A Canon HV20 HDV camcorder
with a 35mm DoF adapter
Following several online photography forums, I’ve been flabbergasted by the general attitude towards the new emerging video features of the DSLR cameras such as Canon 5D Mk II, Pentax K7 and Nikon D90 and D300s. There seem to a lot of disdain, some carefully positive comments (“it doesn’t hurt”) and very little exuberance. As I tend towards the exuberance, I find this very odd, to tell you the truth.
As a person who recently (early this year) bought a video camera, and during that time got familiar with lots of video forums, I was expecting a totally different welcome for the video features in the new Pentax K7 from what I saw. I will try to answer to some criticism commonly thrown around in the photography forums. Finally, I will speculate about the reasons for this odd attitude towards Video-on-DSLR.
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Pentax Spotmatic SP was the original
M42 Pentax body and lots
of classic M42 lenses can still be
used on a new Pentax DSLR
The words “stop down metering” are often mentioned when usage of older manual focus glass (M42, Pentax-K, Pentax-M series of lenses) is discussed on camera forums. To stop down a lens means of course to change the used aperture, but you may wonder how it relates to light metering, at least if you’re not an old fart who grew up with film cameras (in other words, a person like me).
With modern SLR cameras, the lens is kept at a wide open aperture up until the shutter is pressed, at which point the lens is stopped down to the selected aperture, an exposure is taken and the aperture is again set wide open. In automatic exposure modes, for the camera to know the correct exposure time, it needs to know the f-stop to which the lens will be stopped down. The aperture can be selected either from the camera or the lens, but there needs to be a way (contacts and electronic circuits) to communicate the selected aperture between the lens and the camera body.
Older manual focus Pentax glass (M42 lenses with adapters, Pentax-M and Pentax-K series) lenses do not have the necessary contacts or electronics. This is why the lens needs to be stopped down to the desired aperture before the light measurement is made. This is called stop down metering. To make a stop down measurement on a K10D, you select the desired aperture from the aperture ring and press the Green button to set the shutter speed according to the metering. You can also use the lenses in Aperture Priority (Av) mode, but the metering will only be correct at the widest aperture.
The Pentax Spotmatic SP – serving photographers since 1965
The ability of even the newest Pentax DSLRs to utilize lenses going back at least 45 years is known to many Pentax shooters, and old but excellent Pentax glass is used with the help of various ( PK-, M42- mount) adapters by shooters of other camera brands, even on full frame cameras such as the Canon 5D.
Most Pentax shooters are focused on photography, not showing off or making a fashion statement. Therefore, it seems that Pentax shooters are often not averse to using old equipment if it produces great results. But if one does not own or inherit a set of lenses, it is often hard to know which lenses or accessories are worth the price and trouble to track down and buy. This information can be gleaned from perusing forums such as Pentax Forums or MF Forums, but I thought it would be a good idea to blog about some of the most valuable “Hidden Gems” for the Pentax cameras. In this post, I’ll start with the wide angle lens creating so much ado (even touted as the FA31mm Ltd replacement) on the PentaxForums: the Vivitar 28mm/f2.8 (or f2.5 or f2.0).
The Vivitar 28mm/f2.8 MC Wide Angle
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