aerius

Problem #1 as Jon L noted is that you're using a manual focus lens on a camera which was never designed for it. It does not have a viewfinder, nevermind one with the old school focusing screens which had microprisms, split image rings and other focusing aids so that you can really dial in the focus. You're dependent on an LCD screen with its limited resolution & sharpness plus its view magnifier function to judge focus, it can be made to work but it's a PITA. I've tried it on a micro 4/3 camera and it's a hell of a lot slower and less consistent than my Olympus OM-1 film camera (not exactly fair since the OM series had one of the best viewfinders ever made). With regards to noise, yeah, looks like underexposure. I loaded up the sample in Photoshop and the histogram is squashed up on the left with a sizable gap on the right. Here's what you do, pick a few typical scenes of stuff that you'd photograph and take a series of pictures of each scene, using the exposure compensation function to dial up the exposure a bit in each one until you start blowing out the highlights. Then back it off a notch. Then note how much you had to dial it up and remember that number or save it into the settings. Use the standard jpg output to get this part dialed in, open them up without any editing in Photoshop or whatever you use and confirm that the highlights and everything else is good using the histograms. Only after you've got the compensation dialed in should you start dicking around with raw. You want the images to come out of the camera as good as they can so that you don't have to dick around with them too much in raw processing & Photoshop.

And now my OM camera system is complete.

I had an E-P1 for a week or so before I returned it when it first came out. The lack of a built-in viewfinder killed it for me, yeah you can get an add-on but I'm a bit forgetful so I'd likely leave it at home half the time when I need it. The controls weren't that great either for what I like to do, I'm used to film SLRs and want direct control for shutter speed & aperture at all times which the camera didn't let me do, I had to play with too many buttons & menus to set the things that I wanted to set. I've handled the E-P2 at a camera show and the controls on that one are a lot better for me. As for other mirrorless systems, the Samsung NX series gives you a viewfinder, it's built-in on the larger NX10 & NX11 while the NX100 uses a clip-on EVF. The NX100 is smallest & lightest of the 3, it's about the size of the E-P2 and feels a bit lighter though I'm not sure if it actually is. I also like Samsung's controls the best since I can just stick it in manual mode and use the dual control wheels to dial in aperture and shutter speed, it works just like a film camera. I find their menus are simpler and easier to use as well, the important stuff like white balance and ISO are right up front or have their own buttons, no digging through menu trees. Now if they could just stuff the Fuji X-100 viewfinder into the NX100 body or make an interchangeable lens version of the X-100, I'd jump right in on the pre-order line.

A variety pack of black & white film from B&H Photo. Got some Neopan Acros, Fomapan and Tmax 100, HP5+, Plus-X and Tri-X.

And they traded away Richards and Carter for that goalie. It's like they're trying to make their team suck so they can pickup a good draft pick next year.

http://blog.naver.com/cleanday82?Redirect=Log&logNo=60124228527 No idea when it's coming out though, but probably sooner rather than later with the way product cycles are going these days.

A 1/2.3 inch interchangeable lens camera? I can't say it makes sense to me and I really gotta wonder what the market is for this thing.

Another B&W from my Pen-FT

If it's a P1110, you can do the resistor mod if the monitor looks washed out and the color return function doesn't fix it. I had to swap resistors on one of mine to get the blacks to be black instead of grey. Apparently it's a common defect with these monitors.

There's some photography work but it's mostly for video editing. My riding group is shooting a ton of footage for our mountain bike videos so I needed a new monitor to do the editing. As for why, well, I have the space, 2 for $20, and electricity is pretty darn cheap where I live.

A few more years and they probably will pay me to take'em.

Gotta love how people are practically giving away 21" CRT monitors these days. Picked up 2 of them for $20.

Old railroad bridge, now a road bridge

Man, I thought for sure that he was going to lose it Hulk style and snap those headphones in half!

According to this chart, all your A-series lenses will work just fine on the K-5 in all manual and automatic modes. You'll still need a macro lens for your work but at least you won't have to get a complete new set of lenses for the camera.

Definitely. If there's a trade show, larger camera store, or even a photographer's group meetup near your area, go and use the opportunity to try out everything you can get your hands on. Bring some memory cards & lenses and give the cameras a full workout.

Brainfart. It should say Nikon & Canon, but the Limited series lenses do make the rest of their own stuff look like junk. Now if only they could make a camera that looks & feels as good as their Limited series lenses, it's kinda silly having a plastic & rubber camera fitted with a tiny all metal lens. It works great but it just looks wrong.

The K-5 and K-7 are the exact same mount & system so you'd think that it would work, but yeah, it never hurts to get an official confirmation. With regards to lenses and AF, I'm not a zoom lens person so I know absolutely nothing about them other than they're too slow, but with primes I think Pentax still has the best ones. Their DA and FA Limited lenses are IMO unmatched by anything short of Leica or Zeiss glass, the build quality and feel makes all the Nikon & Pentax stuff look like junk. Unfortunately the price tag matches the build quality. The rest of their lenses don't look like they're anything special though.

I don't know, depends on how old it is. I did a quick search and it looks like anything that's A-series or newer will work just fine if set to the "A" setting on the aperture ring. Anything older and it gets messy. http://support.pentaximaging.com/node/5

Yeah, that's the exact same reason I love my Olympus OM-1 and Pen-FT, it's really hard to find a nice small high quality DSLR that does all the stuff I need while being easy to use. For lenses you should be fine, I was using the fullframe 31mm and 77mm FA Limited lenses when I was testing out the K-5 and both lenses worked fine. I did mess up the focus a few times when using manual focus mode but once I got used to the focus confirmation lights it was pretty straightforward. Not as easy as on my OM-1 since it has a way better focusing screen and more viewfinder magnification, but probably around the same as my Pen-FT.

Since you really liked your Pentax Super-A, I think it would make sense to stick with them on your first DSLR. I've tried out the Pentax K-5 for a couple hours at a recent photo show and really liked it, I was using it mostly with the 31mm f/1.8 FA Limited lens since that's what I'm most used to. What I like about the K-5 is that it's the closest in use to a conventional manual SLR; with most Canons & Nikons I can't figure out how they work without reading the manual while with the Pentax I could use all the basic functions just by playing with it for a couple minutes. I don't know what they cost in Europe but they should be in your price range, over here they sell for a bit more than the Nikon D7000. If Fuji doesn't come out with an interchangeable lens version of the X100 in the next couple years, I'm getting a K-5 or whatever their next top of the line camera is.

Real black & white film

That looks like a refund to me. The seller claims there's no wear on the lens and it's like new, that would be a lie since the lens is scratched. Unless he wants to claim that scratches don't count as wear.

So let me get this straight, Sigma is selling a crop sensor camera that cost more than a Leica M9 with Summicron lens? You can't be serious.