K-5

[ChrisN]

Harry - any of the K-mount (Pentax and third-party) lenses with an "A" setting on the aperture ring will work perfectly with the auto-exposure modes on the Pentax dSLRs. For the M lenses without an "A" setting, you need to select your aperture, focus and compose then press the green button next to the shutter release, for stop-down metering that sets the shutter speed to the correct setting. You can also dial in any necessary exposure compensation and the stop-down metering allows for that. It's a little slower, but not too bad. And of course you can use spot, centre-weighted or matrix metering. It works pretty well.

I think the FA 31 LTD lens (at 46mm equivalent) is the closest to a fast 50, at f/1.8. The excellent FA 35/2 equates to a 52mm and is quite usable at f/2. The older Pentax-F 28/2.8 is one of my favourites - very compact, sharp, pleasant bokeh , fast focusing and gives a 42mm equivalent field-of-view - a true normal lens for the APS-C format. I was lucky to acquire mine before they were "discovered".

 

[Pablito]

Because they're not looking at the photograph, Frank. They're staring at a very small section of a print, or worse at a screen, with barely enough room between their eyeball and the print to fit the 25 x loupe they're looking through and griping about an artifact and how it's not worthy of taking out of the garage.

I think you'll find that people, like yourself, who shoot both digital and film work well in both mediums don't complain, except in the usual "man, how am I gonna get this out of it?" Working up to the limits of a medium and then pushing it is kind of a given.

I've shown you some "sensor breakdown" stuff that I've done, and the odd eyeball has objected to me pushing Tri-X to 6400. Oddly, they don't object to the image - I don't think they can even see it, actually - they object to the process. Weird. Imagine what DeCarava went through with those amazing prints of his.

Also, perhaps some of the "grainy film" adherents are conflating the use of film with a nostalgia for a time that never really was or some fantasy about who they are, or wished they could be.

Wow! Quite an explanation!

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

great post.

 

[MartinP]

This type of blanket dismissal is shortsighted and unhelpful.

I've spent plenty of time working in (and managing) wet darkrooms. I never found wet darkroom work to be cheap, in either time or money. Just thinking about the amount of water that I alone have wasted washing FB prints is a bit depressing. The gear is cheaper now simply because there is a glut of used equipment on the market, but that was not always so.

What did a 1990 Beseler 23CII (or equivalent Omega or Durst), a cold light head, an apo-Rodagon, an archival print washer, a good grain focuser, a safe light, and all the miscellany and a place to put all of it (not to mention plumbing for a good sink) cost new, in 2010 dollars?

Answer: many thousands of dollars, not including consumables or goodies, like a reverse osmosis unit (indispensable in one darkroom that I managed) or a thermostatic temperature control for the wash water supply. I spent that money, for myself or others, several times over.

And the digital workflow allows good quality color work, which was always a PITA in the wet darkroom. Even Cibachrome was a PITA. Now digital color management is the big hassle.

It's always something.

Face it: making good prints is not easy, and it's not cheap. Full stop. For some photos (or photographers) one workflow is superior. For others, another workflow is superior. Blanket dismissals of one process or another are not useful .

All fine, but I was talking about my position. I have more than thirty years of black-and-white darkroom experience, including professionally, and now shoot and print only for friends and fun. There are still no clearly apparent digital reasons for a fossil like me to invest a huge amount of time (actually the main limitation) or cash to change from wet to digital black-and-white, and the hobbyists I know at work all want to try wet-printing because it is so different to the black-and-white stuff they can do with ink-jets.

I mentioned the cost thing because my darkroom capital investment has been minimal (due to design maturity) for a decade or so, while in the digital end of things this is far from the case for anyone I know.

One hopes the arrival of many larger range digital sensors in smaller and cheaper bodies, like the Pentax and maybe the APS-C compacts, will shift the focus (hilarious pun) to digital printing technology, because it is a long way behind the cameras.

 

[semilog]

One hopes the arrival of many larger range digital sensors in smaller and cheaper bodies, like the Pentax and maybe the APS-C compacts, will shift the focus (hilarious pun) to digital printing technology, because it is a long way behind the cameras.

Have you really looked at digital prints made by a master printer?

I ask this because there are a significant number of master printers who made their national and international reputations printing in silver gelatin, dye transfer, etc., who will tell you that they are now printing at least a good chunk of their work using inkjets, and that the results they obtain are at least as good as anything they were able to obtain using the older technologies. Not the same, of course, just as Ilfochrome is not the same as dye transfer. Processes differ — old news. But different is not necessarily worse, and these master printers clearly do not think that their results from injkets are worse.

I am not saying that you should convert to a digital workflow. I shoot film myself, and digital only rarely. I am saying that it might be an error to confuse your preferences with what's good, or useful, or of high quality for other workers. See here, also.

 

[Paddy C]

If inkjet prints are good enough for Catherine Opie, they are good enough for me and for you and, well, for everyone. They look wonderful.

 

[PKR]

If inkjet prints are good enough for Catherine Opie, they are good enough for me and for you and, well, for everyone. They look wonderful.

I'm not an Opie fan but, Richard Misrach is now doing all his printing digitally. We had the same "master printer" in the Dye days. He made the change to digital printing of his photos. He scans his 8x10 chromes and is doing some digital capture. He has a lot of C prints hanging. They won't hold their color well over the years.

I still use film cameras for most of my personal b+w work. I, with the loss of Kodachrome, have begun to do the small amount of personal color work I do, digitally. Sensors have come a long way in the past couple of years.. they're not Kodachrome yet.. maybe never.

The big problem (my opinion) with digital sensors is their lack of bandwidth. They are linear devices and by their nature, will find it hard to duplicate what film, an analogue / logarithmic device, does.

p.

 

[Welsh_Italian]

Just to add that for M42 lenses there is an adapter that will be reqd - M42 to Pentax K.
This capability as well as in-body shake reduction was one of the allures for me when I decided to spring for a digital SLR. Some folks have even modified their Leica R lenses and Olympus OM to Pentax K mount (leitax.com).

Curiously I came across one of these today on fleabay. It looks rather nice:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Angenieux-35m...era_Lenses&hash=item2eb12ac462#ht_6832wt_1141