Location: Healdsburg, Ca
Wanted to try something a little different today. I have a boxful of Pentax lenses, accessories and camera bodies. About 15 years ago, I bought a bunch of mostly Pentax stuff from a sports photographer at the newspaper where I worked (it was just about the time when everybody was making the switch to digital).
I think he sold me the whole box for around $150, which was a lot of money for me back in my lean reporter days. But it was a nice haul, including 300mm and 200mm fixed lenses, some camera bodies and other flashes, winders and even an old mini 110 camera. I always meant to use everything, but you know how that goes. So I put most of it away with the Pentax stuff I've been collecting ever since I was a kid when my Dad gave me a used Sears branded camera (which just happened to be made for them by Pentax).
Flash forward to two years ago when I decided to buy a new DLSR. I went with Pentax because it's so-called backwards compatible, which means I can use pretty much any Pentax K-mount lens, no matter how old it is. It is the only brand of digital camera that does this. Suddenly all my old stuff had new life.
I discovered through a friend that some of the lenses, which say "Asahi Opt, Co., Japan" on them are actually supposed to be of excellent quality and have a good reputation among serious photographers. Or at least they did back in the day. (Pentax, I believe, introduced the modern 35mm camera design to the world -- back when the company was called Asahi.) Since many my lenses were purchased second hand and have been lying around collecting dust or just worn from use, I've been systematically cleaning them up. Some I've done myself, others I had cleaned (and repaired if needed) professionally.
Now that I'm well into this project, I'm thinking the time has come to put them to use. Tonight, I was messing around with a 50mm 1:2 manual lens. My subject the sunflowers my husband got for the kitchen table. I love the sharpness of this shot and how yellow the yellow is, and I'm looking forward to more experimenting. I think my Dad would be proud. I backlit this image and used internal flash, then edited it in Photoshop. Taken, of course, with my K100D.
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