I got a Pentax K10D for Xmas last year and have spent this year buying trying to learn how to use it, reading various photography magazines and browsing on flickr. Along the way, I've bought three manual focus lenses, and two more autofocus lenses, along with two Pentax film cameras, which are also fun to play with.

 

I live in Glossop, so there is lots of countryside around to photograph, but it's usually raining - one more reason I bought a camera which is weather sealed.

 

My current kit has been assembled a bit haphazardly, so here is a chronology.

 

Pentax K10D

I got this because it is a fully featured 10 megapixel SLR which offers lots of control while you are shooting. Also it was recently discontinued, and was available for £300.

See

 

DCRP Review: Pentax K10D

Pentax K10D Digital SLR Review

Pentax K10D Digital Camera Review Introduction

Pentax K10D full review Cameralabs introduction

Pentax 10D – A Hands-On Report

 

for more details.

  

Pentax SMC DA 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 AL

The kit lens, and for a kit lens, pretty reasonable. It's light as it is polycarbonate in construction, it has a good useful range, and the wide end is good and wide. It's not perfect though, the macro is not very good, and after using it for a few months I started looking at the Pentax forums on the web.

 

photo.net/pentax-camera-forum/

www.pentaxforums.com/forums/

Pentax User

Pentax SLR Talk Forum: Digital Photography Review

 

to see what the best options were to upgrade. I was surprised to find that many people recommended getting older manual focus lenses. After checking out some of the image galleries and the photos I decided to get a

 

Pentax SMC A 50mm F1.7

This has proved to be super sharp, and if I could only get the kids to stay still, I'm sure I'd take more photos with it. This has auto-exposure, so is quite easy to use as long as you remember to keep focusing. See here for reviews. I actually bought this as part of a complete kit for £70, with a Pentax Program A film SLR and accessories, which I have refurbished and replaced the light sealing on, and am playing with happily.

 

Tokina RMC 28mm F2.8 lens

I got this off Ebay for £39. This is quite good at f5.6 and smaller, but not so hot wide open. I've taken quite a few shots with it, as it gives a nice field of view on the digital sensor, and is of course properly wide on the film body. I'm not sure if I'll keep it forever, as there do seem to be some really sharp 28mm primes out there, so when the budget allows I might trade up. It is beautifully made though.

 

Pentax SMC M 135mm F3.5

This is a very compact long lens, and very sharp. It is very good value (I paid £32 on Ebay), as back in the day 135mm was the default size for a first telephoto prime, so there are lots of them out there. See here for notes.

 

I have really enjoyed trying out macro photography with the 50mm prime lens I bought, but it was a pain getting extension tubes on and off to change the possible focal distances, so I looked for lenses which were useful both in normal and macro modes. After the usual trawl through the reviews on Pentax Forums I have bought one of these to try to meet this need:

 

Pentax SMC F 35-70mm F3.5-4.5

This lens is great as a nice normal to telephoto zoom, with a really easy to use macro. It's as close to prime quality as I think you could ever ask, and it beats the kit lens by a mile, and the 70mm length is nice to get photos of the kids without getting too close. £30 on Ebay The really amazing thing about this lens is the close focus macro end. Look at this

 

and

 

for examples of 100% crops to show the detail this can pick out close up. This is now my default lens, and I only use the kit lens when I need the wider end handy. Having only a 2x zoom may be less than people expect now, but the very high quality is a price worth paying. Since I bought mine I've seen one of these sell for £4.50! I would have paid that to have a spare. See here for details.

 

When I started using the M series lenses, which do not have any way of communicating the aperture setting to the camera, I also found that the pop up flash on the K10D did not work very well. It always fires on full power unless you use an A series lens or later, which has the automatic exposure setting. To get around this I bought a Pentax AF200SA flash for £7.50 on Ebay, which is a lovely little thing that measures the distance to the subject itself, and so as long as you set the camera to 1/180 and f4, off you go.

 

I've also swapped the focus screen in the K10D for an old fashioned split prism one, £17.50 from jinfinance on Ebay, to make the focusing easier with manual lenses. It works a treat but there's no grid or cross hairs, so it's a pain to remember to keep the horizon flat.

 

To extend my macro capabilities I've bought a 49mm to 52mm reverse coupler, so I could put my 28mm prime on backwards with some of the other lenses and get some true macro images. This works fine, but the depth of field is minuscule, so I have also got a Giottos 9361B tripod from Harrison Camerasand have been using CombineZM to do some focus stacking, like this

.

 

More recently, I was idling on Ebay and saw a Pentax SXFn autofocus film body with a Pentax SMC-F 35-135 f3.5-4.5 lens which I paid the grand total of £26 for. I've tried the lens out on the K10D and it seems okay stopped down a bit, but with a tendency to confuse the autofocus when the distance is too short in macro. Test shots

 

 

 

See here for details.

 

Next project is to go out and photograph Glossop at sunset from a railway bridge, and see how that goes.