GAS GAS: Please Share your Latest Acquisitions Big and Small

Here's how "young" I am: my first reaction to the title was that's a long time to have pictures, 1900s and 2000s ... before I realised it was quite literally 1920s.
The pre-millennium is only 12 years of my life while the rest 23 years are past that and for some odd reason, I have less connection to the 20th century. Hmmmmmm ... maybe I am a Millenium :p
You are young! And the book is excellent.

Age is highly subjective and is, as the cliché says, more to do with how you feel. For instance I'm still 16 on the inside.
 
Have been in Mexico City for a bit more than week, on some writing business, but upon my return to Oregon, my Laowa 'Cookie' (10mm, manual focus) lens arrived. It's very small and seems very well made. Looks nice, too--

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I'm jet lagged and exhausted from traveling, only took one shot with the lens, literally... it's very very W-I-D-E, even more so than I suspected--

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Hope to try it out more in the coming days... but my belated thanks again to Matt (@MoonMind), whose images with and comments about his Cookie really were instrumental in my fascination with this tiny lens.

Here's one more shot in black & white which somehow seems appropriate as it looks so damn old-fashioned.

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Curious how it will work out for you. I have the 10-24, which covers the same UWA end, but it's certainly a lot bigger than that!
 
I've accumulated a small library of photography related books the vast majority of which are pre-loved. The latest find from a local charity shop is below. The problem is it's one of a series and I have an urge to get the rest.
OK, so I'm looking online for the rest of the books in the series I just posted about and found a bundle of 6 on eBay (UK). I come back from making a cup of tea only to find they've sold. :ROFLMAO: So, 'fess up, which one of you lot bought them!
 
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Finally I got around to getting two of these. Prices at my local store were too rich for my blood, but Amazon offered them for half that price. First ordered one, checked it wasn't a fake by measuring write speed and then ordered the second one. Now I don't have to wait so long before I can check images I took and cull them at the spot.
 
Seems to be a day of getting photo stuff. My wife just returned from visiting her dad who's preparing to move house. In the clear out he found this and thought I might like it.
Obviously well used as there's a few bald patches on the corners but seems to be in full working order. Even the (selenium?) light meter works. If anyone in the UK collects this kind of stuff, I'm happy to post it (free) to a good home.
For those not in the UK or who are too young to remember, Prinz was the 'own brand' of Dixons, a well known high street photographic retail chain now absorbed into the UK Currys electrical store group.

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I put in an Adorama order for 6 rolls of cheap B&W film (because that's my pauper reality nowadays), 4 rolls of Arista 100 and 2 of Kentmere 400. I don't have any experience with either, but, if Arista 100 really is the same as Fomapan 100 then I'll like that one. Kentmere should be interesting, since it's supposed to be Ilford but not any of the emulsions I've used (HP5+ or Delta).

And I had a $30 voucher over there from way back when I purchased the K-1 II, which I'd totally forgotten about.
 
I had a CEX voucher of 234 £ (can't convert it to cash) and after months of thinking about it, there's not much I can do with that for my Sony system. And nostalgia started creeping in, wanting a camera more for fun. I've thought about one of my all-time favourite Micro Four Thirds cameras: the Panasonic GX7 and the DSLR that I dreamed of the most 14 years ago when I started getting into photography: the Pentax K-7.

But I went with something more fun and interesting:
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Got the Pentax Q10 with 28-85mm f 2.8-4 and the 80-250mm f 2.8 lenses for 232 £ (with shipping) and with (my surprise) 3 batteries, a wireless remote and a loop strap.

Something that I can keep in my pocket all the time now and take with me anywhere (and not attract attention). If I can find the 47mm f 1.9 lenses that would be great for a little street combo.

And if I ever do have kids it will be a great little learning tool for photography for their little hands and not much loss of money for dropping things (in that case I might get a few more Qs, the original magnesium body, the larger sensor Q7).

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Got the 30-110 and speed light for the Nikon 1 V1 yesterday.

With guests in over the weekend and 14 hours days since, there has not been much time to horse around with the camera, but I have been pondering why the lvf has been rather dark. The room I have been using it in, somewhat late at night is dim and I found the camera to be a bit better with the brightness topped out. but have been looking for other possible solutions and wondered if the camera dont have any light boost, which I think most of my other cameras have. Photos taken with it has been dark, but that goes somewhat with the territory of the room. Mounted the 30-110, and hey presto, lighness galore.

I got a blinding flash of the obvious, and concluded that the reason for the dark LVF, is most likely the 10-30 having the slow death lens syndrome.

Now I need to source something for the regular end of things and need to check out if that is the affliction the fellow over in Shanghai? is repairing, as well as trying to find out where I read about him, while looking into the system last autumn.

Having checked the local classifieds, I may end up with getting another body, with another 10-30 of the same dying breed. Not really too keen on that, given that the "new" lens probably will develop the same syndrome somewhere down the line, and all the available dirt cheap bodies (€50ish) are white J1s, but I guess I could gaffatape the front of one of those black.

