I am no expert on B&W but for what its worth I think the subject matter is excellent. This is just the kind of pic I would take under the same circumstances and it works well in B&W. The compostion is superb but I would perhaps prefer a tad more forground in front of the boat, not much though. My initial and almost instant reaction when I saw it was . . . lacking in contrast. It's still a great pic though.

BTW, please don't forget to feedback your comments/criticisms to Gordon. I'm sure he will appreciate them.

Personally, I think if somebody takes the time and effort to produce a site like his, he deserves some praise, else he won't be encouraged to carry on.

Oddly, B Dimitrov, who has produced an excellent reference work for Pentax users in his KMP site which I'm sure is extremely valuable to one or two of us, now uses Canon kit.

Cheers.

You are welcome. If anybody can help him with his request for content, I'm sure he will appreciate it to help develop his excellent site further.

FYI, I don't know the chap, neither do I have any connection with him or his site. He just posed a question for one of my Ebay lenses and included the link to his site. I found it very interesting and I just knew some of you would as well.

His light meter pages are excellent I think. Well it all is actually.

Enjoy.

Hi all,

Have a look at this web site for some useful camera & lens maintenance info.

www.mypentax.com

I was particularly interested in his 'Fungus' page, not that I have any (I hope).

Yes, I thought so too. Gordon has clearly spent a considerable amount of time photographing each stage of the various processes he describes, and in immense textual detail. He obviously knows what he's about and has produced a valuable resource for owners of the older cameras I think.

Picture me, grinning like a cheshire cat.

I found the spring with the aid of a magnet ripped off of an old PC speaker.

I combed the carpet inch by inch around where i've been working and after about half an hour of searching, there it was, stuck to the magnet.

Its taken me another hour to reassemble the contact, yes, just 3 pieces but they are very small, and one piece is this darned spring.

Well the lens is back together now and working well.

I've learned a number of useful things from this exercise.

1: Don't take lenses apart unless you've got a day or two to spare and you don't necessarily need it to work again.
2: Don't buy deep pile carpets, ever again.
3: This is the sensible one, store all A lenses on their A setting when not in use so as to relax these little leaf springs that seem to break their mounts. On anything other than A, one or both of them is always compressed, probably the one that breaks, causing a permanent strain on its fixing.

For those who haven't experienced ( read 'been daft enough to try' )taking one of these apart, when the aperture ring is set to A, the little button that you press to move it to the A position pops out. It pops out under the pressure of one of these little leaf springs. The spring is fixed at one end, in a very cheap way I have to say. During manufacture, a hole in the fixed end of the spring is passed over a plastic post, the top of which is then melted to hold the spring in place. Its the melted bit that broke on mine leaving a tiny plastic post and causing the spring to be incorrectly aligned and jamming the movement of the aperture ring.

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

Nice idea Liam, but that's way too big. This spring is no more than 0.5mm in diameter and about 2 or 3mm long. It really is tiny. That's probably why i can't find it. I have loads of springs from my typewriter repair days (remember them) but they are all elephant sized and I need mouse sized ( very small comparatively speaking ). I think only a similar spring from a defunct lens will do.

To give you an idea of the size, if you look at the contacts on an A or later lens, it looks like a ball bearing but it isn't, its a tiny tube with a rounded end. This spring fits inside it. it really is miniscule and I take my hat off to the people that built these lenses and anybody that repairs them, their eyesight must be superb.
Thanks for the idea anyway.

John,

I was feeling so pleased with myself too . . . until that darned spring disappeared. I've even been over the carpet with a magnet, twice. Dismantled my desk thinking that it had rolled into a drawer. Nope, gone.

Really exasperating.

I don't suppose you've still got that old lens in bits in a box somewhere ? Still, even if you have, chances are the same spring is missing

I'm hoping that somebody out there can help me fix my SMCP-A 50mm 1:1.7 lens.

I have a second lens that has suffered the same fault as a previous one which I had repaired, that is, the aperture ring refused to move past f11 towards the A setting.

Not wishing to pay the £25 + postage to have this one fixed I thought I would have a go myself. Dismantling the lens wasn't an issue, neither was finding the problem, a broken mount for one of the 2 little leaf springs on the lens body inside the aperture ring. The spring had shifted and jammed.

Fixing that wasn't a problem, araldite rapid to the rescue and job's a good un. Fixed.

Trouble is, putting it back together wasn't without its difficulties. That little ball bearing that produces the satisfying click of the aperture changes was a so 'n so to keep in the right place. I even managed to get the A detent back in too.

Now, that little spring that fits inside the one and only electrical contact has grown legs and disappeared.

I was sooooo careful not to drop any bits and I had it on the end of a magnetic screwdriver ready for refitting the contact but . . . its gone.

Has anybody got an old lens that they could spare one of their springs to get my lens going again?

Here's the rub, I just sold an old A lens on Ebay for spares and repairs. I new I should have kept it.

If you can help me, PM me for my address subject to agreeing a fee + postage of course.

Thanks in anticipation.

BTW, If anybody else feels the urge to do a diy repair on a lens, don't unless you know what you are doing. It's taken me several hours to get this far. £25 seems very good value for money to me now.

Carrie,

What I'm about to suggest may seem an expensive option, but you will learn the art/hobby of photography in lightning speed.

My suggestion . . . buy a Pentax digital SLR. You can practice to your hearts content with no waiting time for film to be developed. You can make the mistakes that we all make and correct them (read learn) in an instant (more or less). The *ist DL2 is relatively inexpensive with 2 lenses from Jessops.

Its worth thinking about and you can put it down as a business expense. You'll get up to speed much faster than using a film camera, then you can get on developing your business instead of films (pun intended).

The problem with film for amateurs has always been the waiting for film to be processed, then when you get a duff shot, trying to remember what you did wrong. That time lapse is totally eliminated in the digital world.

That said, digital imaging requires a computer to 'finish' the photo.