$1K lens & $2K body in SLR

[hinman]

A blog post from an amateur looking for cheap & quality

<br> <br>

<a

href="http://techtheman.blogspot.com/2007/11/1k-lens-2k-body-in-slr.html">http://techtheman.blogspot.com/2007/11/1k-lens-2k-body-in-slr.html</a>

<br> <br>

I think a bit different than others and it does not mean that I am better. Just

that I may be a person with lots of emotions and I love history of cameras and

hence having film cameras around is a great blessing and a wonderful thing for

me. As you can tell, I love cheap and quality together. A wishful thinking one

may say. And while the rest are after the $1k lens and $2k camera body, I lust

for the $11 lens and $20 camera body. How can that be possible? Look no further

but my recent purchase:

<br> <br>

1. $11 albinar 28mm f/2.8 Macro vs Pentax FA 31 <br>

<img

src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_g_5DfKuBHzc/Rz3m6Ew7KTI/AAAAAAAAAFw/gf9ddBY4k-w/s400/albinar_28_f28_macro.JPG"></img>

<br><br>

2. $20 pentax pz-10 vs Canon 5D <br>

<img

src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_g_5DfKuBHzc/Rz3nX0w7KUI/AAAAAAAAAF4/LAXC7_LdYSg/s400/pz20_sigma_75_300.JPG"></img>

<br> <br>

Of course there is no comparison from the ridiculous pair that I make up in the

analogy above. I like to think of the positives as my amateur skills can't

justify to have expensive equipments that I can't afford. And I heard from

others that there are photog business required to take certain photo in film

such as those for a large poster and b&w. I may not know the reason in detail

but if the 'pro' need to use film for a good reason, there is no reason we

abandon the thought of film cameras like the camera manufacturers. And

manufacturers are mostly after money as 1st priority in business. Films are

hopefully to stay for many good reasons and it can only benefit customers for

quality, diversity, history and passion into photo taking.

<br> <br>

My recent venture into ebay for $81.50 get me 2 SLR bodies with 3 lens, 1 2x

tele converters, 2 UV and 2 Polarizer filters:

<br> <br>

For a total of $81.50 not including shipment costs in 2 ebay transactions.

<br> <br>

1. Pentax pz-10

<br>

2. Pentax pz-20

<br>

3. Sigma 75-300

<br>

4. Pentax 28-80 (power zoom switch broken)

<br>

5. Pentax 28-800 (a good one)

<br>

6. Rokunar 2x tele converter

<br>

7. 2 uv and 2 polarizer filters

<br> <br>

Warmest,

Hin

[william-porter]

<p>Sounds like you did some good shopping there!</p>

 

<p>I assume that "28-800" is a typo for "28-80". ;-)</p>

<blockquote><em>And while the rest are after the $1k lens and $2k camera body, I lust for the $11 lens and $20 camera body</em></blockquote>

<p>Me, I want the $1000 body and the $2000 lenses.</p>

 

<p>Will</p>

[hinman]

William, thank you for the typo correction. Yes, it is a Pentax 28-80 power zoom. Of course, I want the $1K body and $2K lens when I am ready. But not in the near future as I see it.

 

Warmest,

Hin

[azemerov]

Hin,<br>

What is this post about? Is it about photography or personal habits? Is it interesting to somebody else? For me it looks like another attempt to promote your blog.<br>

Sorry,<br>

Alexander

[mc2imaging]

Congrats, Hin!

 

My PZ-10 has served me well, and I hope yours does too. The first month I had it I probably ran a hundred rolls through it as I was working as an intern PR photographer for Miss Universe, Inc. My first battery only lasted 2 weeks! I had a Soligor 24mm, a Pentax-A 50mm f2, a Pentax 35-70 (kit lens), and my Tak-A 70-200 plus I borrowed my dad?s AF280 flash. (Note the ONLY AF lens I had until about 18 months ago was that kit lens. I WAS saving for the FA* 80-200 IF ED!) It is a very comfortable camera to hold and operate (except the +/- button). There have been many days where I had it in hand to 10-12 hours and never got tired of it.

 

While I drooled over more expensive cameras (I paid $400 for body & lens kit, 4 yr warranty that I NEVER used, and a remote release) like the PZ-1, this was a solid and reliable camera. I actually like the simplicity of the camera over the models with a bunch of program modes. The only reason I?ve been grabbing my wife's ZX-7 lately is because some punch dripped onto the shutter release and the button sticks. I haven't had time to clean it. Really, the only features I wanted that it didn't have was continuous motor drive and a mirror lock-up. A back-lit display would have been nice too.

