At yesterday's town festival, I was shooting beside a woman with a compact digicam. She took an interest in my gear. "This digicam" (a Kodak) has 6.1 megapixels. But I still like to use my SLR."
"What is it?" "Oh, not much; a Sears." I explained that I own and love two Sears KS Auto bodies, which are rebranded Rikenon XR-2s bodies. I told her how the Sears nameplate helps me reassure guards that I'm not a pro so that I can shoot freely where they might restrict me if my camera bore a respected nameplate. "I wish I had a fisheye, like yours," she said. "But they're kind of expensive." I suggested she pick up a Zenitar 16/2.8K for about 100 bucks. She had no idea a fisheye cost so little. Later, I saw a 45-ish man wearing a zipped-up never-ready SLR case. "What kind of camera is in there?" I asked. "Oh, I don't remember; something old," he apologized. He unzipped the case, and there was a K1000 fitted with a Rikenon 50/2P. "My son is taking a photography course," he explained, "so I decided to learn with him." I assured him that he had a great combination, not just for learning but for shooting great pictures. I, too, use the Rikenon 50/2P on Pentax bodies when I need a normal lens that will deliver corner sharpness at wide apertures. In my controlled test shots of a newspaper page, the Rikenon 50/2P was the only lens that rivaled or surpassed the Pentax SMC 35/2K in corner sharpness at every aperture. In this sense, it's more versatile than my SMC 55/1.8K, which doesn't really shine till f/5.6 or f/8. Paul Stregevsky ------------------------------------------------------------ Get your free email account at mail2go.com today! Click here <http://www.mail2go.com> to open your account. ------------------------------------------------------------