that uses a SCSI interface ...
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A random XKCD strip that turned up today

[John Francis]

I occasionally see what a random XKCD strip turns up
(I've got https://c.xkcd.com/random/comic/ bookmarked).

This one amused me:  https://xkcd.com/1014/

Cars and cameras - what's not to like?  :-)
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Re: Pentax K3-iii Monochrome

[John Francis]

On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 10:14:36AM +0100, Steve Cottrell wrote:
> 
> https://www.dpreview.com/news/2780405465/ricoh-announces-pentax-k-3-iii-monochrome-dslr

According to a post from ricehigh (there's a name I haven't seen in years)
Pentax are no longer accepting new orders for this, so presumably there are
a lot of people who want it.  Either that or they've given up on the idea ...
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Re: St. Patrick's Day in Berkeley

[John Francis]

On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 04:24:15PM -0700, Larry Colen wrote:
> 
> > On Mar 22, 2023, at 10:17 PM, John Francis  wrote:
> > 
> > I managed to dig out one of the images from 2000.  This will have
> > been taken on my PZ-1p.  I'm pretty sure I was using my A* 300/2.8,
> > probably shooting 1600 ASA Fuji slide film.
> > 
> > After some playing around in PhotoShop, I came up with this:
> > 
> ><http://www.panix.com/~johnf/CopperFamily.jpg>
> > 
> 
> Those blue speckles puzzle me, because they look like the noise I got with my 
> K-20 in low light situations.  I???m not sure how you got them off of a slide.

I'm not 100% sure it came from a slide - I'm working from a scanned image.
I know it has to be from film, because the picture was taken in 2000. The
pixel dimensions of the scan suggest it's from the Nikon LS-30 scanner.
I agree that it looks like noise in the blue channel. And while the LS-30
does a better job with slides than the HP PhotoSmart scanner it replaced,
it's still going to have a hard time with parts of the image that are
nearly black (especially if the shot is somewhat under-exposed).

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Re: St. Patrick's Day in Berkeley

[John Francis]

On Tue, Mar 21, 2023 at 08:13:54AM +0200, Alan C wrote:
> When I see 'phone shots like that, I wonder why we bother with cameras.

Quite.

As I mentioned, I was interested to compare modern technology to
what I was able to do twenty+ years ago.

I managed to dig out one of the images from 2000.  This will have
been taken on my PZ-1p.  I'm pretty sure I was using my A* 300/2.8,
probably shooting 1600 ASA Fuji slide film.

After some playing around in PhotoShop, I came up with this:



(for reference, here's the 2023 phone image again):



I could improve the old image some more by smoothing out the blue
speckles in the darkest parts, and losing a few unwanted highlights,
but it doesn't look too bad.  The phone image is better, though.
(And, in all fairness, the stage lighting is much better in 2023).


As to the question as to why we bother with cameras - in my case it
is because there are some things my current camera can do quite a bit
better than I can - things like keeping the driver of a fast-moving
car in focus, rather than focussing on some other part of the car.
It's also rather better than my phone at longer focal lengths ...
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St. Patrick's Day in Berkeley

[John Francis]

On Fridy my wife and I drove up to Berkeley to catch a
St. Patrick's Day gig at the Freight & Salvage (a music
venue).  Getting there was a nightmare - instead of the
hour and a quarter that Google Maps was estimating when
we left home it took us twice that - there were no less
than three separate accidents that were slowing traffic.
Fortunately we'd allowed for that, and still got to the
venue on time.

We were there to see The Black Brothers - two members
of an Irish family well know in their country of origin
who moved to Berkeley quite some time ago.

I didn't have a camera with me, as the Freight's website
explicitly states that no photography will be allowed.
As you can imagine I was more than a little annoyed to
find out that this was not the case - photography is
restricted, but not outright forbidden. (I was rather
looking forward to finding out just how well my current
camera did when compared to some older shots I'd taken
in the Freight's previous venue using my PZ-1p and the
A* 300/2.8)


Fortunately I was not totally without a camera - I had
my phone (a Google Pixel 6a)in my pocket.  I got this:

  

I'm more than a little impressed!
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Re: Hi kids!

[John Francis]

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 10:12:50AM -0400, Mark Roberts wrote:
> What's up?

Mark!

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Re: What's the difference between set and shift on the exposure settings?

[John Francis]

On Thu, Mar 09, 2023 at 11:10:25PM -0800, Larry Colen wrote:
> P 104 of the manual is discussing the E-dial, and it makes a distinction 
> between changing T, A or ISO, versus shifting them. I don't understand the 
> difference.


Well, I don't have a copy of the manual at hand, but I'd guess that
shifting one of the settings would bias the automatic selection to
a setting that was one or more steps above or below whatever the
camera decided was the optimum value, while changing that setting
would override the automatic algorithms and select an explicit value.
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Re: PDML - PDFG ?

[John Francis]

On Sat, Jan 07, 2023 at 12:30:07AM +, Steve Cottrell wrote:
> Just as a matter of interest, is there any interest in a Pentax Discussion 
> Facebook Group?

Not from me.  I don't (and won't) do facebook - I just find far too annoying.

But there again I'm not doing a lot of Pentax stuff nowadays, either.
Probably the most interesting thing I'll do here is post a 'for sale'
list - I'm working up to selling my A* and FA* lenses (A* 300/2.8,
FA* 80-200/2.8 & 250-600/5.6) once I've worked out just how much 
(or how little) they should go for.

I'm holding on to the DA* zooms for a while (16-50, 50-135, 60-250),
and the K-5 still works just fine, but quite honestly I'll probably
rarely if ever use them again.
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Re: Poll in 3 parts

[John Francis]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2022 at 07:48:03PM +, coll...@brendemuehl.net wrote:
> Ya, ya, I know it???s been done a million times.\
> But I wanted to add a comparative twist to it.
> 
> What has been your 
> 
> (a) Favorite 35mm camera

Generally the one I was using at the time, starting from my first 35mm,
and progressing (via the Spotmatic II I purchased with my first paycheque)
through a range of K-mount gear.  But over the years I generally carried
the first of those K-mounts, my trusty old MX, in my camera bag as a second
camera (at least until I had a PZ-1p, an MZ-S, and a stable of AF lenses),
so that's probably the camera I am most attached to.  In fact I picked up
a second MX as insurance just to be sure I'd always have an MX available.

> (b) The sharpest 35mm you ever used

I haven't the faintest idea.  I've rarely found the technical quality of
the equipment to be the limiting factor in what kind of image I was able
to produce (except for, occasionally, the film speed/sensor sensitivity).

> (c) Why you stuck with Pentax

Because until recently there was no compelling reason to switch brands,
and certainly nothing to make the cost of doing so something I'd consider.
But, as most people here probably know, a year ago I found the weight of
the camera bag I was lugging around was getting to be burdensome, and so
I downsized to a Micro four thirds (Olympus) system. Even with two lenses
which between them cover a wider range than the triple of DA* lenses that
I typically carried my camera bag weighs well under half what it used to.
But I've still got that bag full of Pentax gear all ready to put in the
car as a backup. In fact I checked the battery charge only a few days ago
and found that despite not having even been turned on for over a year the
charge indicator still reads 100%
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Re: Pentax is considering releasing a new film camera

[John Francis]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2022 at 11:54:35AM -0500, Rick Womer wrote:
> I still have a Super Program in my cabinet. I thought I had a PZ-1p
> too, but I must have given it away, or lent it to someone and
> forgotten about it.
> 
> I have no desire to go back to film, though.
> 
> Rick

I believe I have:
  2 MX (one - my first K-mount - bought new; one black bought much later as a 
spare).
  ME Super
  Super Program
  PZ-1P
  MZ-S

and a variety of old lenses, teleconverters, winders; I even have an MX motor 
drive.

I also have an airtight box in my freezer with a couple of dozen rolls of old 
film
that have been there 20+ years (even including a roll or two of Royal Gold 25, 
IIRC)

Despite that collection I, too, have no desire to go back to shooting any more 
film.
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Re: test 2

[John Francis]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2022 at 10:29:08PM +, Bob Pdml wrote:
> 
> And now that we've left the EU we don't even have the donkey anymore, we had 
> to give it back.

Really?   From  this distance it appears you've still got many of the most 
prominient asses.

(Not my fault - wxhile I've still got a UK passport, I'm not allowed to vote 
...)
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Organizing photo archives (was Re: Old Shutterbug articles)

[John Francis]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 08:36:19PM -0500, Stan Halpin wrote:
> I wish my brother John had done more sorting and purging. But his life got 
> complicated by Parkinson???s etc in 2015 and he was unwilling/unable to do 
> much with his photo archives or other stuff after that. Physical and 
> cognitive decline.
> With his images, my dilemma is that my sister-in-law will have a different 
> filter than I do. I see 30-40 interior shots of some unfurnished vacant 
> apartments. I would delete the whole batch. No esthetic value, no context. 
> But she might say ???OMG those were the two whirlwind days we spent apartment 
> hunting when I moved to Buda! Gotta keep those!??? So I am trying to 
> sort/organize by subject and time and location, then I???ll hand it back to 
> her to figure out what to keep.
> John got his first 35mm camera in 1957. He scanned many of the images from 
> the 367 rolls of slide film that her shot over the years. One of the upsides 
> of this project for me is rediscovering scenes from my teen years, shots of 
> my parents back then, etc.
> Stan

I haven't even got round to thinking about scanning the bulk of my 35mm film & 
slides.
I do have some scans done (from my PZ-1p or MZ-S) when I had an HP PhotoSmart 
scanner.
Most of those were done when I was shooting part-time for Motorsport.com; I 
would
typically shoot anywhere from 4 to 12 rolls during an event, get them developed 
and
printed, and select a small number of frames to scan in and submit.  I did this 
for
a few years, doing as many as 12 events in a year (although usually only half 
that),
so I've got quite a few rolls of film (or slides) to look through.

Besides that, though, I've got a box containing a lot of other stuff - some from
my student days (before I got my first Pentax) shot with a very basic 35mm 
camera,
some with my film Pentaxes (SP-II, MX, ME, ME Super, Super Program, PZ-1p, 
MZ-S).
I haven't really looked at any of that stuff for 20 years or more.

I've also got some family photo albums I've inherited. No negatives - just 
prints.

