Screen Choice for P67II & Lens Question

I am about to buy a P67II to replace my P67, which I had fitted with a Beattie

Gridded Intenscreen to replace the original rather dim, plain viewing prism.

Now, I am very used to using the camera with the Beattie screen and I like the

bright image and find the lines very handy for composing images.

 

Is there a direct equivalent to the Beattie screen amongst the new Pentax

screens? If there is, I'll just buy it and sell my old camera with the Beattie

screen. If there isn't something suitable is it a practical proposition to install

the Beattie screen into a P67II? I know that with the P67, to fit a Beattie screen

means taking out an additional glass piece, apart from the original viewing

screen. So, assuming that the Beattie screen fits the P67II, would a similar

adjustment need to be made to it as well, if fitted to this model?

 

I noticed that there was one posting that listed a few different model numbers

of Pentax viewing screens. I tried to find the screens on the Pentax website

and found no information on them at all.

 

One other point, if I buy the camera from Robert White I can get a new 105mm

lens fairly inexpensively too. Now, I currently have an older Takumar 105mm

lens, which I bought used, which works fine, but renders much paler colours

than my 45mm and 55mm lenses; even when photographing the same

subjects at the same exposure and in the same light. I had the lens serviced

by Pentax a few years ago and there wasn't any improvement, so I can only

take it that there must be some difference in the lens coating or maybe even a

small design difference perhaps.

 

I'd happily change to the newer lens, if I thought that there was a good chance

that it would be more similar in colour balance to my other lenses. I have a

200mm Pentax 67 lens too, which is also quite pale colour wise as well.

Going from using say the 55mm lens to the 200mm lens and then looking at

the transparencies afterwards gives a huge difference in apparent colour

saturation. Anybody else noticed this too?

Allen-

 

I have an older Pentax 6x7 body with MLU fitted with a Beattie Intenscreen. Although it is a great improvement over the stock screen, it does seem to be brighter towards the center with some dimming towards the edges. About 15 months ago, I bought the new P67 II; the standard screen is wonderfully bright and very easy to focus with, and there is none of the fall-off as with the Beattie screen. The gridded screen is called a cross line matte and is designated BG-60.

I use the newer series of Pentax lenses (45, 55 , 75 shift, 90, 135, and 200 and the 1.4 rear converter). I had an older Takumar SMC 300 but sold it when I got the new 200 and tried it with the 1.4 converter. This combination is actually sharper and has more contrast on the chromes than the old 300. I shoot Velvia, so vivid color and saturation is not the issue, haha! In fact, I prefer overcast light, early or late light, when contrast ranges are low to moderate, because I know the film/lens response will make up for this in a very pleasing way. The new lenses are terrific. Good Luck.

 

 

Charles Shoffner

 

www.shoffnerphoto.com

Hi Allen,

 

I also noticed collor differences with the old super Takumar 105 mm.

The collor moved to yellow / brown and it gave a light loss of 1/3 ~ 1/2 stop. Finally i discovered that the kit (glue) in the rear group was ageing! you can examining this by looking from the rear at the diafragma blades they look brown, but when looking from the front they look black. My 150 mm from the same age was still Ok but this lens only contains free are elements.

 

I run a test in black and white between the old and a new lens and apart from a little light loss the both look the same in respect to contrast and sharpness.

 

Kind regards Gert Jan.

My old 105 also has a 'built-in yellow filter'. Quite handy for black and white, but not so good with colour slides! I only purchase new lenses for this system nowadays.

Thanks for the prompt answers, I'll be ordering my new camera from Robert

White's later on today, with the BG 60 lined screen; can't wait to finally have

proper built in metering!

 

I've spent years fiddling around with a separate light meter and whilst it is

accurate most of the time, it is much handier to have everything built in to the

camera.

 

Looks like I was right to be suspicious about the Takumar 105mm lens too. I

recently sold a Takumar 75mm and a 135mm lens, because I didn't like the

quality of the lenses, especially compared to my Pentax 45mm and 55mm

lenses, which are just so good. So, now I'm down to a much more reasonable

outfit size of 45mm, 55mm, 105mm and 200mm lenses, which does pretty

much all that I want to do. Interesting thought from Charles about using a 1.4 x

converter on the 200mm lens, that would be good to experiment with, I have

the latest version of that lens and a solid Gitzo 1348 tripod to hold everything

in place.

Hi Allan,

seems your decision is made ... so I will only make you feel better by letting you know that the screen on my P67II is very bright and has dealt me no problems whatsoever. As for the new 200mm, it is very sharp, and surprisingly light. The newly designed 75/2.8 is also very sharp and light, quite a departure from the other 75 in weight and design. One note on the AE prism, however, I find that it tends to disagree with my spotmeter by 1/3 to 2/3 overexposure ... has anyone else had this experience?

 

Cheers

I'll soon find out if the prism is accurate or not Thomas, as I've literally just

ordered the camera from Robert White; so it should arrive here within the next

day or two.

 

Now, that just leaves me with my old camera to sell off, or possibly keep as a

spare. But, I used to have an old Pentax 6 x 7 which I used as a spare for my

P67, but hardly ever used. Decisions, decisions!

 

I'll probably sell the old camera, with its plain prism, Beattie Screen and the

Takumar 105mm lens. The camera is in near mint condition, prism too and the

lens was serviced by Pentax not all that long ago, not a bad buy for somebody

wanting to get into medium format I guess. I'm not really sure where the best

place to advertise it is, the prices on ebay are generally fairly low just now,

maybe a private sale would be the way to go. I'll put a mention of it on the

photonet sales section anyway.

The 105 Super-Takumar had a lesser coating than the 105 SMC Takumar. The Pentax 105 is basically a 105 SMC Takumar with a rubber focus ring. There is a difference between the Super-Takumar and the later models as far as saturation is concerned. My 14 year old 105 SMC Takumar has no yellow cast and has good saturation. The cross sections of all three look identical but I suspect the Super-Takumar uses a glass that changes with age to give a yellow cast.

I just checked the lens again Steve and it is a Super Takumar 105mm lens;

which probably explains why it doesn't perform as well as the newer versions.

But, when I bought the lens some 7 years ago now, I didn't really know much

about the different lens versions and coatings. This is what makes this forum

so useful, so much accumulated experience of these cameras and lenses in

just about every situation you could imagine. A useful place to seek advice for

beginners and more experienced users.

 

I have just received my new Pentax 67II camera from Robert White this

morning, including new Pentax 105mm lens, to replace the older version. First

impressions of the camera are pretty good, much more help on offer in getting

an accurate exposure with all the different metering modes.

 

I compared the metering indoors against a Sekonic L-408 and my Olympus

OM4ti with standard lens. The Olympus readings were pretty close to the

P67II on most subjects, but the Sekonic was reading about a stop out from the

P67II, when used in spot metering mode. I won't know anything conclusive

about the overall metering accuracy until I get a chance to get the camera into

the great outdoors; hopefully sometime soon. Must remember to get some

spare batteries though, I've had two brand new Pentax 67's and the batteries

supplied failed very quickly with both of those cameras. In fact with one of

them, the battery failed the first time I went out with the camera and I didn't

have any spares with me either!