My name is John and I am a cameraholic. <grin> I shoot in the broad genre that is usually called "travel photography" and use a Leica rangefinder outfit most of the time. The 24mm, 35mm and 90mm focal lengths would be fine for 90% of my shots but I resort to my Pentax SLR gear when I need an SLR. As I don't carry two outfits at the same time, they each share the work about equally.
My SLR outfit consists of LX, MX and Super A bodies plus 20mm Carl Zeiss Jena, 24mm f/3.5 Pentax K, 28mm f/2.8 Pentax A, 35mm f/2 K, 50mm f/1.4 Pentax A and f/1.7A, 90mm f/2.8 Tamron SP Macro, 135mm f/3.5 Pentax M and 200mm f/4 Pentax K plus a Schneider 28mm PC lens which is on loan pending a decision as to whether I should buy it. A shift lens is essential for shooting buildings - if I can't find a good Pentax shift at a reasonable price, which was no easy task last time I tried, I will have to keep the Schneider and pay the price. Ouch! I also have several zooms (including the 35-105mm A, 70-200 A and a 24-70 Vivitar) that I rarely use. However, the 35-105mm A is a joy for taking shots of my family - something of a "busman's holiday" perhaps, but something I really enjoy. All my other shooting is paid work for other people and I try to keep my work completely separate from family life. I also shoot digital with an Olympus E-10, which I have found to be a very fine camera in spite of several major weaknesses, notably speed of use. It will be more than good enough for me until I decide which digital SLR outfit to buy, probably about 12-15 months from now after the Olympus E1 has either established itself, or not. My shooting is a mixture of landscape/street photography for picture postcards and calendars, general travel photography to illustrate articles by myself and others, landscape and "miscellaneous" photography (basically whatever catches my eye) for two stock agencies and the occasional formal wedding shoot using borrowed or hired Hasselblad gear. My health is not so good so I now tend to steer clear of the stress of wedding photography, although it pays very well. I formerly used Nikon SLR gear and have found the change to Pentax a mixed blessing. I adore the Pentax bokeh, but have concerns about the excessive linear distortion that so many Pentax lenses seem to have, including many fixed focal lengths. I am assuming the 28mm Pentax shift won't suffer from this, otherwise the Schneider will be the one to buy. John
