when one cannot afford a 70-200 f/2.8

The elite speed lenses of the current era tend to be a 70-200mm f/2.8 more or less.  These are fast at 200mm unlike many more typical f/5.6 designs, but a large penalty comes along - literally, the fast telezooms are large, heavy and include their own tripod socket since they outweigh nearly every camera that will be attached to them!  They are also multiple hundreds of dollars, and right now I have nothing like that to throw around.  What to do?

Well try this: for $24 I picked up an 80-200mm f/3.5, so only fractionally slower than the modern beasts.  This one still weighs in at over a kilogram (about two pounds) and outweighs my camera bodies, so thankfully it also has a tripod socket.  What's not to like about that?

OK for one it's manual focus.  I'm not planning to shoot sports (though I can if I want to!) so I'm OK with that.  Also it's an ancient screw-mount lens - so I forgot to add $10 for the PK-M42 adapter to make it $35.  Screw mount means manual aperture setting.  Most curious of all perhaps is the brand: JC Penney!  No they never made lenses in department stores, but many department stores added their labels; many Sears lenses were Ricoh-made and plenty of lens companies allowed another brand to be stamped on their lens.

On the good side, the tripod collar will lead to steadier shots with tripod or monopod, a slide-out lens hood improves contrast, and nine aperture blades result in very nice blur to either side of focus.  It also is an internal-zoom lens so its length only varies by the range of the focusing ring, which covers infinity down to about five feet (1.8 meters).  Clearly the price is right, so how's the performance?

Let's get one thing straight: this is a very nice, little-used copy of whatever brand it really is.  Everything works very well on it, though the zoom ring rattles a bit.  Images from a tripod look quite nice, no complaints from me while using the K-01.  The shot at left is 100mm f/6ish on a wet day.
It's very hard to hand hold and keep the camera's live screen more than 10" away from my face, but on the K-5 it should perform better in that respect.  I'll be trying it on the Q soon, that should be very fun!

Anyway, I'm impressed.  Just in case I have another $20 lens that may be coming soon*, so we'll have a contest and keep just one.  Oh what fun!  In the meantime, the all-manual kit now looks like this:

• SMC 17mm f/4 fish-eye
• SMC-A 24mm f/2.8
• SMC-M 50mm f/2
• Quantaray 28-70mm f/2.8-4
• this JCP 80-200mm f/3.5 M42 mount/PK
• Hanimex 400mm f/6.3 T-mount/PK

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

* p.s. it's true - a Sigma δ 75-250mm f/4.0-5.0 is on its way.  No it's not a whole fraternity, it seems that early Sigmas used extra greek letters to mark their lenses!  So this is a variable-aperture zoom but still, 250mm at f/5 is slightly faster than most - so we shall see if the extra reach is worthwhile.  It says 'for Pentax' but nowhere does it show a bayonet mount, although the rear cap is thicker than for most M42 lenses.  Again, we shall see... in any case this 80-200 does pretty good work!

better tests of the SMC 17

I met a fellow camera-forum member on the Portland waterfront and we compared lenses for an hour or so.  The 17mm Fish-Eye did fine work, and compares decently with the DA14 and DA15 primes.  The field of view fits just between those two lenses thanks to its allowance of distortion at the edges, and since it's a film-era lens it can go still wider on my ME film body (the DA series is built to cover aps-c sensors only, so they would go black at the edges with film).  Detail was good, flare visible but not destructive, and close-up abilities are pretty impressive.  A fun time was had by ... both!



yes, this bridge deck is actually level...

this is shot from just a few inches away!

knowing when to fold

Back in September we began packing to move, citing finances as the primary reason.  By mid-October we had packed 3/4 of our goods, including my K-5, a few primes and Quantaray 28-90 & 100-300 zooms plus the 24mm and 8mm fisheye. Surely I could do without them for a month or two?

Given the circumstances, in mid-November I took a calculated risk by purchasing a lens with six months' freedom from payments or interest. Soon after that the K5ii went on an incredible sale; we would be debt free very soon so why not?

Now it's March and 'a month or two' has become five, and 'why not' has become painfully obvious.  With no confidence that we will be free of home & debts within two months, a few newer parts of the kit must go.  The new K-5ii body and 28-75 Tamron went first, and most likely the da50-200wr will go next.  These moves have put a good amount of cash back where it belongs until the move is truly finished.

So the K-01 resumes its primacy in my kit with the Q in reserve.  For primes I will keep the 17mm fisheye to go with the 40mm; some unknown prime would fit nicely in the 70-135mm range, some day.  As to zooms, the 18-135wr was too cheap to justify parting with it just to pay more later, and neither the Quantaray 28-70 f/2.8-4 nor the white DAL 18-55 have much value in the market.  Note also that a Vivitar 2x teleconverter with macro-capable extendability is here too; I have not decided it that will remain, but it has been another interesting way to get up close without a dedicated macro prime.  Sitting safely in storage are the SMC-A 24mm, SMC-M 50mm, a 400mm Hanimar and the two Quantarays I mentioned earlier - as is a Rokinon 8mm fisheye that now finds itself out of work thanks to the SMC 17mm!

