Saturday at SRS

Rob... I was just arriving about then. Brown wax coat and a blue camera bag? I would have been earlier but I missed my bus

Cheers, Kris.

Kris

It was a pleasure meeting you at SRS by the way.

I had arrived there just about 15 minutes before you did so I might have run into Rob, but the shop was packed to the seams and I couldn't even get around to the counter where the toys were , And also as I had no idea how Rob looks I failed to recognise him. It would have been good to get to meet some more of the forum members as the chance was there. Perhaps we should have worn stickers with our forum names on our shirts huh .

So I decided to go out and needed to use the cashpoint and returned a few minutes later when I made my way around to the new toys section when you recognised me . Dare I ask how did you manage to spot that it was me? , let me guess, little one on the profile pic and the ones I had posted provided identification for the dad was it?

It was nice meeting you anyway and get to play together with the toys and share experiences. The ring flash seemed good but my oh my, its pretty pricey isn't it? I still have my eye on the DA*300 though

I knew it would be dangerous to go back to SRS, especially on an open day with lots of stuff to play with. My other half and myself spent a long time looking at everything on offer.

I was looking forward to the DA*55 and it was the first thing I played with on arrival. I was not impressed by it though. It is a really nice, well buily lens but I have four lenses that cover 50-55mm, two are F2.8 and wonderful wide open, one is F1.7 but sadly manual and the other is the kit lens. The extra two stops on the 55 are not that usable, focusing was not accurate enough on either of the cameras we have nor on the K20 demo body. Purple fringing occured at F1.4 but was gone by F2. Focus accuracy was much better at F2 because of the extra DoF but I didn't feel I could trust that lens to get me the shots I need.

The DA*60-250 was huge! Personally I did not like the handling nor the range as it overlaps too much with my 50-135 which is positively tiny in comparison (slight exageration). The tripod mount was in a stupid possition that prevented the comfortable use of the zoom ring. Others there agreed that it was in a silly place, got in the way and they would remove it asap if they had the lens. Unfortunately the spacimens they had were preroduction and misaligned so the images were hazy with halos. The other thing I didn't like was the zooming extends the lens rather a lot. I was hoping it was internal zooming like the 50-135.

The ring flash caught my better half's attention as she does a fair bit of macro photography. The controls on the flash seem quite limited but then you notice there are other settings on the flash ring itself. Gives quite good creative potential as you can set side flash only, one third one side and full the other and finally both bulbs full (selectable on a 5 way switch two settings for each side). There were only two of these flashes left and one went so we ended up getting the last (painfull hit 1)
Out of all the lenses on display only one felt really special, the DA*300. Nothing else was different to what I already have nor fely as good. It is almost perfect in shape, quality (build and optical) and size (it is the biggest lens I could possibly fit in my bag). Unfortunately I couldn't let go of it so ended up taking an other painfull hit to the wallet. Hopefully I'll get some good use out of it, it is my new favourite lens. It would be perfect to couple with the 1.4x teleconverter which will be a must have for this lens (640mm equivalent f5.6).

I forgot to pick up any freebies though.

It was nice to meet Chris at last and I also found myself at the counter next to Tyr and introduced myself.

I went looking for a good fast zoom and found one in the 50-135mm F2.8 DA* SDM which is excellent. I love the slick focusing action and F2.8 through the range.

I traded in my *istD for a K-m. The K-m lacks the ease of use of the *istD - which is a really great little camera - but has enough going for it to make it worth the upgrade. The K-m is now my carry-everywhere.

Hello!
IT was a really nice day yesterday!

Ahh I had so much fun, and I met one of you... but profile pics are not common around here, and although we talked plenty, we didn't introduce ourselves - nice to meet you anyway!

Thanks to Chris for the great show, it was really fun.

I have finally made my decisions re. pentax LBA, i'm in need of a long-ish lens, and was really looking forward to the 60-250, mainly because the 50-135 is simply too short to be interesting.

- 50-135 great lens, not too big, constant f2.8, doesn't extend and is therefore very very discrete.
- Seen the 60-250 f4. Its =huge, and very very heavy. It extends at the long zoom end by at least half its lenght, and its a bit like holding up the bigma. f4 is not too fast, and as much as pentax keep on pretending that those are pre-production copies (2 of them) it is really not sharp. at any focal length, and even at f5.6 or higher. I will wait until the official ones come out in april (hopefully) but cannot believe that it will improve much - and its still really big and heavy.
- the 55mm f1.4 ltd is FANTASTIC - asbsolutely amazing bookeh, and really quick focus. great lens if you don't have the 50mm.

- I think i have fallen in love with the Tamron 70-200 f2.8. Sharp, solid, not too fat, not too heavy, perfect focal length, and really really good. I've compared it to the 50-135 and it showed the same sharpness at all focal lengths (obviously only measuring on the sign outside SRS) and its longer, and much much cheaper than the other 2.

What a happy relaxing day, and again, thanks to Chris for hosting!

I did see a few people, lenscape and nathanservi82. Was so distracted by all the equipment that I was not being particularly sociable, sorry about that. If anyone else from here went I was to one in the big black trenchcoat and hat, somewhat hard to miss.

