Surprises, Pleasant

In a world filled with tough news and unpleasant surprises, I am very grateful for my photographic practice. Anyway, I bought my copy of the Pentax KP comfort camera right before it was canceled, and got a very good price indeed. My concept was that I would use it as a platform to explore the well-regarded line of so-called 'limited' lenses. You see, I had never owned a Pentax digital camera before and I was curious. I was very pleasantly surprised at just how good the image files were. Then, at one point, I also picked up a copy of the 100 mm macro lens which has an unusual field of view of about 150 mm on the APS sensor. As it turns out, I really enjoy this perspective on the world. It is funny how that works.  

 
Good light this weekend fellow traveller, regardless of your field of view.

A rose from a friend’s garden

When I graduated from high school I thought I might become a physician. That concept lasted for about a month, if that long. But I took a number of biology courses my first year, my absolute favorite being botany. I did really well in the class, but I had the unfortunate knack of killing most of the plants I came into contact with. So I’m always impressed when folks I know are accomplished gardeners. Over the weekend, some friends came over for tea and brought one of the last roses of the season. It was on its last legs and the petals started dropping right away. I liked seeing the patch of color where petals were in the vase. The fluorescent coloration of the flower was captured accurately by the Pentax KP. I was using the wonderful 35mm macro lens set at f/8. 

Camera schleppin'

My favorite camera bag of the past few years is called the 'Seven Million Dollar Home' from Crumpler. I think it is one of their classic designs of a generation or so ago, and new ones have not been available for quite a while. I bought one in almost new condition from that famous used camera place in Atlanta. It is well designed yet does not scream 'cameras inside'. These days, I like to go out shooting with a digital camera, a film camera, and my EDC stuff in tow -- and this bag is perfect for that. The other day, I grabbed the smallish Pentax KP fitted with the 20-40mm lens and paired it with the largish Leica R9 with the 50mm Summilux. The Leica was loaded up Ilford Delta 400.

 
If I had a loft, I would surely have at least one of these big ass ladders around, and we might even own a his-and-hers set because my wife likes 'em too. Well, we don't live in a loft, so I took the opportunity to photograph this beauty on a recent visit to a museum (Pentax left, Leica right).

Function over form

I've never heard of a street department before, but, as you can see, they have one in Lincoln, Ala. I sure am glad that I don't work for them, though, not only because there are not that many streets to manage, but because if I did, I would have to spend so much time in this building 'complex'. It's such a beautiful part of the country, I think I would prefer working for the parks department. 

Shot with the Pentax KP and the 20-40mm lens. The lens is terrific. I admit that it took me a while to appreciate the value of such a short range of focal lengths, especially in the modern era of lens design. I've come to think of this optic as essentially a 30mm lens with fine adjustments to the perspective.

If resolution and sharpness are important to your aesthetic, then the Pentax sensors and lenses would be right up your alley, I think. The files are pretty crunchy right out of the box, and it is taking me some time to get used to working with them. My tendency right now is to alter them as little as possible. In this case, I liked the monochrome version the best.

Photography as therapy

Today was the day I had to face the music about our taxes. The bill was somewhat higher than I would have liked, so after picking up the paperwork, and bitterly making the payment, I drove over to one of our local woodlands for a casual hike. The weather was just about perfect, and I did not see another human being on my visit. I brought along the Pentax KP, the 35mm f/2.8 macro lens, a Fujifilm GA645Zi medium format point-and-shoot film camera, and a roll of Tri-X. These cameras are pretty different from each other, but they do both come equipped with a small, built-in flash. Fill flash is actually an incredibly useful feature to have on a walk in the forest, where the lighting can be quite tricky at times. If you set the flash exposure compensation to –2/3 stop, you'll get nice balance with the ambient light. And, you will be the only one who ever knows that the flash fired during the exposure.