Of course before I can do any scanning I'm going to need to get a scanner. While
the high-end Epson 800 looks nice, it costs a lot more than the 600. It also 
gets
mixed reviews.  I haven't started looking around seriously yet, though - I'll 
get
the digital/digitised stuff sorted out first before opening that can of worms.
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Re: Old Shutterbug articles

[John Francis]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2022 at 04:36:50PM -0500, Stanley Halpin wrote:
> I am going through a large stack of articles extracted from Shutterbug issues 
> from 1992-2004.
 . . . 
> I will keep a few Pentax articles, a 1991 article on computers (e.g., how 
> many megabytes one might need to store files, and how some users were 
> starting to adopt storage approaches that could accommodate gigabytes of 
> data!), and other miscellany. 

I can relate to that.

At the moment I'm in the process of reviewing a whole lot of old image files, 
etc., from my pre-digital and early (non-Pentax) days.
I've got three or four generations of backups retrieved from ever-increasing 
sizes of external hard drive (100GB and up), but some of the oldest stuff comes 
from machines where the internal hard drive sizes were 512MB or less.  I've 
narrowed down the effort to focus on maybe 400GB or so of files (maybe 100,000 
individual files in a few thousand folders).

I know that for some folks 100,000 files isn't all that many, but I shoot at a 
rather slower pace - I would estimate there are perhaps 20,000 different images 
(and probably half of those are only present once, in the most recent archive). 
Currently I'm just looking for duplicate copies of images, etc. - there are 
going to be quite a few of those, as each of the backup snapshots has one or 
more complete image collections which are, more or less, arranged the same way 
from machine to machine.  But that "more or less" is a complication - quite 
apart from later snapshots having files that don't appear in older snapshots, 
there are several cases where whole hierarchies of files have been moved to a 
slightly different place.  And then there are those images which got copied off 
into a separate sub-project, so there are almost-duplicates that should be kept 
separately as well as the original copy ...

One benefit of getting down to the task (which is something I've been putting 
off for at least ten years...) is that I'm finding old shots that I'd totally 
forgotten about, not to mention shots that I remembered, but hadn't been able 
to put my hands on when I tried to locate them!
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Re: Erwitt-style sequence

[John Francis]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2022 at 11:12:11AM +, Bob Pdml wrote:
> Hoping the PDML will accept this link to a short sequence I shot last week. 
> Please remove spaces from the link. I put them there because the PDML always 
> rejects posts I send which contain a link. No idea why.
> 
> https ://  adobe  .ly  /3ALD4Nb 

Have you tried enclosing the link in angle brackets?  That fixes some problems.


i.e.

   
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Re: Who was here in 2005?

[John Francis]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:21:06PM -0800, Marco Alpert wrote:
> I was on that outing. I???m pretty sure that???s Shel Belinkoff on the left. 
> Bruce Dayton in the middle? Not sure about the woman on the right. 
> 
> - Marco

Spot on.

The other one *should* be easier - there weren't all that many female 
contributors!


 
> > On Nov 20, 2022, at 9:21 PM, John Francis  wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Who can identify any of these people?
> > (I know who they are - I was asking who else remembers them)
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Who was here in 2005?

[John Francis]

Who can identify any of these people?
(I know who they are - I was asking who else remembers them)

This was taken on a PDML outing to Hakone Gardens in San Jose in 2005.
Camera: *ist-D
Exposure: 1/125 @ f/5.6, ISO 200
Lens:  ? The EXIF says focal length 220mm.
   I don't seem to have a good EXIF extractor on ths computer!



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Re: Local Colour

[John Francis]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2022 at 08:34:15PM -0500, ann sanfedele wrote:
> Your phone did well.. at least in the eye of someone looking at the shots on
> a nice sized modem.
> I'm thinking the red leaved tree is an import.. but the yellow is native..
> but I have a feeling you
> won't know the answer :-)
> 
> ann

My guess is that the yellow trees are Fremont Cottonwoods, in which case
they probably are native (there's a place named Fremont about 30 miles away
from me, and both the town and the tree are named after the same person).
I'm not sure what the red tree is, but there are quite a few around here.

The phone pictures look pretty good on my 2560x1440 27" monitors, too.
A few months ago the battery in my wife's phone went on a growth spurt,
which forced the phone apart. As we were going to have to buy at least
one new phone we took the opportunity to switch to a different carrier
as well at a much better rate than we were paying before. I decided to
update my phone, too; we've both got not-quite-the-latest Google Pixel
phones (she's got a Pixel 6 because she wanted wireless charging - I've
got a Pixel 6a). The phone in her camera is supposedly a bit better
than the one in mine, but to be honest I'd be hard put to spot that.

For just walking around grab shots that phone camera is probably as
good as anything I own except possibly my M1X, and has the advantage
that I almost always have it with me. But there are, of course, still
situations where a DSLR wins out.  The most common one in my case is
when I'm photographing race cars - a 300mm lens on a u4/3 sensor gives
me the same field of view as a 600mm did on my old film bodies. This
lets me stay at a safe distance from the cars (and is a great deal
easier to carry around).

The one area where neither my phone nor my M1X match my old Pentax K5
is when I'm doing things like cat portrait photography.  You may recall
this shot I posted to the PDML back in 2018 when I bought Bill Robb's
old FA50mm/f1.4  - there's no way my phone can replicate that. In fact
I can't even replicate that with my M1X - the best I have at the same
FOV as a 50mm on a K5 is only a f4. 

  <http://www.panix.com/~johnf/PDML/alex.jpg>

But at least I got that shot, which turns out to be the last picture
I ever took of Alex. Shortly after that lens test shot his kidneys
started to fail, and we eventually lost him earlier this year.  


> 
> On 11/16/2022 11:50 PM, John Francis wrote:
> > The foliage on the trees in my neighbourhood is looking pretty spectacular
> > at this time of year, so a few days ago I took a walk around with a camera.
> > This is the view I liked best:
> > 
> >  <http://www.panix.com/~johnf/PDML/LocalColour/LocalColour1.jpg>
> > 
> > (I grew up in the UK, so I'm not used to seeing leaves like that).
> > A day or so later I was out running errands, and saw this ahead of me:
> > 
> >  <http://www.panix.com/~johnf/PDML/LocalColour/LocalColour2.jpg>
> > 
> > 
> > Of course there are times when these colours aren't quite so welcome.
> > This is an example I found just a few blocks away:
> > 
> >  <http://www.panix.com/~johnf/PDML/LocalColour/LocalColour3.jpg>
> > 
> > 
> > if you look at the top of the pole to the left of the tree trunk you
> > might just be able to make out an red octagonal sign.  This is the "STOP"
> > sign that is supposed to warn drivers about the upcoming intersection!
> > 
> > P.S.  I didn't have my camera with me for the 2nd and 3rd shots, but
> > I did have my phone ...
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> > follow the directions.
> 
> -- 
> ann sanfedele photography
> https://annsan.smugmug.com
> https://www.cafepress.com/+ann-sanfedele+gifts
> https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/annsan
> https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/annsanfedelecalendarsandbooks
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Local Colour

[John Francis]

The foliage on the trees in my neighbourhood is looking pretty spectacular
at this time of year, so a few days ago I took a walk around with a camera.
This is the view I liked best:



(I grew up in the UK, so I'm not used to seeing leaves like that).
A day or so later I was out running errands, and saw this ahead of me:




Of course there are times when these colours aren't quite so welcome.
This is an example I found just a few blocks away:




if you look at the top of the pole to the left of the tree trunk you
might just be able to make out an red octagonal sign.  This is the "STOP"
sign that is supposed to warn drivers about the upcoming intersection!

P.S.  I didn't have my camera with me for the 2nd and 3rd shots, but
I did have my phone ...
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Re: Heat wave

[John Francis]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 11:50:57PM +0100, Steve Cottrell wrote:
> Here, down to a balmy 21 or so daytime, big fat low revolving over us dumping 
> good amounts of rain. The grass has lost the bright yellow glow and patches 
> of green are returning. Rain til the weekend. Happier days.
> 
> Cot

What is this grass of which you speak?   :-)


I stopped watering the grass several years ago when it became painfully obvious 
that:

  1) California didn't have enough water to meet existing requirements,
 let alone the increases expected from population growth.

  2) It was extremely unlikely that California would be able to get the
 votes required to change the allocation system, so there was no way
 to prevent long-established agriculture, etc., having first rights
 to take as much water as they wanted to grow crops; there wasn't
 even a way to require efficient irrigation systems (too expensive)
 or to prevent crops such as almonds (or even hay) being exported.
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Re: Heat wave

[John Francis]

On Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 01:07:39PM -0700, Larry Colen wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Sep 6, 2022, at 12:12 PM, John Francis  wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > It's a little warm out here ...
> > 
> > Yesterday some parts of the greater SF Bay Area had temperatures as high as 
> > 117F.
> > 
> > It's not quite that bad here, but yesterday got to just shy of 110, and 
> > today is on track to be at least as hot.
> > (It's around mid-day, and the temperature outside is 103).
> 
> My home weather station reported 107F (42C?) in Felton.  I think the hottest 
> I???ve ever seen at home was maybe 103.  

Update: It's now 110 outside according to the local weather station.
I had to go out for a couple of reasons; it's not nice. Makes the 90+ in the 
house seem almost comfortable!
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Heat wave

[John Francis]

It's a little warm out here ...

Yesterday some parts of the greater SF Bay Area had temperatures as high as 
117F.

It's not quite that bad here, but yesterday got to just shy of 110, and today 
is on track to be at least as hot.
(It's around mid-day, and the temperature outside is 103).

And, of course, at just a few minutes before 8pm on Friday out air conditioner 
attempted to cycle on, made a nasty 'clunk' sound, and stopped working.
We managed to find a repair company that was still answering the phone, and 
they sent a technician out.  Unfortunately our unit is over 20 years old, and 
the part that needs to be replaced has to be shipped - nobody local nowadays 
keeps every part that old in stock.  And Carrier's parts shipping department 
was closed for the holiday weekend ...
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Re: SD woes

[John Francis]

On Sun, Sep 04, 2022 at 11:01:30AM -0400, Rick Womer wrote:
> Last spring we took a walk in Morris Arboretum, where the spring blossoms 
> offered lots of photographic fodder. Alas, when I got home, the card had 
> thumbnail JPGs on it, but no DNG files. As usual I erased the card (SanDisk 
> Extreme Pro) in the camera after transferring the files to my computer.
> 
> Last week we toured Winterthur, a beautiful DuPont estate about an hour away. 
> Again I took about a hundred photos. When i put the SD card into the reader, 
> I got a screen full of thumbnails from Winterthur and the flea market in the 
> parik a couple of weeks ago, all stirred together (even though the card had 
> been erased).  No DNGs.
> 
> I have four SD cards, of which three were indistinguishable until I numbered 
> them yesterday. I checked each of them with the Mac Disk Utility, and they 
> all passed.
> 
> Any ideas apart from buying a new set of cards?  Is there any way to 
> distinguish a card failure from a camera failure?
> 
> Rick

The most obvious reason for a perfectly readable card to contain only JPGs, no 
DNGs, is that the camera has somehow got set to only write JPGs.  I assume you 
checked that, but ...
(Or, depending on which camera body you have, to write JPGs to one card, and 
DNGs to a different card)
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PESO - A day at the races

[John Francis]

(to be strictly accurate it was a weekend at the races)

Last weekend I accompanied Larry to a club motorsports event
at Sonoma Raceway.  Larry was driving his Miata, and I thought
this would be an ideal opportunity to test out my new camera.
(One reason I bought it was to give me a lighter camera bag
to carry along when I was photographing motorsports, but this
was the first time I actually got to try it out for that).



