the E500 saga

While toying with µ43 gear I decided to try the E500 and 4Thirds lenses. Several of those are both unique and well liked, and they can be adapted to the newer micro cams. So why not? I added both K-4T and 4T-µ43 adapters to ensure my many lenses could take advantage of as many systems as possible. The E500 takes Compact Flash and xD cards; I bought adapters to use microSD inserts but that didn't work too well, so I ended up with an 8G CF and 2G xD for the ever-increasing pile of gear that the experiment was requiring.

Well here's a bit of what happened - -
The e500 and lenses (35mm macro, 18-180mm and 11-22) arrived about the same time. And the E500 battery would not charge.  That sent me out to buy a spare battery, which arrived the absolute day that I could still return the lenses. A few quick tests led me to cancel the returns that I had filed - these lenses were quite good. The 18-180 had typical superduperzoom challenges (especially f/6.3 at the long end) but it looked like a good investment.

Then the bargain µ43 adapter arrived.  It didn't really work, waaayy too tight mounting to the lens. I got the 35 macro to work and it was fine. I got the 18-180 to barely fit, and AF speeds were awful (as expected and reported by every 4Thirds/µ43 owner). The 11-22 would not fit at all without becoming permanently fixed to the adapter.  Hey no worries, I bought from a US listing (as reported by eBay).

When asked to return the adapter a Hong Kong address was listed. Oh sure, the "USA address" was "Ontario, United States" - a vague drop-box sort of address. You could add California to your fake listing at least.. but they had me. No way was I going to ship internationally for a $30 refund, wait two weeks and learn I get 80% or nothing because they cannot duplicate the problem.

So what to do with all this stuff?  The most productive answer would be to buy an EM1 with phase-detect AF on the sensor; that allows the 4Thirds lenses to reassert themselves as excellent lenses.  Oh wow those are $500 used, $900 new - no thanks.

So I ordered another Pentax camera and will dump this experiment ASAP.

The µ43 gear is already gone, victim of the last pre-IRA financial crunch - so there's no point to holding 4Thirds gear. As noted in an earlier post, the E500 cannot easily do action or low light (in its era 3-point AF and iso400-max shots were the rule).

If nobody speaks up soon for the gear soon it's off to the resale companies where I'll be lucky to get $200 for the bunch.  Better than keeping it here and recalling these moments. These are still excellent lenses and hopefully an EM1 owner will give them new life. It's just not for me.

don't believe anything I say

.. but why are you still reading?

I really so want one of the $1500 K-1 bodies that I saw online today.  THREE of them, each a demo/likenew and each at a different location.  I will have some cash next week but very little right now - so even at $500 I must say no.

That includes all the K-3 bodies I saw a few days ago, which have all been sold. Even at $200 I must say no.

So Adorama drops in a surprise just for me, it seems: a demo K50 body for about $150. My paypal-dumpsite balance this evening (just after another lens sold) is.. $145?

OK: so for now I'm a K50 guy. 
This is a K50 iii - not because of Pentax introducing another silly-suffix camera model (and they are not alone doing this!), but because I have been forced to dump two previous K50s! However this one's black so I'll pretend the red ones didn't count!

Maybe next week I'll return it for another demo K-1.. or K-3?  Highly unlikely, but dreams die hard..

This means the white K-01 is now even more expendable as its similar sibling with Phase-AF and a real eyepiece rejoins the team. I'd love to say I don't need those items, but remember not to believe me if I do say so!

mostly right

self portrait with mirrors

I've always had a soft spot for the underdog.  The Pentax K-01 fits this role perfectly (as the K-s1 did later). It was reviled by the press for being unconventional yet delivering big-time on image quality. It's a K-5 in everything but shape viewfinder and AF system! It's not a great fit with bulky telephoto lenses but give it lightweight lenses and it will produce consistently excellent images.

I have another white K-01 body and recently I attached the Quantaray /Sigma 28-90mm 1:2 'macro' lens on it. Generally it's fast to focus (the K-01 CDAF is not swift at all times, but firmware has improved it!) and the 28-90 is a sharp lens, on APSc at least. 

I have found that 1:2 satisfies my closeup needs quite nicely and this is a $30 lens that does the job very well.

I may be moving the K-01 soon to finance a K-3 body - and I'll miss it again.

all wrong

Recent plans have been adrift, planning without verifying. Once again I was buying bargains, but if the system is not the best of fits it will all be re-sold so 'bargain' is less the correct term. I had figured that the possibility of using a viewfinder would make a big difference to her over the Samsung body she has now.  But no - my wife really likes the NX300, and she has now made that clear. This means we have NX as our mirrorless system, and µ43 gear is all wrong as a second camera.

