Once again, many thanks. Yes, i managed to stay with you.

The Pentax K was my uneducated preference, due to it appearing to be the Wigber weapon of choice. Not really looking to use a film SLR for poster printing at the moment, just to experiment and work through some old photography books i've picked up in the charity shops. That, and the fact that i'm old enough to remember the quality of film (photos and movies) that has been somehow lost with the sharpness of the digital age... a real shame IMO.

Posters - will defo use my Canon 450D as its fine and easy in the first instance. Also there's a contact i have in a local printers that should put me right re price etc.

Good man. As they say around here, "dude know's his shite" {thumbs up}

Pentax K cam's are cheap (they were never taken seriously, so there's little cult-inflation on the price, and they weren't expensive to begin with,) easy to find (they made a shitload of them - Pentax was the first manufacturer to crack the 10 million cameras mark,) and fairly well-built.

Second choice would be Nikons.

Third would be, believe it or not, the old Canon FD mount, which is manual focus, easy enough to find...because Canon completely screwed its customers over in 1987 when they made the the EOS mount that was completely incompatible with their old mount. Getting harder to find, as the Canonites just sorta left them to rot where they lay when the EOS came out.

Third would be Olympus' OM mount cameras, which were so good Leica sued them out of spite - because the OM cameras were the camera everyone thought Leica would make, instead of, you know, doing something completely stupid. Good glass, very small, extremely well-built. Unfortunately, most of the cameras now run off illegal mercury batteries (which shouldn't matter if you're shooting print film.)

Fourth, Minolta's AF cameras. Wanderer's a big fan of the AF Minoltas. Unfortunately, it's a matter of time until the Sony shooters figure out "d00d, u cna use minolta lens' on ur Sony," and, being Sony owners and therefore having more brass than sense, start driving the price up to ionospheric heights.

Fifth, Minolta's MD mount manual-focus cameras. All I can say is, "Yup." Doable. Not preferable.

Sixth, Canon's EOS film cameras. Why? All the lenses are still being used, and are therefore expensive. Remember, there are a lot of 5D fuckwits out there who'll buy anything to snap on their toys. The thought of owning a white lens - any white lens, even if it's busted, fungus'd and from 1988 - makes a Canonite's dick hard. Plus, with film, I'd say you're better off with Nikon.

In the "don't bother" categories:

Yashica/Contax cameras. Expensive. Rare. No one really cared when they were made, and fewer still do now.

Leica: Always treated SLR cameras like a red-headed stepchild, again, out of spite and stupidity. When they lost a lot of sales to SLRs in the seventies (the Olympus OM,) they thought they might have a crack at the SLR market and just rebadged Minoltas. Oh, and 'cause they're Leica, the lenses and everything else about them are ball-tearingly, ridiculously expensive.

Some weird-arse mount like Topcon or something: Er...

quote:

the quality of film (photos and movies) that has been somehow lost with the sharpness of the digital age... a real shame IMO.

*salutes*

I developed two rolls of film... they're washing right now.

When i looked through the little darkroom setup i have, looking for some other tools, i found a container of apparently unused Kodak Panatomic-X. I have unfortunatly no knowledge of this film. Google seems to indicate it is ISO32 (yikes). Is this right?

It'd be worth trying out. If i find a way to transfer some film from the giant role (i estimate it's probably a hundred exposures long) to an unused film canister. Does the photographic knowledge of the WGB have any tips on that?

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:

Third would be Olympus' OM mount cameras, which were so good Leica sued them out of spite - because the OM cameras were the camera everyone thought Leica would make, instead of, you know, doing something completely stupid. Good glass, very small, extremely well-built. Unfortunately, most of the cameras now run off illegal mercury batteries (which shouldn't matter if you're shooting print film.)

I was a hardcore Olympus OM-user for maybe ten years. Won national contests a couple of times with an Om-1n and and OM-4. Still have my favorite OM-1n, and one lens for it, buried in the closet. The distillation: Fantastic series of camera bodies; iffy, uneven repertoire of lenses for them. The 85/2 and 100/2 portrait lenses are world-class; the 35/2 is pretty good (kept that one); many others, especially their 50s, made pictures that were very difficult to print.

If I was going back to portraiture tomorrow, I'd buy an Olympus Zuiko OM-mount 100/f2, and load the OM-1n with one of Ilford's Delta products. Result? Cream.

quote:

In the "don't bother" categories:

Leica: Always treated SLR cameras like a red-headed stepchild, again, out of spite and stupidity. When they lost a lot of sales to SLRs in the seventies (the Olympus OM,) they thought they might have a crack at the SLR market and just rebadged Minoltas. Oh, and 'cause they're Leica, the lenses and everything else about them are ball-tearingly, ridiculously expensive.

Yes, but they're ball-tearingly, ridiculously good, as well.

I own and use two Leica M-mount lenses. They're all I've used, really, since 2005. Anything black & white I've posted to this board was shot with them. In my experience, these lenses are COMPLETELY worthy of the hype. I've never had prints come so easily from my badly-exposed negatives, and the out-of-focus areas and clarity both surpass my wildest expections, expectations founded on a decade in Mamiya medium format and Olympus OM. Have used a bit of Zeiss, too; lovely pictures resulted, yes, but not as robust. Delicate-edged.

