I bought the 100mm macro for portraits, it is perfect.
as for the 501.4+1.7af converter, it autofocuses and is very sharp. you lose a little light, but hardly problematic.... it works fine.
I do have an 85mm soft 2.2 but if using with studio flash, needs 4-8 stops nd filter added so focussing is hard.

I do hope Pentax takes it older 85 1.4 af lens design, and releases an inexpensive, all plastic version like the 35 2.4...
being priced at about $300.00 to $350.00 CDN would be a huge seller for Pentax.....

I know everybody loves thier own countries, as I do mine..... but I gotta say Canada is the only Country I ever want to travel in. (ok two trips to the USA, Iowa was nice).

I love the lack of guns and overall low crime rates compared to other places.

My Grandmother lived in her small town Ontario home for over fifty years.
Her door was only locked once that whole time. Her house was only broken into once during that whole time.

My Aunt was visiting from Calgary, and took Grandma out to bingo one night. My Aunt locked the front door on thier way out, and when they got back, my aunt had to break in through a window, as the front door lock had never been used and was broken. Nobody knows how many years that lock was broken, but we never used it again.

Fifty years and no break-in's, robberies or violent crimes in the whole neighbourhood.

I love this Country. (yes our cities do have crime, but it is easy enough to buy land in the countrysides).

You can drive 8000 kms across numerous provinces and never have a gun waved at you or have to pull out your id to the authorities. ( unless you speed...).

Yep. and with the k5 you got the dynamic range to that if you need to.... so now exposing for the highlights and pulling the shadows up in post is even better with RAW....
yep. sometimes I shoot an image with INTENT to do some serious photoshopping to it as well....

I like you yearn for an 85 1.4 Pentax. out of my budget though.
I use my m 50 1.4 with the af 1.7 teleconverter for now and am very happy.

Have you considered using the 100mm macro? it is an awesome portrait lens.

I imagine the k5 with the prism off, small evf finder on and a pancake lens would be just as small as many other evil 4/3 class cameras... those samsung and sonys have HUGE dslr sized lenses on them... Pentax is already small....

I wouldn't mind seeing the histogram and or zebra stripes overlaid on the image in an evf...
the bottom line for me is this...

Video shooters with dslrs are resorting to mounting hoods/loups/eyecups over the back lcd to use it as a evf..
or the rich ones are doing something like this(off the video out port on thier d-slrs):


link

remember the lx?


I'd like to be able to slide out the prism and slide in a evf like the one above, and have it dedicated to the pentax system so no cables or brackets....
for me that would be the ultimate Evil, a k5, no prism, no mirror assembly, same k-mount, remove the prism and slide in one of several optional evf's...

Well Pentaxophile posted a fine example in his series of photo on the previous page.
With raw you get more to play with in post if you need to or want to.
The irony here is this, I'm a RAW shooter, JR is a jpeg shooter, and neither one of us would have likely pressed the shutter on that shot.

I have my ways... I likely would have passed and looked for a better shot if I was in a hurry, or simply moved the subject a bit to get a better lit shot. or dialed down my manual exposure reading to underexpose and cranked up my flash a bit... If doing a formal portrait, I would have used a handheld meter and metered the highlights and used flash or reflector to fill in the shadows...

Jr, would have spotted the blown highlight, and I'm sure he would have ways in his repertoire to deal with it as well...

Not putting Pentaxophile down here, his point is valid it does show what he means about raw having more data...

But I think the reason that you'll never get 100% agreement on RAW VS Jpeg.... is this:

ALL THREE of us in my example would have walked away with a usable shot.... JR would not have needed to repair a shot taken under those conditions, I likely would not need to repair it, but the guy who might need to repair it gets a better second chance if he shot raw.

The irony here is the guy who is LIKELY to need to repair it do to a photographic error, is also likely the guy that doesn't have the skills to "Save it in post" anyways.... So both arguments for and against RAW shooting are valid. Pick your poison, and have fun!


I will add one more little note though..
Over the past seven years most of the images I have had to fix in post were Gerri's. (Gerri went to college to learn photography, but before digital, and she was relying on a good lab, and print film latitude way more than she knew). As she has learned the mac and software she has gotten better and better at using software to edit images, I've noticed she started taking fewer and fewer shots at weddings and they are really good, fewer and fewer mistakes... so maybe being forced to "Fix it in post" has forced her to take more care at the image taking phase.....

also ensures the flash overpowers the ambient light ensuring even color balance on the subject.

yes... which is why I think having an interchangeable evf with several price/quality ranges would make it feasible.
the main reason to go evil imho is not for smaller size or image quality, but to cut costs and up the video capability....

I bough a kr JUST for video (low light performance was a bonus).... JUST to use my k-lenses for video.... If pentax brings a kmount evil cam to market, I'd probably buy one.... if it meets the k5 on quality for images and better video, I'd have NO CHOICE but to buy one....

Have you ever seen the ones in some pro video cameras?
I rather enjoyed the evf on the canon pro one..... esp when shooting in low light.
I think we are closer than ever...
I'd buy a Pentax k-mount mirrorless cam in a heartbeat if it came with a detachable evf so you could choose from several levels (pricepoints/quality) of viewer.