Why do I shoot Pentax
As we age our choices add up and the consequences of those choices becomes more apparent. When it comes to a camera platform I was born at just the right time for Pentax to my camera of choice – though I admit to a deep and abiding love for Nikon classic lenses.
Many today view Pentax shooters as crazy – after all, hasn’t mirrorless taken over everything in this space? Well, not for some of us.
In this piece I’m going to voice my opinion on the topic, you be the judge if I’m crazy or if I have a valid point.
Pentax Mount History
Pentax digital cameras are incredibly lens-versatile (as are virtually all Mirrorless cameras from other manufacturers, but with caveats) and there is a reason for that. Pentax was the originator of the 35mm SLR camera. Their camera’s originally took M42 lenses. Next, they created the original Pentax Bayonet mount in 1975 – which is still in use today. Along with this bayonet mount came the ability to build lenses which would allow the user to rotate a dial on the camera and change aperture – the cameras motor did the job via a linkage, no more rotating wheel necessary – on some lenses. The last iteration of Pentax 35mm SLR’s came with the advent of autofocus in 1981.
Today’s Lenses
Pentax (Actually Ricoh but whose counting) produces lenses today which are designed for the smaller digital sensor size most of their camera’s run on – though they do also produce full-frame lenses for their flagship. Pentax even has a Limited series of lenses which are widely considered phenomenal by users – at least those of us smart enough to grab up the 35mm 1.1 Macro F2.8 they make. These all-metal lenses are built to fit onto modern Pentax’s and deliver spectacular results – but they aren’t cheap.
Art History
Many of us have sentimental histories with our lens collections – and it doesn’t even make us greedy. If you buy a lens a year and enough time passes, you wind up with a bookshelf of them, if you buy 4-5 a year, you wind up with a BIG bookshelf of them. Different situations call for different lenses and the deeper your history goes with your lens collection – the more important it becomes.
This is a very real concern many younger photographers don’t anticipate, and stumble into. Every lens, every grip, every battery creates more inertia not to change. Why do I mention this? Because it’s a warning that whatever system you go with, despite photography being a single pursuit, it’s as good as your skill with your tools – so be careful what you buy.
I mention this here because it’s a widely known fact Pentax struggles with video – and it does. Those of us who shoot Pentax often own a second – or even third or fourth – camera for video. Although a sizable chunk of the community just uses the ever improving smartphones and a lav mic for that – oh well.
Vintage Lenses
M42’s – Lenses which literally screw into the front of the camera. Originally designed to be a standard akin to memory in computers or sockets for lightbulbs, this standard fell out of favor by the late 1970s.
Bayonet-Only
When you go Pentax lens shopping you’ll stumble into a wide – wide – variety of old Pentax lenses which are bayonet only – A 105mm 1:2 f4.0 Macro I own comes to mind.
Bayonet W/Aperture Control
With the advent of the bayonet mount came an electronic control over a linkage to the lens. This allowed manufacturers to make lenses which gave the camera aperture control – but still allowed for manual control if the user wanted. There is a wide variety of lenses here, and you’ll note they have an A all the way past their top setting with a button, allowing the user to click into this position.
Autofocusing
Many of the iconic Pentax lens formulas were reproduced from the 80s onward into autofocus form. These lenses are relatively slow as compared with faster modern lenses, however for many tasks – such as portraits and landscapes, they still do an excellent job – and it isn’t like they are all super slow either.
Note: Many will prattle on about special lens coatings doing this or that in modern lenses – and maybe some of it’s true. I don’t notice it, the proof as they say, is in the pudding and for lenses with no modern coating, they still seem to work, so…
One Iconic lens of this era which I love is the SMC Pentax 50mm f1.4 – I absolutely cannot tell the difference between shots taken with it and taken with the modern incarnation of the same. There are many – many – versatile, small, handy lenses from this era. One of the best grab-and-go lenses in my kit is the SMC Pentax 35-75mm F 3.5-5.6 – why? it’s size, it’s almost as small as a golf ball and it weighs almost nothing – and costs likewise. It’s no good for low light situations, but walking around in the daylight, it’s an excellent general purpose zoom – if only for certain circumstances.
Why Vintage Lenses?