I sure wish that I hadn't packed up those lenses and the K-5 - the body is functional but needs servicing when more funds are handy, and a WR body is handy in the springtime.  The 100-300‘s presence would keep me amused at times, and safely away from thrift stores both virtual and real!

Truly I have nothing to complain about: with the K-01 and lenses I still have, impressive images are easy to create. It hurts that I fell for the six-month-free cash trap though, that is embarrassing.  We had no reason to doubt that we'd be moved within that window, and in fact we still could - but our recent past should have kept us from making general statements about the future, as life just isn't predictable right now.  Real Soon Now though!

the 17mm arrives

I now have a rare 17mm f/4 Pentax SMC Fish-Eye lens, complete with its original case!  (You can tell it's old because fisheye is hyphenated.)  It definitely takes one beyond the 18-135's widest views, and with a twist thanks to the interesting distortion though on aps-c sensors the distortion is relatively low.  This is a late-70s lens¹ from the original Pentax bayonet-mount cameras, before the M series (and A, F, FA, and finally modern DA series) so manual focus and aperture/metering only.  Among other interesting things this lens focuses very closely at just under 8 inches, which leads to decent bokeh and great composition opportunities.  It works with film bodies too!

First images compared to 18mm on the DA 18-135 show the reach difference especially to the right and top on this test shot.  Exposure is a bit brighter too, and the coatings result in a loss of contrast which loses details especially in the outside shed.  The fishiness is also quite clear here along the outer edges of the frame.  Still it will be great for outdoor vistas, if not so much for indoors like this :^)

This lens could crowd the 24mm a bit, we will see.  The 8mm Rokinon will definitely suffer with the 17's arrival, so that one may go before it sees much use at all.


¹ It seems I have the 2nd edition of the lens, but it's still a classic from the earliest K-mount days!

still adjusting

The extra-wide prime lens lineup has always been sparse, and for good reason: film users seldom needed 20mm or less for a focal length, and such lenses were hard to make in those days so prices were very high & production limited.  Now that aps-c sensors need 18mm focal lengths just to be reasonably wide, the 10-20mm zone is filled with several zoom lenses - but primes are still somewhat rare.  Many curious beasts dwell here, like the Zenitar 16 fisheye and a new Samyang 16mm f/2 (not at all a humble lens at 570 grams!).

In the distant past Pentax made a 17mm f/4 fisheye.  The 17/4 is curious in many ways as it's really wide, very small and it's a fisheye.  These have been superseded in modern times by the much-liked DA15mm Limited prime, also f/4 but without the distortions of a fisheye.  I knew these 17mm lenses existed but hadn't really looked very hard for a copy.  Now that I have some exceptional zooms that go no wider than 28mm, a wider prime became of more interest to me.  At a selling price of less than half the Limited's going rate, this lens has some merit!  Sure it would be nice to have aut0-aperture, modern coatings and more than six aperture blades, but it's small and light and the price is right.  And thanks to its vintage my ME film camera will enjoy it too.  It even has internal filters - that should be curious on a dSLR.  Since much of the fishiness is falling outside the aps-c sensor, even the distortion is not a major effect (though it should be fun on film).

As you may have guessed by now, one will be joining me here soon!  It will be quite interesting to try out, as I have not owned a DA15 but did have a Sigma 15mm f/2.8 fisheye that I really liked.  This is still $100 less than my copy of that fisheye, so the contest is closer between those.  Really, this plus the 28-70mm f/2.8-4 make an interesting manual-focus team, and a manual telephoto would not be difficult to find - say a Pentax 70-210mm f/4?  We shall see...

making adjustments!

One of the great features with more upper-level cameras today is the ability to adjust AF settings for a specific lens.  I had tried it a few times in the past with no benefit, so it's been unused for some time.  With the Tamron 28-75 I finally found a use for that feature, as it appeared to back focus.  Since this is a fast lens at f/2.8 throughout, getting focus right can make a pretty big difference!  I dropped in +3 of 'focus compensation' and the results are very impressive, and justify my letting a few primes go for this bulky but talented zoom.  I then rechecked the new-to-me 18-135 and decided to give it +2 and results look better there as well.

The Vivitar 2x + macro teleconverter arrived faster than I had expected, and oh my does it get me up close!  With the DA40 xs now at 80mm and capable of 1:1 focus (slightly more in fact), this could be worth having around.  It's somewhat dense given the lens elements in the TC, and far shots show some definite loss of contrast - but up close it's definitely a great option, one that I think will be used more than close-up filters.  I will give them each some camera time and see what I think.