The competence of my Leica glass, well, it's just frightening.

Ball-tearing...
I was observing to myself that last entry... well it kind of read like a wine review, then I got to the bit about the tearing of balls.

That could work in a wine review, depending on the wine

Pentax K-X. I'm seriously considering one.

Any observations/comments/suggestions, people?

Oh yeah - here's a nice red one for Lester:

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Gromit,

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:

In the "don't bother" categories:

Yashica/Contax cameras. Expensive. Rare. No one really cared when they were made, and fewer still do now.

Leica: Always treated SLR cameras like a red-headed stepchild, again, out of spite and stupidity. When they lost a lot of sales to SLRs in the seventies (the Olympus OM,) they thought they might have a crack at the SLR market and just rebadged Minoltas. Oh, and 'cause they're Leica, the lenses and everything else about them are ball-tearingly, ridiculously expensive.

Some weird-arse mount like Topcon or something: Er...

Oh thanks, I've got Yashica/Contax and "a" Leica.

Awww, whatever lets you park in those spaces right next to the entrance, martini...

I do miss Contax. It was a German-esque company that didn't have its head up its arse, a la Leica, who are still stuck in 1953, the last time when they were ahead of the curve on anything. I think it's telling that Leica got bought by Hermes a while ago (and then bought themselves back.)

The G2 was a genius little camera. A modern rangefinder, but I do think the N digital was just a kamikaze mission to get back at Pentax after they stole all their ideas all those years ago.

quote:

Originally posted by Gromit:
Pentax K-X. I'm seriously considering one.

Any observations/comments/suggestions, people?

Excellent starter DSLR, by most accounts. Very small - smaller than most Olympuses, in fact. The sensor's the same Sony-built one used in their 12MP cameras, as well as a few Nikons, so it's obviously doing something right. The Shake Reduction Pentax uses is one of the best in-body solutions around, and the kit lenses (as long as you don't let those bastards at CR Kennedy flog you some Sigma lenses. Stay away from Sigma,) are some of the best, as far as kit lenses go.

From reports, they're easy to use. Pentax have even stopped writing the in-camera menus in Engrish, and have started using more vowels, which helps. Excellent FPS and maximum shutter speed for a entry-level cam, too.

Other than that, they're tiny, come in a few colours down here: dog dick red, glossy navy blue (which looks to me to be paint, not dyed plastic, so may be more scratch-prone,) black and Stormtrooper. They've have a vast range of in-built filters we're all meant to give a shit about but no one does (more than Olympus, funnily enough, who make more of a fuss over them...) They're also less expensive than most of the competition, punching well above their weight.

They also feel like real cameras, unlike the equivalent Canons.

Oh, and it's got video, as well. Which I couldn't care less about, as judging an SLR on how well it takes video is like judging a car on how well it flies. It uses AA batteries, which, again, everyone bitches about, because somehow it's better to be able to take twice as many shots as an AA-using camera than to be able to walk into pretty much any corner store or servo in the world and buy a fresh set. Believe me, AAs rock. Such a thing is seen as a negative mainly by people who never take photos more than about five blocks away from their house. Three hundred-odd shots isn't exactly a piddling amount.

The video mode does eat through the batteries, of course, which is another reason people bitch about it. No shit, I say.

And remember what I said about Sigma lenses. All Pentaxes are K-mount, of course, and you're in Melbourne, the wannabe New York, which means you've got all those pawnshops and second-hand stores around full of old K-mount lenses. The rule of thumb is, if it fits on the K-x, you can use it on the K-x.

Got the 17mm (sensor has 2x factor, so its 34mm in reality) Olympus lens in the end.. price and availability were deciding factors. Am loving it so far, very much.. haven't downloaded the photos from the weekend, but it was a very nice focal length for the sweeping beaches and also close ups in the breweries. Will have to see what the quality of photos is like.

Thanks, lith.

Mrs Gromit likes the thought of a tomato-red DSLR, for some reason I can't quite fathom.

Maybe she likes tomatoes.

Probably shouldn't have described as what I did, come to think of it.

Just spotted a (black) K-x with both the 18-55mm and 50-200mm Pentax lenses for A$849.

Very tempting.

I've bought a Nikon D-5000 for my cousin.
I'm taking advantage of it for a month, before she can have it.

It's been a week, and... I can't wait to return to my Canon EOS400D !
Maybe I'm too lazy to learn. I don't know.
But I really can't figure out the interface.

I guess that means I have grown used to the Canon.
Maybe I even know how to use it. Who would have thought!

I have a question.

What should I buy? A Canon EOS 500D Kit with an 18-55 lens for €679 or a Nikon D5000 Double Kit with a 18-55 plus a 55-200 lenz (and they also throw in a tripod [I already have one] and a Nikon carrying case) for €749?

Of course the Nikon is better value with the extra lens, but maybe the Canon is considerably better (and I think my 20-90 lens from my EOS 300 fits). On the other hand the MP difference doesn't really make a difference and .. oh, fuck I don't know.

Suggestions please!

Yesterday I succumbed to temptation and bought a Pentax K-x with the 18-55mm and 50-200mm Pentax lenses and various associated bits and pieces.

Lots of stuff to play with and learn about, so I´m happy!

Got it! For €699, I'm a very happy man!

Here´s to new toys!