12/21/2023 0 Comments Ebony spy camDoes it have a nice, plain name? Noooo-it's to be called the *ist. That's Pentax again.įinally, out comes the first Pentax digital SLR. A year goes by, and the announcement comes that it intends to be a major player in the digital marketplace. That must have been right before it became apparent that the whole world was joining the digital parade. Sometime during this disappointment, the company grumpily announced that it would forego this newfangled digital nonsense and stick with film products. Following its star, Pentax announces a highly specified, pro-level DSLR, then lets years lapse past with no camera materializing. To this day, there is no camera from Pentax that matches the "Limited" lenses visually or conceptually. And naturally, since they were silver, Pentax aficionados expected that a premium, chrome-bodied AF camera was in the pipeline. I just love the way those people think.) To get back to the story, the metal AF lenses were called "Limited"-despite which, they weren't limited editions. And I shall forever regret that its proposed "adjustable 35mm"-a 32-to-39mm (!) zoom-never made it to market. (The odd focal lengths were not a first for Pentax either: in the early days of the K bayonet mount, it produced a 30mm lens. A few years ago, for instance, the company started issuing a set of premium, metal-bodied autofocus lenses with focal lengths chosen according to some sort of arcane numerology-a 43mm, a 77mm, a 31mm. It just seems to be perennially content to field a motley of products and then let them wend their own way in the world. Well, actually, even in its product planning. Pentax has also traditionally been somewhat, er, quirky in its marketing efforts, too. And speaking of Nikon, remember in the '90s when Nikon made a big deal of converting all of its AF-Nikkors to "D" status, meaning that they were chipped to convey distance information to the camera's CPU? Well, lots of Pentax's FA lenses have the same capability-but it never made a point of telling anyone, either before or even after Nikon's well-publicized makeover. Pentax has always had more backwards compatibility in its lenses and lensmounts than Nikon, but Nikon gets all the credit there. Ditto for extra-low-dispersion glass elements. Some of its lenses have aspherical elements-but you won't see that word or any of its abbreviations on the lenses or anywhere in the Pentax literature. For instance, some of its lenses are equal in quality to lenses from famous names such as Zeiss, but you'd never hear that from Pentax. (Some of those old photo-dogs like that about it). Most of all, Pentax has consistently been reticent. The professional LX was small compared to its competition the ME was nearly dwarfed by its own normal prime lenses and the digital Optio-S, half digicam and half jewel, famously fit into an Altoids tin. But once it decided on small, it stuck with cade after decade and down to the present day. Olympus had made a stir with the then-tiny OM-1 (Olympus tried to name it the "M-1," but Leitz put the kibosh on that), and Pentax had been soldiering along for many years making conservative, full-sized, brick-solid cameras like the legendary Spotmatic and the K2-KM-KX workhorses. Perhaps the biggest, most traumatic change of course it ever took was when it decided to miniaturize its offerings in the 1970s with the introduction of the M-series cameras and lenses. It tends to make something once and then move on-no "point-two" versions with modified frame counters for this company, no Sir. It tends to come late to the playing field. The company has been remarkably consistent over many years. As such, Pentax is something of a sleeper (if not a secret) among makers of SLRs, and perhaps an acquired taste. By "photo-dogs" I mean guys (and a few gals) with Dektol in their veins, darkrooms in the basement, and lenses they inherited from their fathers. Pentax is an old photo-dog's camera company.
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