 

 

Btw, I have a BUNCH of batteries for the PZ-10. I?ll see if I can dig a few up and send to you. Several years ago I was given about 20 of them, and I?ve only used 3 or 4 since then.

[miserere_mei]

Alexander, he's just letting us know about his life/photography habits. I don't have a problem with that.

 

Me, I'm waiting for a good deal on a 20mm or 24mm prime. eBay has been on the expensive side lately, but I'm patient, and I know I'll get one in the end. The problem is, I don't want a good deal, I want a brilliant deal :-)

 

Hin Man, let me know how your Albinar works out. I've seen a few on eBay, but was reluctant to bid because I don't know anything about that brand. If I could, I'd go for this: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=190174090173&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=009

[denys_meunier]

Alexander,sometimes peoples like to share with other person somethings they get for what ever the reason about photography,picture or equipement.Hin is happy for what he get and its OK,he just want to share with us,once in a while,i have no problem with that,may be its not OK for you,its wrong,not a good post,i have no idea so just pass over and that's it,its not necessary to make a negative comment.

[young_y]

Alexander,

 

I have enjoyed Hin's posts. I do not think this is an attempt to promote his blog. He may have a different personality, which is all I can conclude from his posts.

 

I actually investigate the tripod brand he bought as I need to replace, with a slightly better one, a cheapest emergency tripod I always keep in my trunk. Although I decided to not to buy it, I at least get to find more options. I am sure some may find his gear and reports on them interesting enough to investigate and even purchase. That is good enough a post for me.

[hinman]

Thank you all for the inputs. And Alexander, thanks for your negative input as I may have annoyed people without knowing it if everyone is quiet. I will be more careful and selective on my posting. But I thought this is Pentax forum and all of my posting is related to Pentax gear and two lens that I post are K mount for Pentax equipment forum -- Albinar 28mm f/2.8 Macro and Sigma 75-300 along with Pentax pz-10 and Pentax pz-20. In that sense, I can't agree with you that I am off-topic. But I will be careful in my posting.

<br> <br>

@ Miserere Mei, the $11 Albinar lens that I get supports PK mount, I think and it works perfectly on my K100D. It is made in Korea and it does not have A/M setting on aperture ring. I would not recommend that brand without further digging. Unless it is something really cheap like $11 like my case, I would caution on the lens. And I do find the 6" macro coming in handy for me

<br> <br>

#1 macro tesh shot of Albinar <br>

<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2311/2036139576_6a71841f86_b.jpg"></img>

<br><br>

#2 macro test shot of Albinar <br>

<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2038/2036138948_203541d1b4_b.jpg"></img>

<br> <br>

No complaint from me on an $11 lens as I don't have a good macro and I know enough about macro except that the 6" distance is the closest out of all the lens in my list. But I do run into the common problems of underexposure in indoor settings even when I meter wide open at f/2.8. I have to dial in +1 Ev compensation.

<br> <br>

@Young, @Matthew, thank you for the support, please be honest if my posting do bother others and I would be grateful for more tailored post for the forum so as not to disturb the general audience.

<br> <br>

Warmest regards, <br>

Hin

[michael_kuhne]

Isn't that what it is all about- sharing our photographic experiences?

This recent experience of Hin's is proving to me how remarkably cheap one can get good AF SLR equipment capable of producing excellent quality photos. In fact, I think I will copy this and give it to a young man I know who works in a local one-hour lab. He shoots with a K1000 and I think he will find this encouraging.

 

The 28mm looks interesting, Hin, because it has closeup capability that is rare in a wide angle lens. It appears to be a manual focus model. I used to have a similar one under the CPC brand, made in Japan. I came to value the unique close focus properties, and gave it away only after replacing it with the Sigma 24mm f/1.8 EX DG macro.

[zane1664879013]

> Alexander, he's just letting us know about his life/photography habits.

 

If that were the only motivation there wouldn't be adverts on his blog.

[miserere_mei]

Hin, is the macro on the 28mm 1:2?

[mountainvisions]

Alex,

<p>

I find Hins post enjoyable most of the time. As I do most of the people who reply to his post, Matt M, Mike K, M&M, Will P, and others..they seem to be among the many actually taking photos an not measurbating. They also seem to be among the many enjoying the social, and fun side of photography and not the purely technical side of pixels and bits.

</p><p>

Hins post deviate from the usual "i see banding in my high ISO shots" or "what is the next camera Pentax will make" or "when will Pentax become Canon" post.

</p><p>

And sure he promotes his blog, but he does it in the confines of the rules of the site. Kudos to him for that.

