From: Larry Colen <[email protected]>
Subject: New guy, Introduction
To: "Pentax-Discuss Mail List" <[email protected]>
Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 10:56 PM
Howdy folks,
I joined the list this afternoon, after meeting John
Francis at a
photo-meetup lunch I instigated. Some of you may know me as
"ellarsee"
on the dpreview pentax forum. Ellarsee is just a funny way
of spelling
LRC, my initials (and part of my destiny to be an
Electrical Engineer,
but I digress, often).
My involvement with photography seems to be a very common
profile. In
1973, when I was 12, Dad got a Spotmatic II and taught me
some of the
basics. I'd frequently play with the camera, setting up
shots,
exposure etc. but rarely actually taking any shots.
Someplace, there's
a print of my first photograph, but I haven't seen it
in a while. The
following summer, I took photography in summer school and
learned the
basics of darkroom work. My first camera was an Argus C3,
which I
still have. That September I got a used Minolta SRT-101.
Sometime
around then, Dad and I set up a darkroom which I spent a
lot of time
in over the next several years, until my folks got divorced
and Mom
rented out the downstairs apartment.
I had intermittent darkroom access in college, but after I
lost access
to a darkroom, photography became something I did, but not
seriously. Lest this post rival a Norse saga in length,
I'll skip
forward to November 2007 when I bought my K100D super. I
almost got a
Nikon D40 but when I found out about the Pentax, came to
the
conclusion that even if Pentax didn't have any
offerings at the top
end, what they did offer gave a lot more for the money than
Nikon. I'm
afraid that I've never shot a Canon SLR that "felt
good in my
hands". The plan was that the K100 and kitlens should
be enough to
last me a couple years until the performance that I wanted
was
"affordable". My favorite lens on 35 had been the
Vivitar 28-105 and
the kit lens was not too far from the equivalent range.
One of my key reasons for getting a DSLR rather than
replacing my
stolen FZ50 was low light performance. The following
weekend, I
determined that the kit lens just simply was not fast
enough. Cutting
to the chase, the next week I spent more than I had on my
camera and
kit lens on an FA 31 limited.
The past year has been a pretty typical one of spending
stupid amounts
of money on toys. A few very nice lenses, and quite a few
inexpensive
used ones. My latest gear acquisition is a katzeye focusing
screen
which to someone who grew up with manual focus, is like
growning an
arm back. When I'm not exhibiting fiscal
irresponsibility, I'm working
on the theory that the best way to learn from your mistakes
is to make
sure that you make a lot of them. So, I've been
shooting a lot of
photos, basically whenever I can find a few minutes to play
with my
camera, and 40,000 frames later probably have almost a
dozen that I
don't need to ashamed of.
I've been posting pictures on my flickr account:
http://flickr.com/ellarsee
Since I do a lot of blues dancing (
http://fridaynightblues.com ) and
nobody else has much luck shooting dancers in the
ridiculously low
light environment, I've been working on that,
experimenting with both
IR flash with my K100 and an FZ20 I had converted to IR.
I tend to keep my 18-250 on the camera as my "Ready
for anything
lens", but when I can I prefer to shoot with a prime.
I'm currently
toying with getting a DA40 to see how close to a
"carry in a coat
pocket" sized camera I can get. I've also toyed
with the idea of the
43 or the 21, but while the 40 is just over my threshold of
financial
pain, the other two are quite a bit over.
I was wondering if anyone in the San Jose/Santa Cruz/Bay
Area had any
of those lenses and would be interested in getting together
so I could
try them out before spending money on one.
Another Pentax related question is that I have a friend who
lives in
Sacramento who is very interested in the K2000, but who
would much
rather try one out before buying it. Does anyone know of
any stores
in her area where she could check one out?
Larry
--
It's not the steps in the dance, it's the
dance in the steps.
Larry Colen [email protected]
http://www.red4est.com/lrc
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