Thursday, January 14, 2016

Wise-ass

Okay, so we've covered the High Priced spreads, Nikon and Canon, let's move on to something more reasonable. Pentax.

Yes, I know you've never heard of it and you don't trust things which you've never heard of and if it isn't advertised on TV or used by top professionals then it can't be any good so why bother?

Cause dollar for dollar your money buys twice as much when you are buying Pentax.

The REAL problem with both Nikon and Canon is not the cost of the camera body which is only slightly higher than Pentax, it's the cost of the glass.

Now any serious photographer will tell you that the body is the least important part of a camera system. It's the glass.

And I agree completely and Nikon and Canon make some pretty darned good glass. Just mosey on over to Art Wolfe's site and have a look at what he packs in his camera bag.


“Digital technology has far surpassed what film was ever capable of and has completely changed the game for what one can shoot in the field.”

That's a quote from the Imperial Omnipotent Stomper himself. So don't whine about not-as-good-as-film and start thinking digital.

Art says that the Canon 200-400¼ L IS USM is his workhorse lens and it only costs $10,990 dollars which is more than I paid for my first real car. Nikon offers a 200-400 F4 VR for $6,996.95 but it doesn't have the built-in 1.4x extender.

My that's a lot on numbers and I didn't win the Powerball so maybe I should look elsewhere?

Pentax offers a 150-450 F4 which is a very similar range for...$1.760.11, now that's a lot of extra Lotto tickets you can buy!

And if you aren't too rigid you can buy a Sigma, no it isn't a genuine, official, box-top prize Pentax lens, but Sigma is one of the top independent producers of fine optics, and their Bigma is the Grand-Forking-Daddy of long reach lenses with a current range of 150-600 F5-6.3 in two flavors Sports and Contemporary. Even the earlier model sported a 150-500 range and if you go back one more notch you can get a 50-500 and...wait for it...it's coming soon...astounding..tremendous. Amazing price of $ 989 for the Contemporary and $1499 for the Sport and again that's a lot of extra Lotto tickets.

But let's get back to basics before you can get that amazing lens you have to have something to mount it on. The camera body, remember?

So let's take a look.

Now I have been very upfront about my preference for a camera which uses double A batteries. You can't find a place on earth where there aren't double As and when you talk about a camera which runs on batteries you are talking about a time when those batteries go flat and if you are using a camera with rechargeable batteries that have a special configuration and can only use those expensive brand name batteries, then you are out of luck.

Okay, disclaimer, the new batteries are much more user friendly than the old Ni-cads. With the old Ni-cad batteries, if you didn't completely discharge them they developed a memory and each time you short charged them they had less and less storage capacity. Bad, very bad.

But the pointy-heads realized that this was not a good thing and that out in cameraland where the real people lived and bought cameras and spent untold thousands on cameras and had their batteries go flat or lose so much storage that they were useless, so they developed the new batters based on the Li-ion technology which allows a top up and so you can do a short charge and not lose your capacity so that your camera didn't develop early-onset Alzcameras and you could shoot with confidence even when that once in a lifetime image is at stake and so buying a camera with a rechargeable battery is not the high-risk thing it was when digital first came on the scene,

But I still think having a camera which can be recharged with dime store batteries is a really, really good thing.

So when I started looking for a camera I found the Pentax K-x which is a 12 megapixel camera, (You remember that that is a good number and still being used on top of the line cameras being rolled out this very day with price-tags that would make Donald Thump swallow his wig and choke and wouldn't that be lucky but someone else already won the Powerball so they used up all of the luck and now we will have to endure another year of political speeches full of bad similes and false smiles winch are not the same as similes but have the same effect when they are bad and maybe even a busted metaphor or two but with the anti-immigration spirit running so strong they might not even use metaphors because they grant wordizanship without using like or as and unrestricted acceptance is just not something they are prepared to do so that won't happen and now so the Mop that Roared will keep on like March coming in like a lion and that is probably a simile which is okay cause it is qualified with like or as and doesn't give away anything without proper authority.), and uses four double As for power.

I've lived with my little K-x for over a year now and liked it so much that when the Long Sufferin wanted a camera upgrade I got her one and now we have matching K-xs and isn't that just special?

So if you are like me and think having double A power is a good thing then you can find a K-x for $168 at KEH, top flight reputation, great customer service and well respected and they have a repair shop if anything ever goes wrong with the new baby. Even cheaper if you go to the Pentax Forum, $125 and that's where I found the Long Sufferin's camera.

But let's say that you aren't as fixated as I am on double A power.

There's the K-r which is also a twelve megapixel camera, uses both double A and the dreaded rechargeable battery and I just saw one for $140 on the Pentax forum.

Still not sold okay let's move up to Nikon/Canon price things. For $218-228 you can get a Pentax K30 which is really an uptown camera. It has a 16.6 megapixel sensor, weather sealed body, (Did you know that it rains in Oregon?), and for me it isn't as small as some of the other brands.

Now size is an important thing if you are a pro football player or a MMA contender, but in a camera it isn't always great. All those dials and switches make getting the right picture controls easier and they come in handy if you have set your shot and suddenly the weather changes, (Did you know it rains in Oregon), but in a small body they can be like typing on a Blackberry keyboard, better in theory than in practice. And when it comes to hanging on to the camera a beefier body gives you more to clutch, like in a crowd or at a fair or when you are freezing your ass off at the Polar Bear plunge and wondering why you thought this was such a good idea and if anyone you know has seen you so that if you snuck out would they rat on you the next time you were at one of the Museum openings?


So maybe you think it is worth giving Pentax a look?

This is a lot like being married, it doesn't matter so much where you look it matters whether the Long Sufferin catches you. Look well and chose wisely.

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