I spent a bit too long selling stuff to people and trying to stop myself buying anything. I was far more successful at the first and completely failed to save myself from buying some things. I think a lot of people had that troube, especially lenscape who I overheard saying "I'll take four!" . It may have had something to do with some Pentax underwear...

I'm pretty sure the 60-250s they had were duds as most of the demo stuff they had had a problem. One of the demo K20s was missing some of the write cirquitry which meant that it took minutes to write a raw file to the card, and it didn't help that it was set to mchinegun mode.

Well, just to add to the comments from the open day.....

I went along for a while to try out the 60-250 primarily, armed with my trusty 70-210 and DA200 in the bag for comparison purposes.

Initial impressions were that the 60-250 is a solid lens, from the same mould as the 200 and 300mm lenses. It is KAF2 mount.

Barrel has two rings, the one nearest the mount controls zoom, the one at the front MF, like the 50-135. It has a MF/AF switch on the barrel like the 200 & 300. If memory serves me well it's a 67mm filter thread, but hey you can look that up on the web!

The barrel extends by about 2-2.5" when at 250mm IIRC. It has a petal shaped hood too, just to make it a bit longer still, so all in all it's not an inconspicuous lens !

Balance seemed OK to me on my K10, even at full extension, unlike the DA200 which feels a bit front heavy to me. Handling I felt was OK, the tripod mount is a little awkward when hand holding, but you can either rotate it 90deg and rest the lens barrel on the hand and then the left thumb nicely supports the bottom edge of the mount, or alternatively you can remove the mount (but not the collar).

As an aside I borrowed a battery grip to try with the DA200 and found to my surprise that it made a big difference to the overall balance, seemed like it provided a more complete 'handle' to hold onto for the right hand so I could get more control with it, perhaps that the pivot point was simply futher back. Also the camera sat more easily in the palm of the left hand, hard to describe, but just better overall. Previously I would have said buy a 2nd battery and put it in your pocket, but it's now on my list to buy. I wonder if the BG would help with the tripod mount grumblings for the 60-250 ?

I took a series of shots using one of the "pre-production" 60-250s, basically f4/4.5/5.6/6.7 at 70/100/135/200/250mm, and a few at 60mm too. Repeated at 70/200mm with my 70-210 (only get 5.6 at 200 tho with this), and with the DA200.

Well, f4, f4.5, f5.6 were all soft at all focal lengths, f6.7 and f8 were 'ok-ish' vs the 70-210. I think this pre-production copy of the lens had some problems. If I had bought it new I would have been returning it. (I even tried using +150um on the focus debug menu to no avail) It's quite common in manufacturing to do short initial production runs to get the manufacturing process sorted out before full scale production, I'm surprised this one was released to the public to play with though - perhaps it has had some mis-handling ? On the plus side, at least it's so bad that we're not all arguing about whether it's good enough for the star rating !

It was nice to be able to handle the lens and get a real feel for it though and overall I feel fairly positive about the lens, provided they sort out the optics.

I wasn't really interested in the 55mm, I played with it a bit and it seemed nice enough, nice wide focus ring. It is KAF3 mount, so no screw drive available here.

I briefly looked at the ring flash, basic idea seems to be to screw one of the 4 available adaptors into the filter thread, then the ring flash grips onto the adaptor. Looks like you can control which of the two semi-circular bulbs is used, IIRC there were 5 settings to play with to control L & R bulbs. Nice, but I don't do much macro so not for me presently.

Finally I took a few shots with the DA300, I've played with this every time I have been into the shop for something else, and every time it gives really clear, sharp, contrasty images. Superb. I'm having a hard time not buying one, if the 60-250 turns out OK I might just trade the 200 in for a 300.

Enquired about the TC and the super-telephoto, but the pentax folks had no news yet , perhaps we'll hear from PMA.

I left with a 540 flash in my bag at one of chris's on the day special prices !

that's all folks !

I was there early on and it was fabulous to play with some lenses I'll never be able to afford. Wish I'd been there a bit longer, I could have tried them *all* out! I liked the DA*60-250, my first experience of SDM on a lens, no quicker to focus but totally silent, I think the optics must have been grubby as all the images were slightly smeared, but on the whole I liked it. Not the same that (to my astonishment) can be said for the DA*55 - really didn't get on with it, slow to focus and the focal point wandered all over the shop, didn't get a single good shot with it, my FA 50 far outperforms it. The DA* 16-50 on the other hand was *really* nice, I liked the weeny little Ltd primes too, wish I'd played with the longer ones though.
Hearing about the medium format camera was extremely encouraging too! Sadly I only came away with a grey card and a groovy Pentax keyfob (I should have wrangled a cap or a mug ), I left the lenses where they were (although my discovery that the ring flash module when set to 100% could be used as a stun weapon did make me ponder on precisely how much kit I could run with and whether it would be the lovely Pentax lass who would wrestle me to the ground when she caught up with me :twisted.
ETA:
Oh yes, I mentioned the DFS issue with the K20 and was surprised that it was the first the rep or the guy in the shop (sorry, forgot his name) had heard of it! He said he'd feed it back through the relevant channels to Pentax Japan.