One question I have seen asked a thousand times and responded to equally often – to no real resolution – is why do we – still frame shooters – want vintage lenses anyway? I think many people feel the much better video-capable cameras such as Sony, Panasonic or Fuji are much better served by these lenses. The fact is many shoot video with vintage lenses and achieve super results. What a lot don’t seem to realize is that this is equally true for still frame photography.
There is something almost magic about a correct setup Fuji rig using a de-clicked (or not) vintage lens for taking still-frame photos – to me, the same magic I see on a Pentax. Furthermore, a simple adapter will allow vintage Pentax lenses to work with almost all mirrorless platforms – they all have them, or do they? Please let me know if I’m wrong on this (Sigma aside) because I believe every major mirrorless cam can easily adapt to using M42’s and early Pentax lenses.
Catch-in-Focus
A core feature of Pentax DSLR’s is something called Catch-in-Focus. This simple feature, once enabled, allows users of vintage lenses with zero electronic connection to the camera body to obtain crisp, perfect shots simply by virtue of this feature. You frame a subject and gradually rotate the focus wheel until its in focus. The camera will emit a beep as well as a red dot in the center of the frame, and it will fire. One technique used by many photographers is to distance out a subject and simple zoom-with-legs using a prime lens to keep the subject in frame – works great at F4 or higher outdoors.
This feature – or very similar to it – do exist in other cameras, but not in combination with the ruggedness of Pentax.
Ruggedness
One thing that has to be mentioned is Pentax’s sheer ruggedness. Except for early digital models, all Pentax are built using metal frames internally and feel like a tank in the hand. Even the earlier models such as K10D and K20D are absolute brutes of camera’s and quite possibly, being polymer framed, are even tougher.
Pentax are known for their weatherproofing, and it’s not just a sales gimmick. If you have a modern Pentax with a lens which is ruggedized on it, you can literally drop your camera in mud and spray it clean with a garden hose and the odds are it will work. This makes Pentax cameras very popular among photographers doing adventure or wildlife photography in inhospitable climates.
Note: Though I know the above is true, I would be a propagandist if I didn’t mention the fact many other cameras are now much more rugged than in the past and also weigh less. Those not doing still photography who are out there doing action and adventure shooting are increasingly using gimbles and phones, dedicated video cameras and drones and much more. For those specifically wanting a hard-as-nails still frame camera, Pentax is sill perhaps the best option – if you don’t care about video at all.
Battery Life
I once forgot my K1 on for an entire week, but because I bought quality batteries and had only shot a few dozen shots from it, it still had about 90% of it’s battery left. The battery time and idle usage in most Pentax’s is nothing short of amazing. When you go out camping and stay out for a week or more, being able to throw a few ounces of batteries into your gear bag is a big plus .vs. numerous mirrorless offerings which cannot compete and have battery lives measured in days or even hours.
Bad Lenses / Old Lenses
Japan
Something that has to be mentioned here is the climate of coastal Japan. I have seldom seen this mentioned, but it should be brought to people’s attention more often. Coastal areas are much more apt to cause lenses long-term damage as they allow for easier ingress of water, humidity and salt into the lenses. Having purchased many vintage lenses from Japanese sellers on eBay, I’ve noted that careful questioning and inspection is critical to getting good results. Note: This is not to say Japanese sellers are being dishonest, the fact is, lenses have many areas which need to be checked and not everyone is a photography expert – so study those photos and if it’s a big-spend, ask for more, the sellers I dealt with from Japan have always been obliging. The key thing to look for in studying older lenses is cob webbing, scratches on the front, fog inside or- and this is a straight question – ‘does its aperture turn’ – again, 99% of the time the sellers on sites like eBay are honest and will disclose all of this. As for repairing lenses, it’s taken me a long time and many tools to even repair basic prime lenses – optics isn’t exactly simple.
It is worth noting that this is not unique exclusively to Japan – and Japan hosts some of the best Pentax lens sellers in the world – but it is more apt to be a problem with vintage lenses originating there simply due to the climate. Though I can’t prove it, I suspect lenses stored in old trunks for 40 years in the UK would suffer the same age related damage.
Looking to try Pentax?
