Check out this guy's work with Pentax for Vogue:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/other-pentax-related-topics/88573-pentax-vogu...

http://www.benjaminkanarekblog.com/2009/10/31/the-vogue-brasil-josephine-de-la-b...

I take your point - though I'd say that perhaps Pentax need to find some better buyers then as well as sales and marketing staff. Chinese guys just across the sea from them source & sell 3rd party things like the M42 adapter and the K-7 grip which have 95% of the quality but 10% of the price.

I own both M42 adapters. The Pentax M42 really isn't that different to the Chinese one. It's couple of bits of metal and a screw. That is easy to manufacture. They're such simple constructs that supplier problems really seem an unlikely cause, much more likely a combo of intentional price rise to ensure that profits are made and Yen issues.

I'd have thought that the cheaper Nikon might be clear dealer markup differentiation for you maybe... dunno. Hence I'm asking

Ummmmmmm, ok

Not being affected, but I just know I can do much better and I know much better can be done. Once I've got something to prove it I'll post it, you'll see what I mean hopefully. Probably be a few months though

I'm not entirely sure KZ - things have changed in the last 10 years. Nowadays people have a lot of mobility and trips abroad for a dirty weekend without the kids in some Euro capital or the US arn't all that unusual. And people have wider networks nowadays through being in touch with old friends through FB etc. It's nothing for me to post to my network and see who is going to say Canada in the next few weeks. There is also very easy purchase from another country through the interwebs.

I do see where you're coming from but I'm also not so sure I always buy that whole argument about Pentax being so great because of the old lenses you can use. There's nothing to stop you using M42 on other systems so they can use those too. That said obviously the -a and -m mount still being compatible is a clearly a good thing. But the lenses I see from Canon & Nikon do tend to be cheaper because of increased supply, and economies of scale.

Note this isn't a Canon vs. Nikon vs. Pentax thread. Rather it's just a good old whine about Pentax prices over here

This approach has a lot of advantages for Pentax - it means they produce fewer, so the quality control is better, and so on. From a business and "let's imagine that I'm the company boss" point of view it makes perfect sense.

Doesn't mean I'm happy about it as a consumer though, and the question I keep wondering is how much is due to pentax and how much due to dealer markup

Probably something to do with dealer markup then?

Ie like in my vertical, when you buy stock from manufacturers in a disti programme you're typically in a partner programme, with various levels which controls the incentives they give you. So sell more, you get to buy at a lower price and more price promotions are available to you. Whether you pass this onto the consumer is up to you.

If you're really small and sell very little all you get is a little badge and some free email promotion type stuff. I wouldn't know if Pentax offers that to smalltime people, though I wouldn't be too surprised if they don't, from what I can surmise their sales & marketing is a few years behind the curve. I certainly havn't seen any marketing material that looks like it's propagated through some central marketing unit at Pentax.

it's a good shot, agree on the cloning.

If I could retake it I'd see if I could find a spot a bit more to the right, and fill the frame up to just above the top of the big buildings. They you'd get those, the traffic stream and the water without the branch clutter. That might look nice.

So I thought I'd post a reject of mine from friday evening, really just as an exercise in showing lessons learned so that others might reap the benefit too.

One of my side projects has been to learn how to get some decent night shots, including star trails. Last Friday was clear for once so off I trapsed, set up my gear in the woods and let it do its thing there for 2hr 30. This was the result:




It's obviously a total reject so here are various thoughts.

- WB, set it low to make the sky look blue rather than ghastly orange
- The longer the better, this is about 1.5 hrs stitched together I think
- I shot for longer but condensation on the lens made the rest unuseable. I've added some of the condensation in at the top on purpose to show the effect, it's that weird streak in the blue at the top. I am buying a couple of hand held fans that'll run on batteries for hrs which I'll mount near the lens and leave running to deal with this.
- aeroplanes can be annoying
- I used remote continuous mode on this with a remote. It gives the smallest time between exposures so the trails marry up best when you merge them all
- I used startrails.exe to stitch them, a great freebie
- lightpainting is best done softly and before the main take. This needs a lot more experimentation but the concept is sound I think, especially on old monuments once I consider myself competent. I bought some big yellow 20 million lux thing from ebay for £20 for this, did the job perfectly
- plan ahead with charging because this was a spur of the moment thing. My battery wasn't full nor the lamp charged
- I have a headband headlamp thing, very useful for hands free operation when it's dark. I recommend it
- to compose, set camera to highest iso, take a pic, then recompose afterwards based on the result. make sure to set iso down afterwards
- typical exposure was 30 secs, f8, iso 400. A little on the dark side so I had to adjust all the raws in bridge
- be very alert when lightpainting that closer stuff is much brighter. Ie see that bush on the right
- to find polaris, the star that they all turn round, look at the bear and follow the last 2 points (google finding polaris)
- this was 10-17mm fisheye corrected. You need a really wide lens to get this stuff, and you'd be surprised at just how steep an angle you need to point it


if anyone else has stuff they want to add as lessons for others feel free to post

Yeah, backs up what I've found. It's about light, if it's bright, it works like a dream, absolutely fine. Low light indoor stuff - nil points.