(Olympus E-M1X + Olympus 40-150/f2.8 @ 150mm, 1/200 sec @ f/16)

I not only got to try out my new camera - I got to ride around
in the other seat a few times. This was a lot of fun, but by no
means uneventful!.  Part way through the first session we lost
all the brakes. (As I remarked to Larry afterwards, just about
the last thing you want to hear the driver say is "Oh sh*t!")
Fortunately this happened at a part of the track where there
was plenty of room to slow down.

One new brake cylinder later we went out for another session.
This went well, but on the cool-down lap we were flagged down
because there was smoke coming out from under the hood.
Fortunately it was just a filler cap that had worked loose,
but that did necessitate a bit of cleanup work on a hot engine.

I'm putting together a gallery of some of the other shots that
I took over the weekend;  I'll post a link to it when it's done.
Suffice it to say, though, that I'm well satisfied with my new
camera.  It seems odd to be using something else after 50 years
with Pentax, but my shoulders thank me at the end of the day.
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Re: Ultrawide Irix on sale at B

[John Francis]

On Sun, Aug 07, 2022 at 12:07:29AM -0700, Larry Colen wrote:
> I saw on facebook that B is selling the full frame, manual focus  Irix 
> Blackstone 11mm f/4 for $379 marked down from $649. Their firefly model is a 
> bit less, but I felt the metal body worth the extra. I don???t know if the 
> firefly also has the weather sealing. 
> 
> https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1325629-REG/irix_il_11bs_pk_11mm_blackstone_lens_for.html

FYI - the price appears to have gone back up to $649.

I have to admit that, based on the touting of having a "neutrino coating" on
the lens elements, I'd have dismissed that manufacturer without a second 
thought.
It will be interesting to see what you think of it.
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Re: August PUG is up

[John Francis]

That image from Dan Mayola sure looks familiar!

Back when I was working in Mountain View (some 20 years ago now)
that is the view I would have had when I was halfway home if I
took Hwy 101 instead of Hwy 85.

Of course it wasn't often that there was a chance to see snow...
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Re: August PUG is up

[John Francis]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2022 at 09:42:25PM +1000, Brian W wrote:
> G'day all
> 
> Enjoy the new gallery here:
> 
> http://pug.komkon.org/
> 
> (you may need to refresh your browser if you see the previous gallery there).
 
Before anyone asks - yes, some of you may you have seen my image before
(it was a PUG entry 14 years ago).  But this is a slightly different crop
that I think is an improvement.
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Re: Funny looking squirrels

[John Francis]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2022 at 03:40:21PM -0400, John Francis wrote:
> 

> Yes, they are.  Redwood City (on the San Francisco peninsula) even has 
> warning signs posted:
> 
Better image (you can actually read the words)


<https://i.pinimg.com/736x/4f/a8/b0/4fa8b0d814c1a484a95d4356b1a25eac.jpg>
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Re: Funny looking squirrels

[John Francis]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2022 at 06:38:30AM -0700, Nolan Hinshaw wrote:
> 
> I suspect that they're all over the coastal forests, chaparral, and 
> woodlands. Naturalists in San Francisco have documented a thriving population 
> of breeding pairs in the city's parks cohabiting (as it were) with the 
> resident coyotes and bobcats and possums.

Yes, they are.  Redwood City (on the San Francisco peninsula) even has warning 
signs posted:



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Re: OT: LIONS

[John Francis]

On Sat, Jul 23, 2022 at 09:53:50AM -0700, Nolan Hinshaw wrote:
> On Jul 23, 2022, at 07:31, Alan C  wrote:
> > 
> > Karin van Zyl is a member of PENTAX PHOTOGRAPHERS SOUTH AFRICA.
> > Here is a link to a recent photo of hers - A Lioness with 3 cubs at a 
> > waterhole.
> > I have posted the link so you can see her submission:
> > 
> > https://www.facebook.com/groups/606970746122355/permalink/2289765277842885/
> 
> Note that three of the four are "Ho-Hum", but the cub nearest mama seems to 
> have noticed the photographer...

Oh, I think they've all noticed the photographer (cub #1 certainly has), but 
gettinmg a drink is more important.
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Re: OT: Nikon (and Canon?)

[John Francis]

On Tue, Jul 12, 2022 at 03:44:15PM -0400, John Sessoms wrote:
> News article that says Nikon will be getting out of the DSLR camera
> business. They've recently discontinued their entry-level DSLRs D3500 &
> D5600 models.
> 
> Canon already announced their EOS-1D X Mark III is their last "professional"
> DSLR.
> 
> I don't know if this is good news for Pentax? I hope the brand endures.

I don't see it being good news for Pentax - I don't expect people switching
away from Nikon (or Canon) DSLRs are going to choose to switch to Pentax.

To be frank, I don't see the DSLR market surviving that much longer, no
matter whose name is on the camera.  I expect the K3-iii to be the last
Pentax APS-C body with a mirror; I can see there possibly being one last
kicker to the K-1 line.  But after that there probably won't be enough
potential purchasers to recoup development costs on any new bodies that
have a mirror box and optical viewfinder. Any other new bodies that can
accept K-mount lenses (whatever the sensor size) will probably have an
electronic shutter and an electronic viewfinder. That lowers the build
cost for low-end bodies, and allows for faster frame rates, and all sorts
of additional features (remote control with a remote viewfinder, to name
but one) on fancier models.
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Re: New computer woes.

[John Francis]

On Sun, Jun 05, 2022 at 04:54:18PM +1000, jco...@iinet.net.au wrote:
> That's what I meant Larry - I use them all the time now.  I was somewhat 
> surprised that my latest HP box came with a wired mouse and keyboard.

My recent purchases (Dell tower systems for my wife a couple of years ago, and 
one for me last year)
both came with wired mice and keyboards.  I can think of two reasons - one is 
that the're probably
slightly cheaper, but I'd guess that the main reason is to remove a possible 
point of failure when
troubleshooting the system.
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Re: Lastest additions to my Pentax stable.

[John Francis]

On Sat, Apr 30, 2022 at 12:09:36AM -0500, Darren Addy wrote:
> Craziest thing happened today.
> I have a Cottage Food biz & Fridays are my Roast Day & free delivery in the
> area day. One of my regular customers messaged me this morning & said a
> little birdie had told them that I was interested in astronomy and would I
> be interested in a 6??? long telescope because it was in a house that was
> part of an estate and they needed to rehome it. Would probably be
> affordable, she said. I was put in touch with the disposal person and asked
> how affordable ???affordable??? might be. They said they were hoping to get
> $50. I said I could do that and it was in my possession within the hour.
> 
> The telescope is a homemade Dobsonian with a 12??? mirror and mirror coatings
> that by themselves was $200. The scope has a Moonlight Crawford focused
> that is worth $300-400. All together everything is worth an easy $2K. 
> 
> Here are the Pentax pieces:
> https://i.imgur.com/Swm5LDF.jpg
> They are worth around $200 each (used).
> 
> The 12??? diameter is going to be a major upgrade from my 8??? dob, allowing 
> me
> to see much fainter objects!

Couldn't have gone to a more deserving home!  Have fun (and post images).
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Re: May PUG Countdown

[John Francis]

Clangers?

On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 01:11:11PM +0200, Alan C wrote:
> Green cheese & rats?
> 
> Alan C
> 
> On 28-Apr-22 12:48 PM, Henk Terhell wrote:
> > I would associate the moon with more romantic scenes than geology :)
> > 
> > Henk
> > 
> > Op do 28 apr. 2022 om 02:37 schreef ann sanfedele :
> > 
> > > Just thought of something else that might encourage the flatlanders -
> > > everyone has been taking shots of the moon , right?
> > > that fits :-)
> > > 
> > > ann
> > > 
> > > 
> > --
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Re: New Toys

[John Francis]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2022 at 06:32:17AM +0200, Alan C wrote:
> Aren't sports cars supposed to be red?
> 
> Alan C

I know somebody who thinks so:



Of course he's not entirely convinced - this is the yellow car just visible at 
the top of the picture:



... and this is the third car (just visible in the top right corner):


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Re: New Toys

[John Francis]

My "uncool" car was extremely practical - a Morris Minor 1000 estate (with the 
1100cc engine).
When I left home after graduating from univerity my parents offered me a choice 
- I could buy
(for a token price) the Escort estate my father was driving, or take my 
mother's car for free.
After discussion with my brother I opted for the moggie, and my brother took 
the Escort.

That car was extremely practical, and almost indestructable - when the engine 
seized up after
a garage neglected to adequately tighten the lower radiator hose (so all the 
coolant leaked)
all I had to do was replace the hose, fill up with water, and wait until the 
block cooled.
Its only weakness was that it was pathologically afraid of water - if there was 
rain within
two counties it was prone to the dread "water on the points" (because, of 
course, it had a
distributor cap manufactured by Lucas Electrical).

I eventually had to get rid of that car when the main box girders of the 
chassis rusted out
and became more like U-girders.  But by then my brother was about to leave the 
country, and
sold me his Triumph Vitesse convertible: ~1800lbs dry weight - less than a 
modern F1 car -
and a straight six two-litre engine putting.out almost 100HP (also less than an 
F1 car :-)

Then I left the country, too, and ended up in the US some 40 years ago.  In the 
intervening
years since then I've owned a Fiat 132, a Mustang GT convertible, and a BMW Z4.



