Photography
While my father was very much interested in photography (and my grandfather as well), it came to me rather late, mostly when I started going on holidays on my own. I just took my mother’s small APS film camera and took pictures, not trying very to understand how it worked.
Then, in 2000, helped by a good friend of mine, I bought a film camera (Minolta 600si Classic) and started to pay more attention at how things were working and it caught me. I went to several Airshows like the Ferté-Alais one and was happily shooting.
After all my gear was stolen in 2006, I wondered whether to buy a used 600si or go digital, after reading reviews of the various cameras. Having played a bit with the small compact Canon Ixus 400 we bought earlier for mostly videos, I became a Pentax fan and have used their various digital DSLR in the last years with the K10D, K-7, K-5 and recently the new K-3.
Pentax made some marketing and technical choices that do make sense for someone like me where photography is not my main craft, just a side hobby:
- the body is stabilized, not the lenses. That means that every lens, old and modern, are all stabilized. Easier to work with, lighter lenses and all that
- the body and some lenses from Pentax are tropicalized. That means that shooting while it is raining is not an issue, that is very appreciated…
- lenses are expensive, especially the Limited ones but still less than most Canon & Nikon gear
Still, the filled-up camera bag is rather heavy, as my main lenses are all metal-big-lens thingies so…
Big big changes
In November 2014, I decided to go much lighter and have sold my Pentax K-3 to get the new Fujifilm X-T1 and a new set of fixed focal lens:
Current Fujifilm gear
- XF56mm/ƒ1.2 R, awesome portrait lens, sharp and very fast
- XF23mm/ƒ1.4 R, day-to-day lens, different from my previous 31mm, change of perspective :)
- XF14mm/ƒ2.8 R, I now have a small and fast wide lens.
As you can see, I’m rather fond of fixed-focal lenses, they are generally sharper and of course faster. Now smaller in the Fuji world… X-T1 + 56mm (the heaviest I have) is on par with the “body” of the K-3 ~800 g. Difficult to beat. The X-T1 is tropicalized too (although the lenses are not).
If you want to know my evolution in cameras, see there.
I did it again
I now have a brand new Fujifilm X-T2. I played with it a bit and fell for it. Awesome.
Former Pentax gear
I was very happy with it (see links on the main page for various pictures) but I must admit that it was becoming very heavy to carry. I will probably keep the Vivitar as the X line does not have a similar 1:1 Macro lens. I now have a PX-FX adapter and I can play with the Vivitar now.
- Pentax FA* 85mm/ƒ1.4 99% SOLD
- Pentax FA-31mm/ƒ1.8 Limited
- Vivitar 105mm/ƒ2.5 Series 1 Macro PROBABLY WON’T SELL YET
- Pentax K 85mm/ƒ1.8
- Pentax DA 18-135mm/ƒ3.5-5.6 and Pentax DA 55-300mm/ƒ4-5.8 for zooms BOTH SOLD