The little Olympus (and Panasonic) cameras go great work, and I've been impressed.  However, a second mirrorless kit is not a sensible answer. I sort of knew this and grabbed some 4Thirds 'bargains' too - and I enjoyed it for a bit until I found myself stranded in an ideal photo shoot with less-than-ideal gear.

The E500 simply cannot do action or low light, which is precisely where I found myself when a crowd of pelicans visited a local pond.  Even the NX300 with PDAF on the sensor could have outdone this - though right now I can only go to 75mme with that camera, so the pelicans would have been absurdly smaller compared to these taken at 350mme.  Very sad to be stuck between systems at this moment, but it's a learning experience that will stick with me. I have a K-01 (yes, another mirrorless body) that might have improved on these, but holding its VF-free body steady with a larger and equally-slow telephoto lens could easily have produced fuzzy birds too even with its SR system working.

For surrealism I like this second image.. but I'd greatly prefer some frozen pics of flying pelicans at iso4000 or so. And none of the gear that I have now cannot manage it.

A final spasm of financial pain came as I was learning all this, and in a flurry of deals the µ43 gear has pretty much all departed. The 4Thirds gear is still here for a while; I had ordered spare batteries and cables so until they arrive they aren't much of a package.  Hopefully I can get most of my ill-planned investment back once the package is fully assembled; the Zuiko 11-22mm is very much a sought-after lens in the Four Thirds and adapted world. That sale plus the pending IRA funds will put us in a better situation for thinking things through and moving on.

"Moving on" comes in two steps.  Part One is a second NX300 so that my wife and I have matching kits. Those bodies are still at around $200 for a decent used copy which is what hers cost. I had considered an NX30 instead, but those tend to cost more than I deem reasonable for our needs.  The 50-200mm ois telephoto can be had for $150, so I might as well have a shareable copy of that. And the 10/16/30 primes might come later if they strike me as great deals.

Part Two is clearly Pentax.
I know their gear, like it a lot, and still have a few good lenses for it. The 28-90, 100/2.8 and a 300 mirror remain in the closet, and a few others could hang about as well. I will seek weather seals so either an 18-50re or 20-40 Limited zoom would be fine, with 16-50 or 16-85 as outside odds to join me. With the 300 mirror I could be satisfied with a 50-200wr, but we'll see when the time comes.

The body - well, the pelican shot suggests that an AF upgrade would serve me well at times. The K-3 has far more AF points within a similar screen area, and its logic systems outdo the K-5 combos as well. Many other features hide within as well that I'd like, and while slightly heavier and harder on battery life the body size is very K-5ish. That's where I'm leaning for now, with K-3ii and K-5ii as outsiders and the K-01 a disappointing fourth.  The extra $1000 is too much to bear in the near future, not to mention more grams and lens requirements.  The temptation is great though!

retro move

In an attempt to step back to the CCD era and continue use of some of my Pentax primes, I picked up a gently-used Olympus E500. The Four-Thirds standard produced some very nice gear and Excellent lenses, but failed to convince users that a large camera with a small sensor was worthwhile.  It spawned the micro-Four-Thirds era which is going quite nicely, and which I now use.

Back in 2008 my tests showed the E500 to be as good as anything I tried in the store - at least at whatever settings the previous user tried. It definitely bettered the E510, which was sad because image stabilization was important to me. I left the E500 two-lens kit on the shelf, but always wondered about whether that was the right move. I went with the Sony-α A200 which I used for a year before shifting to Pentax, which I've used until the past few months when the EM10 joined me.

Four-Thirds lenses are not greatly sought after, so a few attempts to pick up good copies of well-reviewed lenses paid off. The curious zoom pairing of 11-22 and 18-180mm will arrive next week. Both zooms cover rather odd ranges; the 22-44mme is not a common range from other brands and the 36-360mme clearly abandons the more complex wide end while still achieving superzoom status. Most folks would go with the traditional 14-45 and 40-150 zooms but I can go both wider and longer with these two - and the 11-22 is weather protected as well.  I also picked up the 35mm f/3.5 1:1 macro that should serve nicely. All three are generally well regarded - and with an adapter all can be used on µ43 systems and retain electronic connections! Some Four-Thirds lenses focus very slowly when adapted, so it may not prove worth doing.. but it will be interesting to try. At the very least the 35 macro will be a nice addition to the micro kit.  A Pentax K to Four Thirds adapter is already here (K to µ43 too!) for the K primes that I already own.