On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 10:24:50AM +1000, jco...@iinet.net.au wrote:
> Hi Alan - an A35? That was possibly the most uncool car of the era - but with 
> that motor it would have shocked many a boy racer!  Mind you, that comes from 
> one who had a bog standard 850 Mini.  At one time the speedo jammed at 80 
> mph(!) and I got stopped by the police for driving too slowly (guessing I was 
> doing roughly the 30mph speed limit): I was silently praying he wouldn't 
> notice the speedo reading.
> 
> John in Brisbane
> 
> 
> 
> -Original Message-
> From: Alan C  
> Sent: Monday, 18 April 2022 5:35 PM
> To: pdml@pdml.net
> Subject: Re: New Toys
> 
> Long ago, in Rhodesia, I had an  A35 van (1000cc BMC engine, hot cam, twin 
> SU's) in BRG with a light grey roof. Then came the Mini's.
> 
> Alan C
> 
> On 18-Apr-22 09:07 AM, jco...@iinet.net.au wrote:
> > Maybe - but British Racing Green is pretty cool!
> >
> >
> > John in Brisbane
> >
> >
> >
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Alan C 
> > Sent: Monday, 18 April 2022 2:32 PM
> > To: pdml@pdml.net
> > Subject: Re: New Toys
> >
> > Aren't sports cars supposed to be red?
> >
> > Alan C
> >
> > On 18-Apr-22 02:42 AM, jco...@iinet.net.au wrote:
> >> The latest version is getting great reviews in the motoring press in 
> >> Australia.  Friend of mine has an older model (2005) and loves it.
> >> Like the colour - I had my 1973 Escort resprayed in a very similar colour.
> >>
> >>
> >> John in Brisbane
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -Original Message-
> >> From: Larry Colen 
> >> Sent: Monday, 18 April 2022 2:53 AM
> >> To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List 
> >> Subject: Re: New Toys
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> On Apr 17, 2022, at 5:25 AM, Alan C  wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Looks good, Larry. Known at the MX-5 over here - a very popular ladies 
> >>> sports car, still in high demand.
> >> This is actually my fourth Miata/Eunos/Mx-5, but my first NB, the others 
> >> were all NAs.  They have a reputation here of being a ???woman???s car???. 
> >>  I???m fine with them being popular with women, particularly attractive 
> >> women that I might want an opportunity to chat with.
> >>
> >> In the motorsports community there is a saying ???the answer is always 
> >> miata???.  They are fun to drive, get decent gas mileage and are just a 
> >> little bit more reliable than an anvil.  The best racing I have ever seen 
> >> is in a class called Spec Miata.  In the last race I did with the SCCA, I 
> >> qualified mid grid, a friend was gridded directly in front of me with a 
> >> qualifying time .030 seconds faster than mine, the guy next to me was .030 
> >> slower.  So, on a 3 mile (5km) track,  about .060 seconds which works out 
> >> to about 10ft (3m) separated the qualifying times of four cars, or two 
> >> rows of the grid.
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Larry Colen
> >> l...@red4est.com
> >>
> >>
> >> --
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Re: My journey down the slippery slope continues ...

[John Francis]

you know, I might have one of those (and a K-mount to u4/3 adapter) lying 
around.
I've definitely got an A50mm/f1.4, an A50mm/f1.7, and an M28mm/f2.8; I'm just 
not
entirely sure whether or not I hung on to an M50mm/1.4 to keep my MX company.


On Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 11:18:44PM +0100, Steve Cottrell wrote:
> I???ll just leave this here??.
> 
> http://www.seeingeye.tv/pages/pen.html
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Cotty
> 
> 
> On 7 Apr 2022, at 18:13, Larry Colen  wrote:
> 
> that still leaves the question of glass
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Re: GESO - test images with the new toy

[John Francis]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2022 at 09:01:38AM +0200, Alan C wrote:
> John, as Dan said, those are fine images. All tack sharp. I used to get
> colours like that with the K7 but not with the K5.
> 
> Alan C
 
Re:  

Thanks to all who commented.

I can't really take credit for the colours or the sharpness - Olympus
(and whoever makes the sensor) deserve most of the praise for that.

My contribution was deciding where to point the camera, and picking
a small enough aperture to get at least some amount of depth of field
on the flower close-ups - the camera took care of the rest. 

It's a learning experience for me - switching to u4/3 from the APS-C
sensor of the K5 (and the different aspect ratio of the two systems)
is interesting (and occasionally challenging), but definitely fun.

Things I have learned so far:

  o I still prefer a viewfinder, but having a rear screen is good.
Having one than can be flipped out, rotated, etc. is even better.

  o The Olympus shutter release is hair-trigger sensitive!

  o The auto-focus is lightning fast (and accurate). That's good,
because having a smaller sensor affects the depth of field.

I've not as yet got anywhere near pushing the new camera to its limits;
it supposedly offers significantly better Image Stabilisation (SR),
and has an AI-based focus tracking mode that understands motorsports.
But at the moment I'm concentrating on getting to know where all the 
controls are (there are buttons all over the body, and almost all of
them can be re-programmed to do something other than their default).
I've got used to the Pentax control layout - I haven't owned any other
brand of SLR since I purchased my Spotmatic II (50 years ago!)
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Re: GESO - test images with the new toy

[John Francis]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2022 at 06:47:12PM -0400, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:
> 404 Not Found
> >
> > Here it is:  

Hmm.  Try this:  
or   


The text between the <> brackets in my original post (with spaces)
works just fine for me if I select it then "Open Selection as URL".
But apparently just positioning the cursor and choosing the option
"Open URL" doesn't work unless the spaces are quoted.
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GESO - test images with the new toy

[John Francis]

As Larry posted some images from his latest camera acquisition,
I thought I should get round to picking up a copy of jAlbum and
seeing what it took to put together a small gallery.
 
Here it is:  

All except the first image are taken with the new 12-100 zoom.
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Re: My journey down the slippery slope continues ...

[John Francis]

On Thu, Apr 07, 2022 at 12:07:54AM -0400, John Francis wrote:
> 
> Last weekend I decided I was going to stick with the lighter system.
> I knew I wanted something wider than 40mm, but I wasn't sure whether
> to go for the 12-40/2.8 or the 12-100/4. I eventually decided to go
> for the 12-100, and add a 2x TC to use with the 40-150 to give me a
> two-lens system of 12-100/4 and 80-300/5.6 (roughly comparable to a
> range of 17-425 on my K5 - giving up 1mm at the wide end, but gaining
> a little more reach than the 350mm I got with the 60-250 & a 1.4x TC).

So - here's a comparison shot of my new and old systems.
<http://www.panix.com/~johnf/pdml/small/NewToys.jpg>

Olympus: M1X + 11-100/f4  + 40-150mm/f2.8 +   2xTC
Pentax:  K5  + 16-50/f2.8 + 60-250mm/f4   + 1.4xTC (+ 50-135mm/f2.8)

(The Olympus is shown with the two extra batteries I bought for it;
it goes through batteries a lot faster than the K-5 with the grip,


The Pentax gear is a bit faster at the wide end (16mm/f2.8 vs. 12mm/f4)
But at 40mm the Olympus catches up, and from 90mm (~135mm on the Pentax)
I'm limited to f4 on the Pentax, while the Olympus still offers me f2.8
all the way out to 150mm (~225mm).

I've got a 2xTC for the Olympus 40-150, and a 1.4x for the Pentax 60-250.
These give me f5.6 all the way out to 350mm (Pentax) or 300mm (Olympus);
this means that with the Olympus I have the same maximum aperture, and a
slightly longer reach to fill the frame at the top of the zoom range.

P.S. The comparison shot was taken using my trusty old Olympus E-PL1.
 I decided to take another shot showing the E-PL1 next to its new
 stablemate: <http://www.panix.com/~johnf/pdml/small/NewToys2.jpg>
 This was taken using my phone camera (a Google Pixel 3).
 At first glance the phone camera seems to do considerably better
 than the E-PL1 (not too surprising - the E-PL1 is over 10 years old).
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Re: My journey down the slippery slope continues ...

[John Francis]

On Apr 7, 2022, at 10:00 AM, Alan C  wrote:
> 
> For me, one camera is quite enough.

I've run into enough situations where one camera isn't enough to always want a 
backup in my camera bag.

For one thing I spent a few years earning my ticket into motorsports events by 
shooting for a website.  That taught me that there are occasions when you don't 
have time to swap lenses on a camera - you barely have time to switch to the 
second camera setup.

For another thing, there are once-in-a-lifetime opportunities where having a 
second body with you is worth it just for insurance.
When I got a one-year job assignment in New Zealand one of the items on my 
shopping list for the stop-off in Singapore on the way from London to Auckland 
was an ME to sit alongside my MX (plus an M80-200 zoom and a few other 
goodies).  Ever since then I've almost always had two camera bodies in the bag.

Then there was the time when the MX Motor Drive bent the coupling in my MX.  
Fortunately that had become my second body - by that time my primary camera was 
a PZ-1p.

And there was the time the PZ-1p stopped working on a rainy race day at Laguna 
Seca. It was fine when it dried out after a couple of hours, but by then the 
race was over.  But the trusty old MX filled in just fine.

Or the time when I slipped climbing down from a photo tower, and knocked (most 
of) my MZ-S off the back of my big zoom. Again, having the PZ-1p along as well 
meant I could continue shooting.

And, of course, in the film days it was nice to have a second body so that you 
could have two different types of film to hand.


I don't have anywhere near as many cameras as Godfrey, but I have still got a 
fair number of the cameras I've used over the years.
I have owned:
   Brownie 127
   Hanimex 35mm
   Olympus Pen half-frame.
(I don't have any of those, but I do have my father's Ilford Sportsman 35mm).
   Spotmatic II (later donated to a friend).
   MX
   ME (donated to a different friend)
   ME Super
   Super Program
   PZ-1p
   MX #2 (black)
   MZ-S
   Canon G1
   Olympus EPL-1
   *ist-D
   K10D
   K-5
   Olympus OM-D E-M1X :-)
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Re: My journey down the slippery slope continues ...

[John Francis]

Well, the new OM-1 (which wasn't realeased when I bought my M1X) at
the top-of-the-line point does seem to be about the same price as a K3.
Mind you, although Olympus show the M1X at the full $3000 price point,
there are still a few places (including some Amazon sellers) listing
it at the $1700 price Olympus were offering for a few months last year.
(For reference, the previous M1 model was also around the 2K price that
most sellers seem to be asking for a K3).  Not that I'd suggest the M1X
for a camera you're buying to carrying around on your bike!

