New Camera (Sunday 1st May 2016)

My first SLR camera back in 1979 was an aperture priority film camera, the Pentax ME. Before long I also had a black ME Super and a K1000 as back up, and a small collection of K-mount lenses. A lot of this was lost when a camera bag was snatched from my shoulder by a passing van passenger in Glastonbury! Nonetheless, the lenses I still had led me to stick with Pentax when I graduated to DSLR's many years later.

Pentax were a top name in cameras back then but in recent years have lost out to big names like Nikon, Canon and digital newcomers Sony, who took over Minolta. Most of the big lens producers (Sigma, Tamron and the like) tend not to make their lenses available in Pentax mounts, limiting the choice for loyal Pentax owners. Surprisingly, none of the Pentax DSLR's, including their top of the range flagship models, had full-frame sensors, putting them at a disadvantage in the professional marketplace. Some of their own lenses, weirdly, were designed to work on full-frame camera bodies despite only coming with Pentax K-mounts.

A month or two ago the Ricoh Imaging Company, who acquired Pentax a while back, announced the forthcoming K-1, their first full-frame DSLR. I attended a Touch And Try event in Swindon in March when I got to learn about the K-1 and handle a preview model for myself, and it didn't take a great deal to convince me that I really, really needed one!

I took advantage of the pre-launch discounts offered and ordered a camera and 28-105 mm lens. Finally, on Friday the camera body arrived by courier and the lens will follow very shortly. I put it through its paces at Bowood Woodland Walks that afternoon with a wide-angle lens and was very happy with the pictures I took. They will turn up in the set for that day eventually, but I chose an image taken with another camera for Blip.

Sophisticated as it is, it doesn't have a mode for photographing itself, so this is a blip of it, rather than a picture taken by it.

The lens currently on it is a 100mm macro lens that I already had that by chance does support full-frame, so I shall be experimenting with that until the new lens arrives. It can be used in full-frame mode or as an APS-C crop so is in effect, confusingly, both a 100 mm and a 150 mm lens.

L.
2.5.2016 (1817 hr)

Blip #1822 (#2072 including archived blips)
Consecutive Blip #021
Day #2229
LOTD #1056 (#1180 including archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-5 and Pentax smc P-DA* 55mm F1.4 SDM lens

Pentax series

Also blipped today:
Smokey 0949 hr (Saturday 30th April 2016)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Beth Orton - Dawn Chorus (2012)
For International Dawn Chorus Day

One year ago:
Smokey on the same bench table 1738 hr