Photography

As a youngster I had taken some photos with my Mum's camera but the first camera that was mine was a Halina 35X -

- a 35mm fully manual camera with a f3.5 - f16, 45mm lens with a fastest shutter speed of 1/200s. Looking back I'm surprised I ever manged to get any decent shots with it as, for a good while, I based the exposure on the information sheet provided with 35mm films. However it worked and kept me going for a few years.

I moved to an SLR with a Zenit E and on to Practica, Pentax Spotmatic, Pentax KX. This series of cameras took me from '70s to the early '00s.

My photography stopped for a few years until I decided to get a Panasonic FZ28 a little over two years ago. This is an excellent bridge camera and some of the photos (for example, the two photos in the first post) on here were taken with this camera. Although the FZ28 is a great camera I felt I wanted more of what I had with the older 35mm SLRs, so I looked at a number of DSLRs.

I eventually settled on a Pentax K5 for a number of reasons -

the backwards compatibility that means all Pentax K mount lenses from about 1975 onwards can be used, though some or all of the auto functions may be lost,

the in-camera image stabilisation which means any lens is image stabilised,

the wide dynamic range,

the weather sealing, and

I had a few K mount lenses from the late '70s and '80s.

I don't know the reason for the current lack of prominence of Pentax - they were very early with introduction of TTL metering, one the first manufacuters to have automatic exposure and in the mid '60s were producing more cameras than all their rivals combined. Now it is unusual to hear anything other than Canon or Nikon.

I've have owned the K5 for a few months now and it is a very easy to use camera that can produce excellent quality photos (I'm talking about the camera here, not my abilities). I'm experimenting with the old lenses I haven't used for about 30 years. This one is from a local pond taken with a 70-210mm Sigma lens I bought in about 1980.