Ever since the first camera I ever bought, around a thousand years ago (a Pentax Spotmatic), I've had a soft spot and a fondness for both Pentax cameras and lenses. Not to mention having taken quite a few fine photographs with various Pentaxes. I have survived fine without a Pentax DSLR for the past several years, but after handling and playing around with some fine older Pentaxes (K10d's) that belong to some friends and fellow Cameraderie members (
@rpthomas and
@Gerry M) I couldn't resist the siren song of buying another Pentax. The additional fact that some older DSLR bodies are being sold for stupidly inexpensive prices being an additional factor, I finally gave in and purchased one of the K bodies I've heard a lot about over the years, in the Pentax universe - a K-5iis (the updated K-5 with no anti-alias filter) and it finally arrived. I'm not surprised to discover that it has an extremely solid in-hand feel, and most of the controls feel familiar from previous Pentaxes; in build quality (and this is an admittedly subjective impression), it seems to rival the tank-like solidity of my last Pentax, the fine KP. Plus, it looks rather classic--
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The only lens I have for it is a curiosity: a compact, relatively lightweight and largely plastic-bodied general purpose zoom from the FA series, an FA 20-35mm. While the FA zooms don't have the stellar reputation of some of the FA Limited primes, this particular one is rather highly regarded among hard-core Pentaxians, mainly as an ultra-wide for FF K-1 bodies, but also for the APS-C Pentaxes. It was also embarrassingly affordable. I once had an inexpensive plastic-bodied FA 50mm prime which ranks among the best lenses I've ever used, so in spite of my tendency to hold out for DA primes, I'm taking a chance on this one. One of the first sample shots taken with it - handheld at maximum aperture (wide open at f/4), at a highish ISO (1600) and a relatively slow shutter speed (1/15 of a second...thank God for Pentax IBIS) actually came out rather decently--
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And it converts to monochrome rather decently as well--
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I'm curious to see how it will do at lower ISO's and under better (outdoors) lighting conditions. I'm not going to be sacreligious and suggest these are as good as the shots I used to get with my late, departed DA 21 Ltd, but they're not bad.
I'd forgotten how nice Pentaxes are to hold and shoot with. It's good to remember, sometimes...