</p><p>

I always reference an experience I had about 10 years ago when part of a backpacking light list serve. Gradually I noticed people seemed less interested in nature, and hiking and spending time outdoors and more interested in the pursuit of the 10lb pack and the ultimate ultralight gear. Many people spent more nights testing gear in their backyards than on the trail, more days with gear on the scale than on their backs. I realized while my goal was to lighten my load to enjoy my hikes more it wasn't more powerful than my desire to hike regardless of the load I was carrying. To me much of internet banter on photography has become exactly that sickness. If a post isn't a gear related question it's regarded as spam.

</p><p>

Take photos, don't be affraid to share them. Sure it's shameless, but afterall, we take the photo with the idea of sharing it, so photographers by nature are a shameless group of self promoters.

</p><p>

If you don't like the post (Hin's, mine, or anyone elses), don't read it, or don't reply to it. </p><p>

 

Enough words, a photo so when in 4 years someone googles this post they know I actually used my camera once, rather than just ran my virtual mouth on photo.net...<br />

<a title="Iguana - National Zoo - Washington, DC" href=" src="http://static.flickr.com/2311/2036284891_a876c98349_d.jpg" border="0" /></a></p><p><a href="http://mountainvisions.blogspot.com/">Mountain Visions</a></p><--shameless promotion of my poorly written and entirely devoid of ads blog

[norman_sun]

> Alexander, he's just letting us know about his life/photography habits.

 

>If that were the only motivation there wouldn't be adverts on his blog.

 

I also have the same feeling about this blog promotion issue after reading his multiple identical posts on both photo.net and dpreview.com.

In addition, I thought dpreview.com might be a more appropriate venue for life/photography habits. Of causer it is just a personal opinion and I could be totally wrong.

[hinman]

About the advertisement in my blog pages:

 

You can read it in my 'About' post for the reasoning:

 

http://hintheman.blogspot.com/2007/09/about.html

 

Copied here for your reference:

"Why Advertisement

I started this photo blog with intention to join the Yahoo Publishing Network (YPN) as I have been working for XXXXX as a software engineer that are related to advertisement. TechTheMan and HinTheMan are essentially my means to reinvent my interests into my work area. Believe it or not, I actually got rejected from YPN and I have turned around and use Google AdSense instead. Unlike my Tech Corner blog, I limit all advertisement to text base and have them as least intrusive as I can arrange them in this personal journal."

 

In short, I am working on advertisement field and it is related to my related work and interest. And if 'advertisment' in my blog is not allowed in posting in photo.net, I can post my RSS feed with no advertisement but the caveat is that RSS has delay of syndication along with lost of formatting in HTML and CSS, you can see blog contents without ads in

 

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hintheman

http://feeds.feedburner.com/techtheman

 

It is an enrichment of experience why people dislike my sharing of discussion. And I mean no harm and I certainly won't completely agree with your negative assessment of my postings. Again, I would be more careful with my posting in the future. If I have done anything against the rules of the posting forum in Pentax in photo.net, please comment.

[miserere_mei]

I bet Hin Man is making millions from those ads on his wide-spread blog. That's why he buys $11 lenses off eBay.

[miserere_mei]

And so as not to leave Justin alone, here's my attempt at a cliché holiday pic, so people in the future may know that I too used my camera once (and thank goodness I didn't do it again).<div></div>

[y_lee]

Oh, good lord -- who cares if Hin's got ads on his blog(s)! Are those nickles coming out of your pocket?

 

He's obviously a nice guy (even if somewhat deranged :) .....

[mc2imaging]

@Hin - you are making me hungry again!

 

@EVERYONE - this is a community where we share common interests. Hin is obviously

very excited about all of the things he is learning and experiencing - much of which is

ABSOLUTELY related to his PENTAX equipment. Hin isn't making you go to his blog (no

offence, Hin, but I've only clicked on your links a few times) so if you aren't interested in

his posts, you don't have to go.

 

Personally, I think Hin's posts are fun. If you don't, don't read them. Complaining about

the thread in the thread just makes it harder for the rest of us to read the actual point of

the thread. I'm tired of reading about speculation regarding 'THE K10D REPLACEMENT' so

I often don't pay much attention to those threads.

 

This IS a community to help us grow in our common intrests. If people try to stifle other

peoples' contributions to the community, then the commuity as a whole suffers. I am

personally more irritated by the detractors than anything else. I had a hundred things I

wanted to say to our moderator when he didn't get my post relating film to Christmas (it's

here, it's here, it's finally here!). Because HE didn't get it, he wanted to pull my post. After

his comment, several others obviously DID find value in it. I knew he would just censor

me if I argued with him anyway and it would detract from the point of the post.