Today we live in a world where the term obsolete is applied to flavors of ice cream and even lightbulbs irrespective of the function being performed. In the photographic world, the benchmark for many is megapixels. Many look at a camera such as the Nikon D200 or Pentax K10D and think of these as being obsolete – after all, they only output 10mp. A 10MP image is roughly 4000 x 2500 in size (roughly) which is more than enough for web usage. Considering more than half of all photographs today are viewed on smartphones, a 10mp image is going to appear crystal clear to the human eye which doesn’t zoom into the image. In other words, 10mp is plenty for web use and even minor print use. Add to this mix the bevy of new tools which come out almost daily using AI to improve imagery, fix problems and utterly change the imagery and can plainly see it’s plenty.
The Pentax K20D is my recommendation for a starter Pentax body along with a SMC Pentax 50mm F1.7 or F.1.4 lens. Given the size of the sensor in the K20D and it’s 14mp output, it’s a solid still camera that can mount literally thousands of different lenses and includes all key features to make for a solid photographic experience. Where is my evidence? All over Flickr and other platforms which warehouse photo by the millions taken on them.
What’s my take on MegaPixels?
For me, my benchmark is 10MP – below that, I’m not very interested in the camera and that’s primarily due to the technology available at the time those sensors were created – it just wasn’t that great, even if it was CCD. I think with proper technique, focus, time, post-processing and newer tools, you can get away with 10MP photos without being noticed very much – and there is plenty of room for down scaling to hide a lack of focus.
Increasing megapixels increases file size, unless you intend to take photos and bring them to the print shop for large format printing, it beggars the question as to why you need it. For casual photographers who are eager to learn the art, snap some photos to share online and maybe have fun building a lens collection on a budget – go for it, it’s a great choice, a good excuse to walk and a lot of fun.
Final Thoughts
Photography requires more than a camera. Depending upon your desired goagoals,otography can and will require everything from a studio strobe light to box lights, a good computer and a lot of time. Over timtime,ur platform of choice will no doubt influence your future buying decisions.
I own many – many – Nikon lenses but only a single Nikon – why? Because it’s of the 5000 series, which contain no motor to spin the AF gear in the lenses. Instead, these very cost-effective cameras are easy to modify by adding an old-fashioned focus screen to use to acquire focus. They take a lot better video than a Pentax (despite the age) 1920×1080@60fps – more than enough with a good lens to create video worth uploading to YouTube and a simple mic-jack allows for lav mic’s and everything you need. I also own a Panasonic which shoots the same in 4K – both are set up to use vintage pre-ais Nikon lenses. 4K Drones are increasingly cheap and add dimension to video that would be thought impossible twenty years ago and, while I don’t own one now, I have in the past and I would much rather lose a drone than my cameras.
My Video Camera
Besides my relatively cheap, walking around Nikon 5000 (which is still a DSLR) series I also own a mirrorless Micro 4/3 video camera for the purpose of video – that’s it – the Panasonic G7.
The G7 lacks many of the features present in modern day 4K video cameras – but I don’t record in 4K for the most part anyway? – and since it has no stablization it sits either on an anchored tripod or in a stabilizer.
The entire Panasonic plus Viltrox and 24mm lens cost less than some of the lenses for my Pentax lineup. Why do I own these? Simple – video. Instead of buying one, awesome camera, I opted to buy a second one just for video – that can mount vintage lenses and give me the look I want.
I may well buy another camera, Nikon and Fuji are very tempting to me, but my point in writing this isn’t to review any cameras but rather to explain why those of us who shoot Pentax do so.
I think for most Pentax shooters it’s not the camera, it’s the operator, and it’s not wanting to part with many stories of hunting down specific lenses for specific purposes and having to relearn a method of photography that is far more digital than it is analog.
My advice to anyone who reads this is to take your time and look at everything out there and think in terms of novelty and classical artistic truisms – not marketing hype and not blended roles. Is it nice to have a still camera that records video? Absolutely, but it’s also nice to drop a little money and have a dedicated video camera or perhaps a 4K drone instead.
Note: I am sure I failed to mention more features than I even use on my cameras. Pentax cameras come jam packed with features and have excellent ergonomics (in my opinion and many others) but with such a world of features inside it’s difficult to touch on every point.