There are lots of good u4/3 camera bodies - it really depends on just
how complex you want the camera to be over and above using it as a
point-and-shoot.  I'm trying to persuade my wife that she should get
an M10 as an upgrade replacement for our EPL-1; that way I could use
it as a backup and/or biking/walk-around camera (with the 12-100).
But I'm limiting my choice to Olympus so that I get the full benefit
of their IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) system - while u4/3 lenses
can be used on any u4/3 body, not all features work across brands.
There's no reason for you to limit your search to just Olympus if you
find a camera from someone else (Panasonic, say) more to your liking.

Good glass isn't going to be cheap, but it's cheaper than glass for
a K3 or K1 :-)  Unless you can find somebody who's prepared to lend
you a nice lens, of course.  Good luck with that ...

P.S. As Godfrey points out, the M1 bodies do have a way to save a
configuration (several different ones, in fact), so resetting to a
known state isn't difficult once you've set up the configuration.

On Thu, Apr 07, 2022 at 10:13:03AM -0700, Larry Colen wrote:
> I am considering celebrating my new job by getting a u4/3 camera to carry on 
> my bike, possibly an E-M5.  I was poking around last night looking at the 
> current models and a couple of them are up in the K3iii price range, if not 
> more expensive, if you buy them new.
> 
> I did see a couple of bodies on KEH in the $400-800 range, but that still 
> leaves the question of glass.
> 
> 
> 
> > On Apr 7, 2022, at 10:00 AM, Alan C  wrote:
> > 
> > You guys are crazy. You need a big frame on wheels on which you can mount 
> > them all & then fire them simultaneously with some sort of automatic 
> > device. Then you could spend the next week analysing all the images so you 
> > can rank them in order of sharpness, colour rendition & whatever else you 
> > fancy. Then you would be able to truly decide which one (or maybe 2) 
> > cameras are worth keeping. The balance can be donated to a charity shop.
> > 
> > For me, one camera is quite enough.
> > 
> > My tongue is stuck to a cheek now!
> > 
> > Alan C
> > 
> > On 07-Apr-22 05:30 PM, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote:
> >> I still have my Olympus E-M1 (the original version in this line, which I 
> >> bought in 2013) ??? and its great grandparent, the E-1 DSLR from 2003. 
> >> Although I've said to myself, "Heck, I hardly ever take these cameras out 
> >> anymore, I should sell the lot!" I just haven't found any sensible reason 
> >> to. The E-M1 in particular still works brilliantly for most of the things 
> >> I photograph and its extreme configurability/customizability is amazing.
> >> 
> >> My Leicas have all had the ability to save a user profile (actually a few 
> >> of them) both internally and in an externally saveable format, and return 
> >> the cameras to their defaults instantly as well as re-instantiate a 
> >> customized profile just as instantly. You can also transfer those settings 
> >> from one to another of the same body easily. I really wish Olympus had 
> >> done the same thing right from the start.
> >> 
> >> (Note: I think the E-M1 has a similar concept of user profiles at least, I 
> >> should probably re-read the manual???)
> >> 
> >> What I did to save time (since you *can* do a master reset of all 
> >> parameters on the Olympus, at least on both of mine) was to create a 
> >> checklist-cheatsheet for all 197 settings that marks out quickly and 
> >> simply all of my changes from the default configuration. So when I do 
> >> reset the E-M1 to its defaults, I just pull out the cheat sheet and walk 
> >> through all the settings that I changed as a standard setup to reconfigure 
> >> it to my basic configuration. Takes about ten minutes that way, and 
> >> without having to do any head scratching and trying to remember how I had 
> >> it set. I used the pages in the PDF form of the owner's manual that list 
> >> out ALL the menu options and defaults to construct the cheat sheet: just 
> &g

My journey down the slippery slope continues ...

[John Francis]

As some of you may remember, some five months ago I decided that
the K3iii, while a nice camera, wasn't tempting enough to get me
to spend that amount of money on a new APS-C camera body.
I was already finding that carrying a camera bag with my K5, the
60-250, and a selection of other items (generally one or other of
the 16-50 or 50-135, and maybe the 50/1.4) was getting tiring by
the end of the day, so I was looking for a way to lighten the load.
I'd looked at the Olympus bodies, and was leaning towards either
the M5 or possibly the M1, when Olympus decided to drop the price
of the M1X by 40%, making it only a little more expensive than the
M1 (and $300 less than Pentax were asking for the K3) for a body
that was specifically tailored for what I was most interested in -
Motorsports or wildlife photography.

So I jumped, and picked up the M1X and the 40-150/2.8 zoom (which
gave me pretty much the same field of view as the 60-250, which had
become my most-used lens).

I haven't done a great deal of photography in the five months that
have elapsed since then, but it's all been with the M1X. I've just
about become accustomed to the fact that almost all the controls
work exactly the way the Pentax controls don't (I have to turn the
dials in the opposite direction for many functions, the assignment
of the two thumbwheels on the body to control shutter and aperture
has the two functions interchanged, the lens release button is on
the other side of the mount, etc., etc.) Fortunately, though, the
M1X is amazingly reconfigurable - most of the vast number of buttons
spread over the body can be re-assigned to different functions (and
there's an easy way to swap the functions on those two thumbwheels),

One thing I have found out, though, is that it's a little too easy
to get yourself stuck in a corner.  With the Pentax bodies all you
have to do to reset the camera to a known state is to turn it off
and on again.  The M1X, though, remembers the state it was it when
you turned it off, and goes back to that state when you turn it on
again (although there's probably a way to change that behaviour, too).

Last weekend I decided I was going to stick with the lighter system.
I knew I wanted something wider than 40mm, but I wasn't sure whether
to go for the 12-40/2.8 or the 12-100/4. I eventually decided to go
for the 12-100, and add a 2x TC to use with the 40-150 to give me a
two-lens system of 12-100/4 and 80-300/5.6 (roughly comparable to a
range of 17-425 on my K5 - giving up 1mm at the wide end, but gaining
a little more reach than the 350mm I got with the 60-250 & a 1.4x TC).


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Re: Seen this? Limited Edition K-3 mk iii

[John Francis]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 01:01:00PM -0700, l...@red4est.com wrote:
> That would be perfect for photographing a Disaster Area concert.

I'd be a little afraid that the only response when I pushed the
shutter release would be a little message that appeared in the
iviewfinder that said "Please do not press that button again"
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Re: OT; I'm Tired

[John Francis]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 08:19:28PM -0500, John Sessoms wrote:
> Many of the older Canon/Nikon shooters in the nature photography group I'm
> involved with have switched to Four Thirds (micro four thirds?) mirrorless
> systems.
> 
> A 150-400 lens in that system apparently has an 35mm equivalent of 300-800mm
> ... and costs slightly less than Canon/Nikon big glass.


If you're shopping with an unlimited budget, Olympus have recently come out
with a 150-400/f4.5 (with a built-in 1.25x teleconverter) for a mere $7500...
(It's also compatible with the Olympus 2x teleconverter, for extreme zoom;
using both the built-in and the 2x TCx gives you up to 1000 mm actual focal
length - a FOV equivalent to a 2000mm lens on a 35mm body).

If you're a little more cost-conscious, you might consider a 100-400
There are a couple of options there - both Panasonic and Olympus have one
(although the Olympus one is reportedly a re-badged Sigma). The panasonic
gets several good reports, and comes in at around $1800.

I've currently only got the Olympus 40-150/2.8  If I get the 2x teleconverter
that will give me an 80-300/f5.6, which is comparable to what my FA* 250-600
got me back when I was shooting film.  

If I want anything more than this the first thing I'd look at is the 300mm/f4
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Re: OT; I'm Tired

[John Francis]

According to Sony the DSC-RX10 weights 1.095g (2lb 5oz).  A K-5 weighs 750g 
(1lb 10.5oz),
so even with a 50mm/f1.4 it weighs slightly less than the Sony.

A K-5 with the 60-250 zoom does weigh just about twice what that Sony weighs.

The Sony, though, has a sensor even smaller than a 4/3 sensor - only about 0.75 
the size. 
(i.e. the "35mm equivalent focal length" conversion factor is roughly 2.8!  to 
put that
in roughly comparable terms, the drop in sensor size between the four types of 
sensor
("full frame", APS-C, 4/3, and the so-called 1" sensor in the Sony) is 
basically the same
between each sensor size - you'll see a comparable drop-off for each size 
reduction.

I never felt the need for a K-1 - I was happy with the performance I got from 
the APS-C
sensor in my K-5.  But I thought long and hard before deciding to take that 
extra step
down to a 4/3 sensor (although, like you, I was finding the weight of a full 
camera bag
was putting a limit on just how much gear I could comfortably carry around).

On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 11:22:04AM -0500, Paul Stenquist wrote:
> I think I read that it???s half the weight of a Sony APS-C DSLR with a medium 
> zoom.
> 
> Paul
> 
> > On Mar 11, 2022, at 10:38 AM, ann sanfedele  wrote:
> > 
> > ???I cant even lift my K-5 with the short lens on it.  NOt that I could 
> > ever get this . but I'm curious how much it weighs..
> > couldnt find where it told us that on the link
> > 
> > ann
> > 
> >> On 3/11/2022 9:41 AM, David J Brooks wrote:
> >> Several of our camera club members, older like ourselves, have gone with
> >> similar set up but Panosonic's, images are good
> >> 
> >> Dave
> >> 
> >>> On Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 9:07 AM Paul Stenquist  
> >>> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> I never thought I???d say it, but at 74, I???m worn out. I don???t know 
> >>> how much
> >>> longer I can keep carrying big glass and a full frame camera on a walk
> >>> through the woods. Yes, my k-3 is lighter, but it???s still a lot of 
> >>> camera
> >>> with a lens that???s long enough to shoot wildlife.
> >>> 
> >>> Here???s the camera I want:
> >>> https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=sony%20rx10=0=yes=ma
> >>> --
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> >>> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and
> >>> follow the directions.
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> > -- 
> > ann sanfedele photography
> > https://annsan.smugmug.com
> > https://www.cafepress.com/+ann-sanfedele+gifts
> > https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/annsan
> > https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/annsanfedelecalendarsandbooks
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GESO: View from my window

[John Francis]

I woke up this morning to noises from the street.
I looked out of my window and saw this:

http://www.panix.com/~johnf/temp/Crane1.jpg

Apparentl PG were replacing some of the wiring in our neighbourhood.
Here's a slightly different view which gives a better perspective:

http://www.panix.com/~johnf/temp/Crane2.jpg

A close-up of the workers at the top of the utility pole:

http://www.panix.com/~johnf/temp/Crane3.jpg

And here's the crane heading out after the job is done.

http://www.panix.com/~johnf/temp/Crane4.jpg


(No Pentax content, I'm afraid - Olympus M1X & 17/2.8 or 40-150/2.8)
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Re: Ricoh direct marketing cue wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth

[John Francis]

On Sat, Jan 22, 2022 at 03:34:45PM -0500, John Sessoms wrote:
> > We've still got San Jose Camera & Video (which, come to think of it,is
> > where I bought my PZ-1p), but now they're pretty much limited to just
> > the big brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic & Fuji).
> 
> I have vague memories of when Pentax was one of the "big brands".

