FleaBay Rulez!

Some of the best and sharpest  lenses for Pentax were made in Japan in the 70's and 80's. Granted there's no fancy autofocus systems on them, but that's a benefit too since there's fewer things to go wrong. If you chose the right ones (KA Mount) they work fine on all later Pentaxes since they have an 'Auto' aperture mode on them.

 

First is a late 70's 50mm f1.7 which I found for $ixty some in what appears to be really good condition. These things are getting well known for being fast and sharp, though most of the attention goes to the f1.4 version of the lens (which fetches at least twice as much money) Buying a new one will set you back near $500, though it will have autofocus and somewhat better edge sharpness and flare reduction. Since we're using a smaller than 35mm (24mm APS-C) sensor the edge sharpness and vignetting problems don't concern us as much, and the f1.7 had less problems with that anyway. I got a lens hood to help with the flare problems and the 'effective' 75mm focal length with the smaller sensor should work well for indoor portrait work and outside for landscapes. This is probably the only lens I'll have that can out-resolve the 15MegaPixel sensor. On the others the lens is generally the limiting factor

The second 'find' is a Tokina 70-210mm f3.5 zoom. This is reported to be the sharpest of the aftermarket zooms in this range, which was the most popular zoom range back in the day. Would you believe 45 bucks?
I haven't got it yet so we'll see how she does.  Since this has an effective range of 110-320mm on this camera, it should complete the lens' collection we'll be carting around (18-320mm)
We'll post samples once everything gets here and tested and cleaned.

Tripod for your thoughts...

Long ago in a time far far away before the burning of my things, I had a half decent tripod. Reasonably sturdy, only about four pounds so you could carry it quite a ways, adjustable in many, if somewhat crude ways. Just tall enough so you got a nasty crick in your back looking through the viewfinder for any length of time. Well, things have changed somewhat over the last thirty years.
Now the 'good' tripods are of carbon fibre and with titanium ball-heads and cost $500+ though very light and strong. Most are still short enough to generate that crick in the neck. The cheaper ones mostly seem crude and not easily adjustable and either too light or too flimsy. A search, a search for the middle ground. There seem few in that middle not fatally flawed in some manner or another.
Then I saw a SLIK 700DX over at our own Oregon Camera, and it was good. ...except the $225...

 

It doesn't really show here, but the tripod extends to over seven feet and the head has bubble levels and adjustments that make it quite handy for panorama photography. A litle over four pounds. Found one for $125 and it on its way. Could be fun ..

Got one a'commin

Reached agreement with a guy up in Seattle. Pentax K20D, D-BG2 Battery Grip, Five batteries, Smart charger, case, photo-gear backpack/case, bunch of filters, remote electronic shutter release and misc. other stuff. $700.
As a whole it 's better than the eBay deals. Plus, after two weeks of bidding there I was getting tired of it.

Decisions decisions

So, we've settled on Pentax, now which one to get.

 

The Km  is a bit underpowered, the bottom end consumer model.

The Kx is nice, The K7 is VERY nice but too darn expensive at $1100+.

Lets look at the previous models, now all of 18 months 'old'

The were the K2000, K200 and K20D in about the same order.  The K20D is the 'Pro-sumer' model and started out life around $1400 body only.  Now they're fetching like$600-700. Hmmm, K7 features for half price.  Sign me the heck up.

Here's the K20, a bit smaller than it's competition.

LOTS of buttons and dials, S. is going to be pleased.
Cool review at http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/PentaxK20D/  who are, frankly the best camera review site out there.
Now to find one. I've bid on like six of them on eBay. They either go for WAY too much (the manufacturer is selling old stock for $800) or I'm not available when the auction closes. Drat.
Found one on Craigslist with a BUNCH of accessories. We'll see how that goes.

Woot!

Found a Pentax DA SMC18-55 Autofocus Zoom on Amazon for $40 brand new. Cool.
It's not the latest 'weather resistant' model, but the lower end Pentax zooms consistently test better than the equivalent models from Canon, Nikon or Sony.

"So not you have a lens and a printer but no camera, Whassup wid dat?"
I hope I'm going to find a viable Pentax. Both the lens and printer were really good deals. Guessing I could sell either for more than I paid. Not plannin'on it though.

The little camera that COULD

Before deciding on getting a dSLR for all the image quality and control it brings to the party, we were looking at advanced point-and-shoot cameras. Ideally one with complete manual controls, a viewfinder so you can see what you're shooting in bright sunlight and RAW (unprocessed/non-JPEG) output capability. Most consumer cameras make a mess of the image during the conversion to JPEG. Everything with those capabilities and at least a half decent lens was $300 and up. Seemed kinda steep for a little pocket camera.

 

Found one of these on eBay for 67 bucks. The next later models were dumbed down to the max and have sensors with serious noise problems above ISO200 (which they compensate for by making the image blurry enough so the noise doesn't show, thus negating the fancy 10-12 megapixel resolution) or crazy zoom ranges on lenses that turn out to be not so sharp - and no manual modes.

This one has almost everything we were looking for including full manual mode *WITH* manual focus and a reasonably sharp 35-150 f2.8 lens. The only thing it's really missing is the RAW mode. Fortunately the Super-Fine JPEG mode isn't too bad. ...and for $67...

Yes the movie mode is crap. We'll get over it.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q408budgetgroup/page3.asp

That whole Printer thing

Turns out you have to eventually get the photos OUT of the camera. Dinky web photos are all well and good but you can produce something good enough for that with a $100 point-n-shoot and a free photo editor like Picasa.
Photo printers seem to divide into classes by the maximum print width. 8.5 in, 13 in. 17 in, 24 in. and gynormous. The 24in. and up classes are all above $2000 so they're way out of the budget. The little printers do a really fine job at 4x6 to 8x10 size prints, but that seems a little small, though the 'under $200' is nicely proportional. The operating expenses don't seem to stay small though. Especially when calculated on a per-sq.in. basis.
Point of comparison: The local photo lab does very nice quality prints up to a maximum of 24x96in at basically $10/sq.ft. That would eat up the budget quick.
So, I'm going to focus on the 13in. and 17in. width printers. Canon and HP have some nice ones between $600-800. Epson makes the R1800/R1900 13incher for around $500. They all have pretty small ink tanks though which seems to really impact the operating costs. Still looking.


[Edit] Found a refurb Epson 3800 (17in. 9-ink, 3-level black for nice B&W) for under $1000 and it comes with $450 worth of new ink carts. Puts it right in the same (effective) price range as the R1800/1900 13in. printers but with out the ink-swapping and small ink tanks and iffy B&W prints. Pretty compelling

 

Yeah it's kinda big, but when everything is folded down it's not so bad. Besides I have a nice space for it.