Pentax accessories & lenses

photo credit: davidgsteadman

When buying a photo camera, we often research in order to decide if this is the best camera, if its features will be goo enough, but will it be robust enough? Will it be useful or necessary to purchase a warranty contract extension? Will it fail very soon?

When somebody asks me these questions (and it happens quite often since I consider myself some kind of photography expert), I am usually without good answers; Nobody really speaks about this dirty little secret: Reliability of photo cameras is a taboo issue. In most cases, talking only happens for very extreme situations (I will not mention any pro camera events in the past few years). But on a daily basis, will my camera follow me everywhere? will it survive the bad treatment I will apply? Or will it fail at the sight of the first cloud (of dust or rain)? Preferably just a couple of days after the end of the warranty period?

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When you use an expensive SLR camera you are often tempted to purchase a specialty lens like a ultra-wide angle (fish eye) lens.

But, apart from the rare occasions when you really need it, it’s too expensive for you and me. Why not build it yourself? Instructables does the demonstration with a Nikon D90, but it could be done with any other camera.

How to make a fish eye lens for a Nikon D-90 Digital SLR for $16

Tamron rewrote its web site. This was the occasion to move the Lens Comparison Tool but it is still useful to compare a 400mm with a 500mm (or a 35mm with a 50mm).

Tamron - Lens Comparison Tool (based on focal length)

But you can also find a similar tool at Olympus (and it takes into account the specificities of 4/3 sensor format, of course): Perfect Lens finder.

Olympus Perfect Lens Finder

Really unusual announcement : Pentax, which already has a nice line of SLR photo cameras specially treated to be weather-resistant, and just introduced the Pentax K-7 as weather-resistant and cold-temperature-hardened, now offers two new weather-resistant zoom lenses.

SMC PENTAX DA 18-55MM F3.5-5.6 AL WR

SMC PENTAX DA 18-55MM F3.5-5.6 AL WR

SMC PENTAX DA 50-200MM F4-5.6 ED WR

SMC PENTAX DA 50-200MM F4-5.6 ED WR

We had seen that Olympus thought stopping the race for pixels taking 12 mega-pixels as the maximum really needed by most photographers. But they had satyed more or less isolated… up to now.

Pentax K20D

FotoMagazin, German monthly photo magazine, tells us the news in its lastest (April) issue: Pentax joins Olympus in the non-race. After Nikon whose Nikon D700 had shown an honorable restraint with its 12 mega-pixels only digital sensor (in 24×36 Full Frame sensor format), here is Gabriele Remmers, Marketing Communication Manager of the Division of Imaging Systems of Pentax Europe, who revels that today it is more important to bring out image quality, low levels of noise and deep details rather than a pixels explosion. End of the show! Let’s start being serious about quality.

I have to say that I fell in love with this Gabriele. In the interview, we can surprise her defending optical viewfinders (as the pentaprism of our SLR cameras) against Electronic View Finders (EVF).

But, for the most entrenched pentax lovers like some of our readers, she may have a surprise in store when she is questionned about the upcoming cameras. Speaking of 35mm Full Frame, she tells us that you will have to be very very patient. There’s nothing on the drawing table, Pentax is stuck with its range of APS-C “small sensor” lenses. No Full Frame before creating (shoudln’t I say “re-creating”) a full range of lenses targetting this sensor format (some extension of the current D-FA and FA ranges). And if you look into mid-size format, Pentax is still thinking about it but with a low priority (nothing to be expected in the short term).

So, what will be the next Pentax K30D? Quite certainly an APS-C SLR camera with a 12 to 15 mega-pixel sensor optimized for image quality, with an optical viewfinder looking through a nice pentaprism.

Sony lens - 'Hiding' by Scoobay

I recommend reading a nice little post titled “All lens tests are wrong” that concludes that the only good test for a lens is to use it during a full year.

Not wrong, but I still recommend to also check my list of web sites with photo lens reviews.

Thanks to Tamron, it is possible to easily compare photo lenses of different focal length and their effect on the size of an image.

Tamron focal length comparison (click on the image)

Tamron focal length comparison

DPreview has a good comparison of 4 zoom lenses opening at f/2.8 for SLR cameras:

• Canon 70-200mm F2.8 L IS USM
• Nikon AF-S VR 70-200mm F2.8 G
• Sigma 70-200mm 1:2.8 EX DG Apo Macro HSM II
• Tamron 70-200mm 1:2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro

Since they are one of the most coveted segment of the SLR lens market, it was worth mentionning despite the absence of some serious participants like the Sony SAL-70200G – 70-200mm f/2.8 G-Series offering (originating back into the days of the great white lenses from Minolta) or the Pentax SMC-FA* 80-200mm f/2.8 [IF] ED.

Canon lenses, which one is best?

It is often difficult but manageable to group lens reviews in order to compare/evaluate a little more than their mere physical characteristics (focal length, aperture/diaphragm, or even number of individual lenses). But how would you evaluate/review optical quality? When I see the difference really impressive between two lenses, I would be prepared to judge from their price, but a cheap wide-angle lens is not always worse than a slightly more expensive one (well… if the price difference is really large, it’s not only an accident and quality explains a lot).

So, where to?

I collected a few web sites appearing quite able to provide this kind of quality reviews/comparisons/evaluations/tests.

From here, I invite you to an orgy of lens reviews, lens tests, lens comparisons, lens evaluations. And remember to shoot some photos, too. It’s not only the lens which does the photo. Some are shot by telephones, if the photographer is an artist.