Yep. But my memories of the '70s are also vague (and getting vaguer).
But I bought my Spotmatic II (and, later, my MX and ME) back then.
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Re: Ricoh direct marketing cue wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth

[John Francis]

On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 11:37:29AM -0800, Larry Colen wrote:
> 
> I don???t know how many brick and mortar camera stores there are in the Bay 
> Area.  I???ve seen cameras at some of the big box electronics stores, but no 
> Pentax. Keeble and Shuchat in Palo Alto which had been around for decades, 
> with two shops across the street from each other went out of business a few 
> years back. There seems to be a Samy's in SF. 

We've still got San Jose Camera & Video (which, come to think of it, is where I 
bought my PZ-1p), but now they're pretty much limited to just the big brands 
(Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic & Fuji).

Mike's Camera does have a few Bay Area branches, including one in Menlo Park. 
They offer a slightly wider selection (they include Olympus), and also some 
third-party lenses (Tamron, Sigma, ...).  But many of the items they show on 
their website are marked as 'not available in stores'.
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Re: Ricoh direct marketing cue wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth

[John Francis]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 05:43:35PM -0800, Larry Colen wrote:
> https://petapixel.com/2022/01/20/ricoh-to-stop-mass-producing-cameras-sell-direct-to-consumer-only/
> 
> As of April 1, 2022 (no fooling) Ricoh will stop selling Pentax and GR 
> branded cameras through the distribution network and will only sell through 
> their own website and branded stores.

As best I can tell that announcement was specifically talking about the 
Japanese market.

More than anything else this sounds a lot like the way computers are sold.  
Sure, I could go to a variety of stores (online or physical) and buy an 
off-the-shelf computer, but I've hardly ever actually done that (the exception 
being a couple of ready-built systems I picked up from Tiger Direct at 
clearance prices). Most of the time I've gone to the manufacturer's web site 
(Gateway 2000, HP, Dell, ...), configured the system there, and had them ship 
it to me.

While cameras today aren't as configurable as computers have been for the last 
few decades, there have been some options (a couple of variants of an otherwise 
identical camera).  And as we see every time a new body is rumoured to be 
forthcoming, we get people posting saying what the camera must have to make it 
desirable as far as they are concerned. If Ricoh could actually offer a system 
where a camera body could be configured in a variety of ways (anti-aliasing 
and/or IR filters, sensor dimensions, pixel count, flip-out screen, screw drive 
focussing, power zoom, fastest shutter speed, ...) might they be able to do 
that and still keep the price reasonable?  I don't know.
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Re: All my Pentax K lenses

[John Francis]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 10:28:37PM -0800, Juan Buhler wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I posted a video on my channel about all my Pentax K-mount lenses.
> 
> It's funny, after putting them all in the same place, going through one by
> one and looking for photos I made with each, it doesn't feel like such a
> big collection as I thought I had.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQoeYxL48mg

Interesting how different two lens collections can be.

21 lenses, of which the vast majority are manual focus, and nothing over 150mm.

I've only held on to 17 of the Pentax K-mount lenses I've owned over the years,
and only six of those are manual focus.


Here's my list (also sorted widest first):

DA  10-17/3.5-4.5 Fish-Eye
DA* 16-50/2.8
DA  18-55/3.5-5.6
M   28/2.8
FA  28-105/4.6
M   40-80/2.8-4
A   50/1.7
A   50/1.4
F   50/1.7
FA  50/1.4
DA* 50-135/2.8
DA* 60-250/4
FA* 80-200/2.8
FA  80-320/4.5-5.6
A   135/2.8
A*  300/2.8
FA* 250-600/5.6

Three fondly-remembered lenses I've owned but parted with:
M   50/1.4
M   80-200/4.5
A*  200/2.8


I don't have quite as meny lenses on my shelf as Juan does,
but his collection is definitely a lot easier to carry around!
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Re: OT; Brilliant photograpyy

[John Francis]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 10:52:01AM +1000, jco...@iinet.net.au wrote:
> Worth a look!
> 
> https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=tkliwinihilisci=a.4859932557378431&__cft__[0]=AZVd6-yQN-dlhXAc7eqDOz99uWl
> ZhlLPRK2K7ikx4gXPFZJS0cu9TKKBLbi3jYXuFSCu8oCA4RfnrC4X96sf_YDUcXARvN-GP9SPW8mE2HXFswAZy7bN7IqZlvM9iS9ISecEJiesDN_y9nCiB4m
> j_SlJoGpazP-BGmoXg4gVrmUIPi2Ve7OMO-eubEuqxYQ6jOXnTNF4sSYi0cudx5N1jkNY&__tn__=-UC%2CP-y-R

Indeed.

Some hits, some misses.  But I'm sure different folks will have difering 
opinions on just which is which.
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Re: GESO (6) - Moist New Year's Day

[John Francis]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 10:05:44AM -0800, Nolan Hinshaw wrote:
> On Jan 2, 2022, at 09:23, Rick Womer  wrote:
> > 
> > Yesterday there was a gentle on-and-off rain most of the day. I borrowed my 
> > wife???s weather-resistant lens and took my camera for a walk around the 
> > neighborhood.
> 
> I call that a "quality of mercy" rain, per Antonio's self-defense in _The 
> Merchant of Venice_. We had one here (SF), too - musta been a very broad 
> front. Oh, and we had a king tide at 1000 as well - +7 feet to more than -2 
> feet.
> 
> ObPhoto: here's a mood shot of one of my favorite things as it came out of 
> the camera, on approach to Pier 40 to pick up a group from BAADS - 
>  - for an afternoon on the bay.

Photo link?
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Re: PDML image sharing

[John Francis]

On Sat, Jan 01, 2022 at 01:18:37PM -0500, Stan Halpin wrote:
> I had a similar resolution question. I am in the process of moving from a 
> 2009 laptop to a 2021. My screen savers and desktop images on the 2009 were  
> from my favorites from the 2006-2009 era. On the 2021 they looked terrible, I 
> had to go back and find the originals, reprocess and re-export at a higher 
> resolution.

That's what I did when I recently moved from a laptop to a desktop.
My screensaver images were at 1920x1200 resolution to match my old
24" display.  The laptops, of course, were all 16x9 aspect ratio,
although the last generation had a 17" 4k display.

I originally tried running the laptop at full resolution, but some
of the software I was using didn't really work well that way - the
menus, etc., wouldn't scale the font size up enough to be legible,
so I usually ran the system with the display set to pretend that
it was only a 1920x1080 display.

As the two screens were different aspect ratio (16:9 vs. 16:10)
the same image scaled to fit the screen meant one of them was
going to be distorted anyway, so I didn't put a lot of effort
into creating new 4K versions of the images even if that would
have been appropriate.  In some cases the images were at even
lower resolution than those from the 6MP *istD - I had some
from my 3MP Canon PowerShot G1.  But a lot of my images have at
least 10MP - even those scanned from 35mm slides or negatives -
so reprocessing them to fit my current 2560x1440 27" displays
is generally worthwhile.

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Re: PDML image sharing

[John Francis]

My current screens are also 2560x1440 (as are those on my wife's computer).
I've resized smaller images (1920/2048 to 2560, and they don't look bad,
but I generally try and match the images to the display resolution.

I haven't had the opportunity to play with a 5K monitor, so I don't know if
I'd be able to spot any differences.  I keep on promising myself I'll do a
few tests with 4K images vs. standard HDTV resolution and see if it makes
much of a difference.  I know that the biggest difference I see between a
regular Blu-ray movie and a 4K movie comes from the extra HDR color space
when I watch them on our (Sony OLED) 4K TV, but I might be able to spot
other differences with a still image.

On Windows it's possible to have the background slideshow resize images as
necessary to fill the screen, so a 2560-wide image wouldn't just be a small
rectangle in the centre of the display.  I'd expect IOS to be similar.

On Sat, Jan 01, 2022 at 12:23:50PM -0500, Mark C wrote:
> HI John -
> 
> Glad you liked the photo. What resolution of images do you use in your
> screen saver? I always wonder how my photos look on others' displays. I'm
> using a 2560x1440 resolution monitor and my web images look OK on it, but on
> the higher res 5k's or whatever, they may just be plus sized thumbnails...
> 
> Mark
> 
> On 12/24/2021 9:33 PM, John Francis wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 24, 2021 at 11:05:40AM -0500, Mark C wrote:
> > > And best wishes for the new year!
> > > 
> > > https://www.flickr.com/photos/markcassino/51773061684/in/dateposted/
> > > 
> > > Mark
> > I don't comment on photographs as often as I probably should, but I do
> > have to say how much I like this one.  In fact my first thought was
> > "I'd love to have an image like this in my screen-saver rotation, but
> > I don't have anything suitable".
> > 
> > Then I thought a little more about this, and wondered if there was any
> > way we could set up a PDML trading post.  Somwhere where we could put
> > up a gallery of images we'd be happy to offer to other PDML members
> > for their own personal use at higher resolutions than we'd generally
> > make publicly available.
> > 
> > I've put together a selection of a dozen images from my screensaver
> > rotation at <http://www.panix.com/~johnf/PDML/Composite.jpg>. If
> > anybody would like one or more of these just let me know - I have
> > them currently at 2560x1440 resolution, which should be enough for
> > most people (if it isn't, just let me know - I have a few of them
> > at a bit more than that).
> > 
> > I haven't yet got a quick way of dropping a copyright marker on
> > these, but that shouldn't take me too long.
> > 
> > Oh, yes - Merry Christmas to all!  We're currently working in the
> > kitchen putting together various goodies to see us through the next
> > couple of weeks (we've got half a goose for our Christmas dinner).
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Re: PESO - Fungus Amongus

[John Francis]

Until the *istD came along I used a 3MP Canon PowerShot G1.
A great little camera - I gave it away to someone who used
it for quite a few more years!
(The camera claimed "3.3Megapixels", but that was the size
of the CCD - the largest images it produced were 2048x1536).