 

I'm really irritated that Alexander has taken over the theme of this thread and that I have

spent so much time typing this since he's probably turned off this thread anyway. I will

leave with one last thought:

 

Even after gaining a pretty good amount of notoriety, Jimi Hendrix was known to seek out

performances of small time rock bands. Some of them were pretty bad. Jimi's philosophy

was that even the worst guitar player had the potential to teach him something, and he

was always looking for sources of inspiration. Even if you think Jimi was lousy himself, he

has inspired countless others. I get alot of inspiration from this site, especially from

Godfrey, Justin, Hin, and many others...

[mountainvisions]

Really what I want to know is how everyone but me seems to score these dream deals on Ebay. Petrana got several M lenses for under $100 total (i think) and while I don't love M's I can't even find M-42's for those prices. The best I've done so far is a 55mm 2.0 for $20 shipped for my macro setup. Well, I might not be able to buy off ebay but it's always been good to me when selling time comes :-).

[xpiotiavos]

Hin, keep posting. You're not annoying anyone by sharing your pictures and joy in finding good, cheap toys to play with. Like Justin's post shows, the only annoying thing is that you keep finding the deals before we do!! ;)

 

Alex, seriously... this is exactly what the forum is for, and I for one love seeing threads like this one.

 

And just to lighten the mood:<div></div>

[hinman]

@Justin, @Mel, @Miserere, @Matthew, @Adam, @y lee, @denys, @Young and all others, thank you very much to your sharing. And to all friends who have a negative opinions, I would take a step back on posting. I make repeated mistakes and sometimes I oddly need a reminder as new ideas can run over the top of head, the $81 ebay purchase is one of them.

 

The Almighty has a strange way of putting a friendly but shy character in me. I love to hug everyone along my path and I remember their names by heart if I can. I know the name of cafe manager and the chef in my cafe that rarely visit, most if not all the receptionist in my office buildings, and the janitors that I salute in going home late into night. My favorite subway's sandwich store's staff know my name and those of my boys. I love people and sometimes it does hurt more than usual. I shy away as a yellow poppy after the sun goes down but by tomorrow, I rise up as bright as the Sun can shine upon me.

 

I use my blog page and journal to share information as I find them. And I use it to touch lives whenever I find the appropriate context. I like to share an opinion and my great enthusiasm with the Pentax products and different ways of Pentax thinking -- the SR in body, the Pancakes, the unmatched ergonomics, the backward compatibility of immense amount of old glasses, and hundred of different things that Pentaxians appreciate and hold dearly.

 

Photo.net is one of the most enjoyable forum because of the diversity of discussions and people with knowledge and appreciation of photos and art, and the willingness to comment and share an opinion with respect.

 

Thank you all for the comments! Great weekend and peace with everyone in the restful weekend.

[mel_unruh]

Hin,

 

DO NOT CHANGE A THING! I for one love your posts. It is VERY refreshing to see someone who is actually excited about PHOTOGRAPHY and not bits and bites, my digital better than your film, etc, etc. Hin, you have a passion for the art of photography and I hope you NEVER lose this passion or your curiosity and quest for more knowledge as these will fan the flame of your creativity. I sincerely hope that this flame will spread to others as you continue to share. Hopefully some will put down the Photoshop manuals and will be ispired to pick up their cameras to learn this craft that we call photography.

 

Mel

[bruce_horn1]

Justin, Here are some tips for finding cheap Pentax gear on eBay. Hopefully this will not ruin my chances of ever finding another cheap lens there but so it goes. :-)

 

Search on the term "Pentax" in all categories, not just cameras. Items that are listed in the wrong category typically get fewer bids.

 

Search on common misspellings such as "pantex, pentex," etc.

 

Often you can find an old film camera for sale that goes very cheaply but has lenses and accessories with it that are worth far more. This is especially true when the poster has no idea what they have and just puts "pentax ME and lenses" or something like that in the title. Read the listing and look at the photos in it. Sometimes the thumbnail photo is a stock photo but the other photos inside will have interesting lenses.

 

Know your equipment. Can you tell from a blurry little photo that the lens on that camera is a 40mm pancake or a 50mm 1.4 instead of a 50mm 2.0?

 

Search for third party brand names that you know make Pentax gear you might want.

 

Be patient. It may seem that every pancake lens that comes up sells for more than list but eventually you may hit on one that no one has noticed.

 

Ask questions of the sellers. They may not know what they have but can usually read the text on the front of the lens for you.

 

Realize that eBay is not the best place to buy certain things. Items that are new or in high demand may be better bought at regular stores or web sites.

 

Check out local photo swap meets, camera store's bargain bins and regular flea markets.

 

Cheers,

 

bhorn