Getting to your vision

I think I came pretty close to achieving my vision with this image. In early Spring I'm always struck by the bright Camellia flowers that pile up under the well manicured trees that dot so many front yards around here. The fallen blossoms, red in this case, define a precise circle on the ground under the tree. My pre-visualized image was in color, but I ended up preferring the black and white version. Red is such a difficult color to get right. In the interest of full disclosure, I used a faux IR treatment to darken the color of the petals and lighten the leaves for better contrast. There was a time when I would never have tried something like this, much less cop to it if I had secretly given it a go. Thankfully, I'm much more open to post-visualization these days. The image was shot on the Pentax KP using the older version of the 35mm f/2.8 macro lens. It is one hell of a nice lens. It has the exact kind of mellow bokeh that suits my taste. I know this lens was designed for digital cameras, but I'm itching to see how it renders on film. Stay tuned.

A blustery day

The published weather forecast this morning was for 'a blustery day' which made me smile a little. The past month has been quite rainy -- to the point of annoyance, really -- but, as a result, the azaleas and dogwoods are currently in full bloom. The dogwoods, in particular, are a good indicator of the amount of rain that has fallen. Luckily, I was able to compose, focus and capture this image during a lull between gusts of wind. Dogwood flowers can be interesting to photograph in color, but the dead-leaf-brown tones in the background of this image did not appeal. Hence, the monochrome treatment. I used the 21mm f/3.2 lens on the Pentax KP. It about as wide a perspective as I feel comfortable with, but it is a very fine little lens indeed.

Riding the trailing edge of digital technology... and loving it.

 

The Pentax KP digital camera is at the end of its run, and now costs about half of its original list price, which is why I now own one. With most digital cameras produced since about 2015 being pretty solid performers, I've grown fond of riding the trailing edge of the adoption curve, as there is virtually no risk. But then again, my favorite camera, the Rolleiflex SL66, is over 50 years old, and I still enjoy shooting it as often as possible. The KP has a few interesting tricks up its sleeve, some that I was aware of, such as pixel shift, and a couple of others discovered on my own. For example, while many digital cameras have a multiple exposure feature, what is interesting about its implementation on the KP is that you can combine up to 2000 images in one exposure. That is about a factor of 100 greater than any of my other cameras, so, naturally I wanted to see what I could come up with. The image above is a combination of 112 exposures in camera. I pointed at a grouping of trees and tried not to move too much. It is an interesting, painterly result that I couldn't have achieved with any of my other equipment, so I am intrigued to push further.

Double trouble

 

This double fence has always amused me. My best guess is that the owners had a dog and decided to enclose their yard with a fence. The giant hunk of granite presented a bit of a problem, though. It was too large and too expensive to move, yet too close to the road to build around. So, the decision was made to build the fence over the bolder, so that not one square inch of backyard real estate would need to be sacrificed. The unintended consequence was that the dog could clamber onto the boulder, reducing the effective height of the fence by nearly half and making it much easier to escape the yard. Clearly, the simplest response was to add a second fence to the first one. This strategy obviously worked. Problem solved. Pentax KP, 35mm f/2.8 lens, converted to black and white. I'm really enjoying this camera, which will probably be the subject of a dedicated post one day.

F/4 and be there

 

I was walking from the kitchen to the sofa with a cup of coffee this morning when I spotted a pleasing composition out of the corner of my eye. I enjoyed noticing how the line formed by the stem of the daffodil continued on to the top edge of the red chair in the background. There's more about the composition that I am fond of, but that was the trigger. So, after setting down the mug, I grabbed my camera and framed up this shot. The widest aperture available to me was f/4 so I used an ISO of 1000. I wanted to separate the foreground flower from the background without obliterating it entirely. The modest aperture allowed the natural properties of the lens to express themselves, so to speak. This is a pleasing still life shot, and years hence, it will remind me of a fine early Spring morning back in 2021 when I felt a twinge of optimism, despite everything.

Another, more pragmatic, thought popped into my head... Just how fast does a lens have to be now that we are living in the age of five figure ISOs? I went for an evening walk recently and, just for grins, shot a set of images at an ISO of 40K. The thing is, they looked really good to me, no more offensive in terms of graininess from film images on P3200 exposed at EI = 1000. I used the Pentax KP and the 20-40mm zoom lens here. It is a real sweet set up.