Here's a shot from the Long Beach 2003 Race Weekend:

  https://www.panix.com/~johnf/temp/LongBeach2003.jpg


On Fri, Dec 31, 2021 at 07:26:43AM +0200, Alan C wrote:
> Yes, the result is very good.
> 
> We still have an Olympus C-500 compact (5Mp) & a Pentax K110D (6Mp) which
> both do quite well if you are prepared to use you feet or zoom to fill the
> frame. Useless for bird photography. 2 frame portrait Pano's double the Mp.
> I read an article on simulating a K1 using a K5 or K3 like that.
> 
> Here's an example with the K110D & FA 80-320 at full stretch uncropped:
> 
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/wisselstroom/51184992538/
> 
> Alan C
> 
> On 30-Dec-21 07:15 PM, Rick Womer wrote:
> > Deep in a cabinet I found my 20-year-old Optio 33L, a very portable little 
> > thing with a mighty 3.2 MP sensor. I took a few shots with it while taking 
> > a walk around the neighborhood. This is one:
> > 
> > https://rickwomer.smugmug.com/2021/December-2021/December-2021/i-dkqvSpv/A
> > 
> > Two things surprised me: First is the quality of the images; and second is 
> > how much I could manipulate them in Lightroom. I was surprised to be able 
> > to adjust the exposure, sharpness, and contrast, and even use the brush.
> > 
> > Comments always appreciated!
> > 
> > Rick
> > --
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Re: I won Christmas, and a PESO

[John Francis]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2021 at 04:13:31PM -0800, Larry Colen wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Dec 30, 2021, at 12:54 PM, Bob Pdml  wrote:
> > 
> > Very good! But it???s not a win. It???s a drawer???
> 
> Do you feel better now that you got that off your chest?

I'm sure his granddaughter will be better off not having
to survive another winter without drawers.
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PDML image sharing

[John Francis]

On Fri, Dec 24, 2021 at 11:05:40AM -0500, Mark C wrote:
> And best wishes for the new year!
> 
> https://www.flickr.com/photos/markcassino/51773061684/in/dateposted/
> 
> Mark

I don't comment on photographs as often as I probably should, but I do
have to say how much I like this one.  In fact my first thought was
"I'd love to have an image like this in my screen-saver rotation, but
I don't have anything suitable".

Then I thought a little more about this, and wondered if there was any
way we could set up a PDML trading post.  Somwhere where we could put
up a gallery of images we'd be happy to offer to other PDML members
for their own personal use at higher resolutions than we'd generally
make publicly available.  

I've put together a selection of a dozen images from my screensaver
rotation at . If
anybody would like one or more of these just let me know - I have
them currently at 2560x1440 resolution, which should be enough for
most people (if it isn't, just let me know - I have a few of them
at a bit more than that).

I haven't yet got a quick way of dropping a copyright marker on
these, but that shouldn't take me too long.

Oh, yes - Merry Christmas to all!  We're currently working in the
kitchen putting together various goodies to see us through the next
couple of weeks (we've got half a goose for our Christmas dinner).
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Re: GESO Foam

[John Francis]

I probably do.  "toxic" and "poisonous" mean causing an actual chemical
reaction which is harmful to you.  Nausea (which can be caused by a
bad smell, or motion, or many other reasons) doesn't qualify.  It may
be unpleasant to be exposed to the smell (which isn't actually from
the methane, but from various other decomposition products, etc., that
are typically mixed in), but moving out of the affected area is enough
to take care of it.  That isn't the case if you are exposed to carbon
monoxide from breathing car exhaust fumes, or eat deadly nightshade
or yew berries or the wrong sorts of toadstools, or are bitten by a
venomous snake or spider - those have persistent effects which often
require medical treatment.

On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 01:34:11PM -0500, ann sanfedele wrote:
> what it prompted in me was nausea.. but you may have a narrower definition
> of toxic than I do.
> 
> I have a photo of that sign we encountered along the ALACAN somewhere..
> 
> On 12/16/2021 8:13 PM, John Francis wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 05:49:37PM -0500, ann sanfedele wrote:
> > > re poisonous - um -- methane certainly falls under that category.
> > I don't think so - it's non-toxic. It will choke you if you breathe
> > it instead of regular air, but the same is true of pure nitrogen.
> > --
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Re: GESO Foam

[John Francis]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 05:49:37PM -0500, ann sanfedele wrote:
> 
> re poisonous - um -- methane certainly falls under that category.

I don't think so - it's non-toxic. It will choke you if you breathe
it instead of regular air, but the same is true of pure nitrogen.
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Re: OT: Species of Birds Named By People Who Clearly Hate Birds

[John Francis]

(I finally got round to cleaning out my mailbox, and I ran into this thread)

I pretty much agree with what Ann said (including the stupid "incredible")
iMind you, when I got to the "Waterfowl" section I found myself thinking of
Steve McQueen and his baseball (and couldn't get rid of the Bernstein earworm).

Coincidentally in the last week Microsoft decided to feature the Blue-Footed
Booby as the lock screen first on her machine then, a few days later, on mine.
This prompted me to comment that I didn't know why Microsoft thought I wanted
to look at pictures of Boobys ...


On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 09:37:19AM -0500, ann sanfedele wrote:
> I have to agree with Mike..and I love those bird names! - they are funny and
> sometimes very sweet and/or rightly descriptive . and remember, these
> mentioned are just the ENGLISH language version of the birds common names,
> i.e., nicknames.. Not their actual zoological species names in most cases.
> (note to that twitter poster.. ugh)
> 
> I was kind of annoyed by the headline on Twisted Sifter "Species of Birds
> Named By People Who Clearly Hate Birds is a Thing and It?s Incredible"
> (it's the "incredible" that really got to me)
> 
> Much funnier (IMHO) and enjoyable are the two books by John, Ben and
> Catheryn Sill who love birds but have invented a variety of species and
> illustrated them in " A field Guide to LIttle Known and Seldom Seen birds of
> North America." I've got the original paperbacks from 1988 and 1990..but
> there is a 2013 volume with a new not as cute cover on Amazon as well.? Lots
> of used copies all over the internet, at least on this side of the pond..
> 
> ann
> 
> 
> 
> On 2/13/2021 6:01 AM, mike wilson wrote:
> > > On 12 February 2021 at 22:23 "Daniel J. Matyola"  
> > > wrote:
> > > 
> > > 
> > > https://twistedsifter.com/2021/02/funny-bird-species-names-compilation/
> > > 
> > Quite the opposite in most cases.  Some (e.g. Smew) are onomatopoeic 
> > versions of the bid's call.  Others (troglodyte mignon) refer to behaviour 
> > or (horned screamer) are purely descriptive.  The only one that may be 
> > slightly unkind is the (Blue footed - there are others) Booby.  This is 
> > related to the albatross, spends minimal time earthbound and is therefore 
> > not the most agile of animals on its feet.  But that assumes a late 20th 
> > century useage of the term, which may not be correct.
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Re: Whoosh? was (I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th)

[John Francis]

Google have also just announdce they'll be donating a million bucks to
provide habitat for monarchs, including setting up an area in a local
park where they'll be planting milkweed, etc.
Of course that area also has a few burrowing owls living there, and
apparently they seem to consider monarchs to be a tasty delicacy.

I'll probably stop by there some time - that park is also where I got
a good picture of a hawk sitting on a fencepost about 10-15 feet away.
It's also where I took this picture some years ago:

  http://panix.com/~johnf/temp/Windsurfing.jpg

The main Google campus is about half a mile away from this location
(although when I took the shot it was still the SGI campus, which is
where I used to work).


On Thu, Dec 09, 2021 at 07:46:30PM -0500, ann sanfedele wrote:
> Glad to see this!? There was a similar photo on the news here this evening,
> remarking on the return...
> I also have another friend who is parenting monarchs in Tucson, but mainly -
> I think- by giving them
> plants to visit they particularly need and want..
> 
> ann
> 
> On 12/5/2021 10:24 PM, John Francis wrote:
> > For those of you who couldn't make it, here is a picture of monarchs:
> >  http://panix.com/~johnf/Monarchs.jpg
> > 
> > Not as many as in some previous years, but a lot better than recently!
> > 
> > Not taken with a Pentax, I'm afraid; this was my first trip out of the
> > house with the new Olympus M1X & 40-150/2.8. I'm quite pleased with it.
> > --
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Re: Whoosh? was (I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th)

[John Francis]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 10:53:19PM -0500, John Francis wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 06:36:44PM -0800, Nolan Hinshaw wrote:
> > On Nov 24, 2021, at 13:42, Bob Pdml  wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > >> On 24 Nov 2021, at 20:48, Larry Colen  wrote:
> > 
> > [...]
> > 
> > >> Yeah, but you could see the monarchs.
> > 
> > > I saw Prince Andrew on Monday. 
> > [and cetera, et so on]
> > 
> > I wonder if this apparent whoosh . . .
> 
> 
> It's a joke, I say 'joke', son ...
> 
> I'm pretty sure Bob is savvy enough to know Larry was really talking
> about butterflies (especially since Dan has been posting pictures of
> the ones he raises each year).

For those of you who couldn't make it, here is a picture of monarchs:

http://panix.com/~johnf/Monarchs.jpg

Not as many as in some previous years, but a lot better than recently!

Not taken with a Pentax, I'm afraid; this was my first trip out of the
house with the new Olympus M1X & 40-150/2.8. I'm quite pleased with it.
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Re: Live view, arrggh

[John Francis]

On Thu, Dec 02, 2021 at 07:14:06AM -0500, ann sanfedele wrote:
> 
> Larry - Hey, I thought you were doing -headshots- for business reasons..
> didn't know you were going on Match.com. ;-)
> 
> Posed full body or mostly full body shots that are posed are really a turn
> off, IMHO..? a pro head shot and snap shots in good natural light
> will get you farther.
> 
> ann

I have to agree with Ann.  These shots all say "Look at me!  I'm posing!".
In particular, the upward tilt of the head seems to be looking over the
head of the viewer, rather than looking directly into the camera.
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MX memories

[John Francis]

I'm just beginning the process of tracking down all the assorted
bits of Pentax K-mount equipment I've got spread around the house
(or out on loan :-); the next stage will be deciding what to keep.

