MZ-S Continued...

Well the thread on the MZ-S was quite the impetus I needed to lay down the digital for a while and get back to film. I purchased a couple rolls of Tmax 100 and hit the trails! I took three lenses along with my MZ-S: M28mm 2.8, M50mm 1.7, and my A70-210mm f4.
What a great time! And I captured some beauties that are going in my BW portfolio. (for some reason though, I found myself looking down at the back of the camera after each shot... queer).
Here's a couple of my favorites:

M50mm f1.7 at f11



A70-210mm f4 at f22

Joshua: Great photos! Don't you feel really GOOD about going out with real FILM for a change? !!!

Y'know Peter, I actually do!!
It was great! I felt that mystery again that I love, not know how those rolls will turn out, and what "gems" await you on development!

Lovely shots Joshua and that's exactly the feeling I get too and you learn so much from the ones that don't quite work, don't you?

I send my films away for development and it may have taken weeks to finish each one (I have several cameras and not nearly as many photo opportunities as I'd like), the excitement and expectation I have when opening the envelopes hasn't begun to diminish yet - and I'm sure it never will.

Digital's great in so many ways but I still love film.

what digital system are your using joshua?

I use the *istD with the DA16-45mm f4 along with my regular lenses.
Why dost thou ask?

i am searching for a digital system besides my mz-s & 645nii....

But until now i do not know for sure to stay with pentax (for digital) or to step over to a different provider. The d200 seems nice to me, but i hear a lot of problems... I already have nice lenses (FA 50 1.4, FA 85 1.4, FA 24-90 ED,FA 300 4.5 ED), but am not sure how they behave on the digital variants... besides that i would prefer a minimum of 10Mb, six is in my mind to low.

regards,

Willie Jan.

You've only got to compare the viewfinders of a Nikon and the Pentax. I haven't seen the viewfinder in the D200, but the D100 viewfinder is APS sized - it's like being in a box (incidentally all the Fuji S DSLRs are the same).

All the lenses you mention will work a dream on the *ist-D series (and all the "A" series work very well too!). You end up with a crop which effectively multiplies your focal length by 1.5 (doesn't change the focal length, just the angle of view).

I think you would be surprised to see what you can do with 6 mega pixels and the lenses you have If you need seriously large output, then bank on getting Capture One Pro - it will give a fabulous upsize to 24 mega pixels (it does this from the sensor CCD information, and is much better than upsizing a TIFF or JPG in Photoshop).

I've recently taken some images (shot RAW, converted in Capture One LE at 6 mega pixels), then upsized in Photoshop CS2 and sharpened - to 51 mega pixels! Printed at 16x20" at 402dpi and the result is just sublime

It's just a very different workflow from film and needs a bit of time and experience to master....

Back on thread: Joshua - those B&Ws are excellent!

Matt

at this moment matt, i scan some of my 35mm, 6x12 and 4x5 for my website www.foto-art.nl. Specially for my theater work and newspaper photos i would prefer digital. Besides that my heart is with the 4x5 in the landscape....

Willie:
First off, nice website, great dreamy landscapes!

It doesn't seem as though you're in too big of a need for digital, but it would be perfect for your theatre work, even at 6MP - no problem!
But you can always wait alittle longer for Pentax to come out with a 8MP DSLR (which I imagine shouldn't be too long, but who knows). If you are in need of more megapixels really urgently then you would have to go with another brand, if you really want to buy a whole new line of lenses.
If I were you, I'd just wait a bit longer to see what Pentax comes out with in response to the new trend of higher MP DSLR's.

Joshua,
can't we infiltrate into pentax to find out

Given Pentax use the same Sony chip as Nikon we only have to look at the D200 to have a reasonable guess...

That's probably true. However, don't forget that to double resolution you need to quadruple the pixel count!!
So a 12Mp sensor has twice the horizontal (and vertical) resolution of a 3Mp sensor.

I'll appreciate a little more resolution anyway, and a 10Mp Pentax would be very nice indeed. However, my point was that even at 6Mp I can produce images that were impossible when using 35mm (for me at least) - both in terms of quality and resolution.

Especially for theatre and gig work I have found the *ist-D to be amazingly good! Wish I could do more theatre work. I have some samples here: http://www.pbase.com/mattmatic/concerts The Swing Out Sister gig was particularly challenging - it required slow shutter speeds even at ISO3200! (And I couldn't get very close at all!) Every time I do a gig/theatre shoot I learn something new

Matt

usually i start at 1600 for theater shots with a 85mm 1.4.
A lens such as the 24-90 is not usable in my case otherwise all photos would be unsharp by movements of the actors...

If you use this lens, use a tripod all the time. This will increase the amount of sharp photos.

oops, this was me not logged in.

bloody XP cookies.