Any experiences and/or "in the know advice" with the dying 10-30 would be appreciated. Nikon washed their hands of the problem late 2021 when they began charging for the repair, most likely doing it with the same sort of plastic parts that croaked in the first place.
 
Picked up another 24GB of RAM for my dual CPU system. Why 24GB? It’s 3x 8GB, as the old Westmere Xeons have triple channel memory controllers. Going with 2 or 4 sticks drops it to 2 channel mode, which reduces total memory bandwidth. Once my second X5690 gets here, the dual CPU tray upgrade will be complete. 12C/24T and 48GB of RAM. On1 really likes all those cores on import to build previews.
 
Not photo related but I ordered a a new watch. I wanted a mechanical watch rather than just another quartz one so I ordered a Seiko Series 5 Automatic Black Dial Men’s Watch as it is inexpensive while getting really good reviews.
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I especially like that they put a clear back on it so that you can see the movement doing it’s thing for ~26,000 beats per day :D

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Not sure what I was thinking, but I got a Panasonic 20mm f1.7.
A lens I disliked for a while. After looking at my previous photos of it and selling my Olympus 17mm f1.8, I needed something else again. I wonder how long I'll keep it this time.

I also pounced on a DxO One, seems really silly and fun.
 
Well, after giving it a month with the Single in February challenge, I decided that the X100F was just not all that exciting. So I sold it and invested the proceeds back into µ4/3, buying an 0 8-25/4 and an O 12-100/4. Retirement is only a couple months away and these two should be solid additions to my long birding glass and small primes. I have not had much time to play with either as we are getting ready to move house, but the Synch IS on the 12-100/4 is really as extraordinary as they say.

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Not photo related but I ordered a a new watch. I wanted a mechanical watch rather than just another quartz one so I ordered a Seiko Series 5 Automatic Black Dial Men’s Watch as it is inexpensive while getting really good reviews.
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I especially like that they put a clear back on it so that you can see the movement doing it’s thing for ~26,000 beats per day :D

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Very nice! I'd order a Seiko 5 if I hadn't developed a sort of brand loyalty to Orient in their price bracket. I'd love a Seiko Captain Willard, but it's a little outside of my budget. For a field watch like this one, I recommend the Barton leather NATO strap you can find easily on Amazon. I had that strap with a quartz Timex field watch (mine was a black case so I had the strap with the black hardware). It was a very nice combo.
 
Well, after giving it a month with the Single in February challenge, I decided that the X100F was just not all that exciting. So I sold it and invested the proceeds back into µ4/3, buying an 0 8-25/4 and an O 12-100/4. Retirement is only a couple months away and these two should be solid additions to my long birding glass and small primes. I have not had much time to play with either as we are getting ready to move house, but the Synch IS on the 12-100/4 is really as extraordinary as they say.

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Congrats! I think you will get a lot of mileage out of that setup!
 
Then the Pentax K100D showed up, it has according to that camera body data thingy at the Pentax forum, 2860 shutter actuations, and was produced 12th of September in 2006. The camera came with a Lowepro Topload Zoom 2, which will fit the G9/PL50-200 right fine and dandy and with room to spare. Unfortunately the bag came without the "Hammock" that would make room for something in the bottom of the bag, whilst the camera and lens would be cradled in the hammock.

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First shot while fiddling with it, there are much noise but also something in the greens that seems to be holding a promise of nice things somewhere down the line.

The camera came with a surprise lens, I just saw it with a lens on and thought it to be just another 18-55 kit, but it turned out to be a F 35-80mm F4-5.6, giving it a somewhat useful 50-120mm in APSC currency and a rather nice "otherness" rather than just another plain, old 18-55. Mounted on the lens was a hefty B&W ES 010 1xMC (UV Haze) filter, but no lens cap. The spare 49mm that I found tucked away in the bag that came along with the K10D will be put to good use on an old 18-55, as the Pentax branded one on that, will go onto the 35-80.

There was a very minor leak in one of the batteries, with a very tiny amount of electrolyte pollution on one of the brass contacts. It cleaned right up, with no visible surface damage so swapped them out with Ikealoops and the camera fired right up. Going through the mountain of old SD cards, I thought a 8GB would be right fine and dandy but that was a no go, so popping in an even older 1GB did the trick. i will look a bit further into that*.

Other than that, I think it is right fine and dandy, but rather dated which is slightly confusing with no live view (I think), a screen that seemingly live it own life as to when and how it turns itself on and off. A somewhat strange ratio, which I dont seem to be able to get rid of and whopping +/- 2 stops of exposure compensation but not with todays intuitive scale, just a number in the top display, with a tiny plus or minus sign in front. Other oddities worth mentioning is that I don't seem to be able to access both speed and aperture in manual.

All in all, I think it was €35 well spent.

*I did, the camera needed a firmware upgrade to handle the immensely large SDHC Cards, it now runs right fine and dandy up to 32GBs, but the picture counter on the camera is just triple digits, so it shows "999" if any larger card than 8GBs are used. The body had FW 1.00 upon arrival and now runs FW 1.02
 
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