But while doing that I picked up an MX body for the first time in
many years, and was struck by just how heavy it felt for its size.
Without the power winder it weighs a little over a pound (495g);
if you add the winder it's 1.76lb (800g).
Even without the winder that's heavier than any of the MZ-series
bodies except the MZ-S, although being a little smaller than them.

With the winder (which is how I almost always used mine; the film
advance lever of an SLR is hard to use with a camera up to your
eye if you are left-eyed and wear eyeglasses) it's heavier than
any of the K-series digital bodies except the K-1 (or K3-iii!).

One benefit of digging through the various boxes is that I've
at last found the folder of internal filters for the 250-600;
I'd obviously set them aside "somewhere safe" to avoid losing
them when I was dragging that lens around from track to track.  
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Re: Whoosh? was (I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th)

[John Francis]

On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 01:00:10PM -0800, Nolan Hinshaw wrote:
> On Nov 26, 2021, at 19:53, John Francis  wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > It's a joke, I say 'joke', son ...
> 
> You are Foghorn Leghorn and I demand my two-fifty!

After I posted it occurred to me that I may have somewhat of an
advantage - I happen to have met each of Larry, Dan, and Bob, so
it may be a bit easier for me to guess how they would see things.

That led me to wonder whether anyone else has also met all three.
(If there are any others, that may well have come via the PDML).
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Re: I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th

[John Francis]

On Sat, Nov 27, 2021 at 04:56:19PM -0500, John Sessoms wrote:
> So, what game are you playing?

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (currently playing "Mummy's Mask").
Sometimes in-person, sometimes over Discord.

And on Sundays we're playing a Pathfinder RPG Adventure Path
(the group started off as in-person, but then our GM moved
out of state, so we're playing that with a combination of
Fantasy Grounds and Discord audio and video).
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Re: I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th

[John Francis]

Oops - I meant to reply directly to Larry, not to post that to the group!  
Sorry!
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Re: I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th

[John Francis]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2021 at 11:12:31PM -0800, Larry Colen wrote:
> 
> Next week the SLV Post is going to be doing a short bit on my photography.   
> Since my photos are already on display at Johnny???s Harborside, I???ll be 
> doing a reception on Dec 4th, from 2:30 until about 4:30.  Come by, say hi, 
> I???ll also have some of my other work with me for the reception.
> 
> The facebook event is:
> https://www.facebook.com/events/358500139380144?active_tab=about
> 
> I hope to see you there.

Unfortunately I'm probably not free then; Saturday is one of the days when we 
have an online gaming session, and it might well not finish in time for me to 
get to Santa Cruz.
(It's also possible that the game will get cancelled between now and then, in 
which case I'll try and make it over the hill).
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Re: Whoosh? was (I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th)

[John Francis]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 06:36:44PM -0800, Nolan Hinshaw wrote:
> On Nov 24, 2021, at 13:42, Bob Pdml  wrote:
> 
> > 
> >> On 24 Nov 2021, at 20:48, Larry Colen  wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> >> Yeah, but you could see the monarchs.
> 
> > I saw Prince Andrew on Monday. 
> [and cetera, et so on]
> 
> I wonder if this apparent whoosh . . .


It's a joke, I say 'joke', son ...

I'm pretty sure Bob is savvy enough to know Larry was really talking
about butterflies (especially since Dan has been posting pictures of
the ones he raises each year).
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Re: I'll be doing a little show in Santa Cruz December 4th

[John Francis]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 12:18:12PM -0800, Larry Colen wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Nov 25, 2021, at 11:55 AM, John Sessoms  wrote:
> > 
> > I was going to write similar "congratulations & regrets" but Dan beat me to 
> > it. I really would like to come if I could.
> > 
> > Maybe if I ever get to make my long deferred photo safari to the western 
> > National Parks we can arrange a PDML style mini-meetup.
> 
> I have been wanting to do some sort of photo gathering/trip on the west coast 
> for quite a while.  But for obvious reasons planning it got sidelined for the 
> past couple of years. 

Me too!

I'm not getting any younger, and there's a lot of the West Coast I'd like to 
visit (or, in some cases, re-visit).
My wife's knee-replacement replacement seems to be doing well, so there's a 
chance we'll both be up for some kind of photo-trips.  She's not going to walk 
much, but many of the national parks have a friendly attitude to disabled 
parking placards, so in a lot of places we get to drive rather than walk or 
ride the bus.  That was very handy when we visited the Grand Canyon!
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Re: Pentax or Olympus?

[John Francis]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 09:27:33AM +, Bob Pdml wrote:
> > On 24 Nov 2021, at 07:32, mike wilson  wrote:
> > 
> > ???
> >> On 24 November 2021 at 04:47 John Francis  wrote:
> >> 
> >> 
> >> The Olympus rig is only a little lighter than the Pentax;
> >> while the lens is significantly lighter (even though it's
> >> f2.8, not f4), the OM-D body is actually quite a bit heavier
> >> than the K5. (The K3 is heaver than the K5, too, but still
> >> significantly lighter than the OM-D M1X, even with a grip).
> > 
> > I was rather curious about this.  For decades, Pentax was agreed to be the 
> > lightest and petitest of the major manufacturers, generally without a lack 
> > of facility.  I can remember discussions here about it being one of the 
> > attractants.  It will be interesting to see if you decide that the saving 
> > in mass was worth the expenditure.
> > --
> > %(
> 
> A few months ago I bought a used Panasonic GX8 as a second body alongside my 
> Olympus E-M1 Mk II. It was like new with only about seven hundred shutter 
> clicks, and was about half the price I???d seen advertised elsewhere. 
> 
> It very quickly became the camera I reach for first as it???s much, much 
> smaller, lighter and more simple than the Oly. I subsequently bought some 
> used and cosmetically ugly, but optically sound, Panasonic lenses (12-35/2.8, 
> 35-100/2.8) which are much lighter and easier to handle than the M.Zuiko 
> 12-40/2.8, and a new 50/1.7.
> 
> I like this kit so much that I???ve bought a second mint GX8, with even fewer 
> shutter clicks (just over 400) than the other one, at an even lower price, 
> and plan to sell the E-M1 and that lens, along with a few other bits of 
> Olympus kit.
> 
> I realise the GX8 is probably not the camera for someone like John, but for 
> me it???s a really good find.
> 
> Hello again, by the way. I seem to have gone awol from the PDML for a couple 
> of months, but messages started coming through again yesterday.

Hello again, Bob - I was wondering where you had vanished to.

Thanks for the recommendation for the GX8 - I'll take a look at that one.

I'm anticipating buying a new smaller camera to replace my wife's E-PL1
(while that camera still works just fine, sensor technology has made a
few steps forwards since then). I hadn't got round to taking much of a
look to see what's out there except seeing what the current E-PL## was;
it will probably be 6-12 months before we go anywhere my wife needs a
new camera (the hard date is early 2022, when the US National Figure
Skating Championships returns to San Jose - the last time that this
happened was when she got the E-PL1).  But it occurred to me that I
might also want to consider whatever we end up buying as an everyday
camera just to have with me.
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Re: Pentax or Olympus?

[John Francis]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 07:32:50AM +, mike wilson wrote:
> 
> > On 24 November 2021 at 04:47 John Francis  wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > The Olympus rig is only a little lighter than the Pentax;
> > while the lens is significantly lighter (even though it's
> > f2.8, not f4), the OM-D body is actually quite a bit heavier
> > than the K5. (The K3 is heaver than the K5, too, but still
> > significantly lighter than the OM-D M1X, even with a grip).
> 
> I was rather curious about this.  For decades, Pentax was agreed to be the 
> lightest and petitest of the major manufacturers, generally without a lack of 
> facility.  I can remember discussions here about it being one of the 
> attractants.  It will be interesting to see if you decide that the saving in 
> mass was worth the expenditure.

Well, a fair bit of the expenditure was already earmarked; the K5 is
getting a bit long in the tooth, so I was considering getting a K3iii.

The big saving in mass comes if I want to use longer focal lengths.
The last time I went to San Diego Wild Animal Park was the first time
I got to use my 250-600, and there were a couple of time when I could
have used something longer. This was back before the days of digital
bodies; I suspect 600mm on an APS-C sensor would be enough. But that
lens weighs something like 12lb; there's no way nowadays I'll want to
lug that around for several hours.

But with the 4/3 sensor I just need to get to 400mm.  I'm not planning
on buying Olympus's fancy new ($7,500!) 150-400mm/f4.5 zoom, but I might
consider renting one for a couple of weeks.  And that 'only' weighs 4lb.
Still a lot to cart around, but a lot more manageable than 12 lb!
And if I do decide I want my own longer lens Olympus have another way
to get there - they have an older 100-400/f5.0-6.3 which is a lot lighter
(on both the wallet and the shoulders); I would think I should be able to
sell my 250-600 for more than enough to cover the purchase of that lens.


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Re: Pentax or Olympus?

[John Francis]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 12:02:54AM -0500, Paul Stenquist wrote:
> With the 50-135/2.8 on the Pentax it might be lighter. That???s been my walk 
> around for a while now. Although With a K3.
> 
> Paul

I'm sure it would be lighter.  But that's hardly the point.
The lens I seem to use most often is the 60-250, and much of
the time I'm shooting at a focal length of 150mm or more.
(Sometimes I even use it with the 1.4x teleconverter).
The 40-150 is a close match to the 60-250 for AoV. And if I
want to buy a teleconverter I've got a choice of 1.4x or 2x.
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Re: Pentax or Olympus?

[John Francis]

It's here!

See http://panix.com/~johnf/temp/NewestToy.jpg

That's a 40-150 on the OM-D, and the 60-250 on the K5,
which is about as close a comparison setup as I can get.

The Olympus rig is only a little lighter than the Pentax;
while the lens is significantly lighter (even though it's
f2.8, not f4), the OM-D body is actually quite a bit heavier
than the K5. (The K3 is heaver than the K5, too, but still
significantly lighter than the OM-D M1X, even with a grip).

I haven't seen any results from it yet - it was dark by the
time the batteries were charged and I'd done the initial
setup (the user manual is almost 700 pages, and they don't
even supply you with a printed copy!).

One thing I am going to miss, though, is Hyper Program mode.
But the body is covered with a myriad buttons, most of which
can be programmed; there may be a way for me to set one up
to toggle between shutter priority and program mode, which
is what I mostly used Hyper Program for.
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Re: Pentax or Olympus?

[John Francis]

On Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 02:56:57AM -0500, John Francis wrote:
> 
> That doesn't mean you'll be able to kick me off the PDML, though!

Hmm.  I post that, and for over 24 hours I don't see any new messages ...
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