Two Rather Old and One Not So New

I am still always amazed when I see examples of modern Pentax DSLRs working with far older equipment as accessories, and producing great photographs with the combinations ..... whether its old film era lenses, extension tubes, bellows, old flash gear, our Pentax DSLRs are keeping this stuff going and meaning we get ongoing long term value out of it all!

I used a combination myself the other day .... it seemed to be exactly what was needed. The 'Two rather old' items were the A28 F2.8 lens, and the AF 280T flash, and the 'Not so New' is the Pentax K7 (I'm reluctant to start calling that a 'legacy' item for now!!)

The occaison was No4's third birthday, and the A28mm just felt like the right thing to use .... and being a manual focus lens I needed to use an 'Auto-Thyristor' type flash in order to get automatic flash exposure control. I believe these two items come from the same era, around the time of the LX .... please correct me or make that more accurate if you can.

In any case they certainly went hand in hand (well mount and hotshoe) and I thought made a handsome looking combo with the K7 .... really quite amazing considering the amount of time and technological differences between them all! The fact that they enable great images and are technically a joy to operate makes the whole business just a lot of fun!

Here's a couple of phone shots of the equipment, primed for its task .....









I chose the A28 lens because its the largest aperture lens I own at that focal length, and I wanted a good view for focussing. Even though I chose to shoot at f8 this was still handy for focussing as the light was varying with the curtains being opened and closed.

The AF 280T was operated in its Green A mode (close range) .... the ISO is set with the slider lever and the correct aperture is read off from the green scale figures. I was being told to use F11 for ISO 200, but because I was bouncing from a wall and corner I instead set F8 on the camera to allow more flash light to record. I made fine tuning adjustments to the flash exposure with small ISO nudges (eg to 280 / 160).

Here's a couple of the results ... I was very pleased I chose to shoot with Two Rather Old and One Not so New ! ... and I felt very lucky to have such excellent choices available to me!

Wonderful shots, Nigel. Great expressions on the children's faces, and what a super fun cake! I don't know how accurate they are but on my screen the skin tones look very good - in your capable hands the equipment has worked well. And you are lucky to have such lovely photographic models!

All the best.
Philip

Absolutely spot on. Couldn't say it better myself so I didn't

Thank you Philip and Derek .....great minds huh !

It should be pointed out, there is no ambient light in these photos. The settings of 1/180th , F8, ISO 200 ensured that the fairly dim room recorded as pitch black without the flash. The angle of the wall bouncing of light has created the sort of 'light spread' you see, which I hope looks fairly natural and complementary.

Even with such old equipment, the on-camera bounce /light shaping techniques are far easier to handle and manipulate than the process of setting up off-camera flashes and umbrellas and things. Certainly for this type of quick, casual home situation, then it's the most practical approach, regardless of the age of the gear or the particular modes of operation that are needed.