Pentax Thread lens 'Sun'

Came across this on a site which has banned me ....
"I came across an old zoom lens I used to use. It’s a “sun” brand, and fits a pentax (thread-mount) camera, and is 85—210 size. Do you know if there is any use for something like this now?"

It could be rubbish and only useful as a paper-weight as one snooty person suggested ... on the other hand if it is a 'Thread Pentax' that means to me that it has a'M42' thread and adaptors to EOS an MFT are available ... I have both and my legacy lens are all M42 Pentax.

I do not know the 'sun' brand an it ould be AOK maybe not but if cheap enough worth a try.
Sun lenses ....http://allphotolenses.com/lenses/brands/c_101.html
or http://allphotolenses.com/lenses/item/c_629.html
The reviewer suggests it is a good quality lens
It appears to be a constant f/4 like my Tokina.
A couple of shots when I got my APS-C and fittied the lens to it. Shot in A mode the camera picks the shutter speed but I had to focus.

Trolley Derby shooyting from side of road ...

A silly error on my part

I am kicking myself in the proverbial as I unfortunately remember my error in reading a specification review in 'Dpreview' that the camera that newbie had bought had a GN of 9.4m .... and I took m to mean metres when it was metric to difference between the 'imperial' system of working in feet and metric using metres. The results are the same which ever system you use so long as you do not mix measures LOL.

So if you convert 9.4metres to feet you end up with roughly 28 and the GN is always specified when using 100 ISO.

Up the camera's ISO to 400 and we have 56 ... which was the GN I used for most of my work, except in a DIY modification I cut out one of the two capacitors my flash had and halved the output for a GN40 and a recycling time half of normal. That was when I was shooting in competition with two or three other 'togs' as we shot people arriving at a show. After awhile one of them came over and wanted to know what 'super fast' flash I had which looked like his but shot twice as fast ... LOL

I had a switch so I could revert to full GN56 at the flick of a switch [ DPDT ] and seconds to fill up the second capacitor. Using GN56 I had to wait a wee while for it to recharge between shots but at GN40 it was topping up faster than I was shooting LOL Note I am using LOL instead of a smiley as it comes out as a square :-(

An Abuse of Power

Over the past few weeks I have suffered from an abuse of power by the moderator of a site which has ended in me being banned …. Forever 
This current dispute is because I challenged the wide spread condemnation of the ‘on-board’ camera flash as useless. Camera makers have been including this feature in most cameras since digital began so I cannot but think somebody is not wrong here 
But because I questioned the statement and said it was a load of rubbish I have been banned without any tolerance to explain why I think the onboard is useful. I regularly use my on-board when there is insufficient light on my subjects.
The on-board is usually condemned on the grounds that it is too weak to be of any use and its position close to the taking lens is dis-approved of. Because of the recent fashion to bounce light off celings and walls much of the output is ‘wasted’ by not being directed at the subject being photographed, hence the need for more power than the average on-board has. Then there is the problem with shooting colour that a flash close to the camera results in ‘red-eye’ so these days it is better if subjects are looking at the camera to have the flash some distance from the camera or else use the camera’s ‘red-eye’ avoidance feature which with a series of weak flashes gets the pupil to close.
But if you are taking ‘candids’ it is reasonable to shoot when people are not looking directly at the camera.
Years ago I earnt my living shooting candids and in those days flash guns were quite weak compared today and I regularly worked with a Guide Number of 56. The GN is divided by the distance in feet from the flash to the subject and the answer is the aperture to use.
So for single people or pairs taken from five feet this resulted in my using f/11 while a standing couple with camera held vertically was 10ft and f/5.6 … this was with film rated at 100 ISO. Occasionally one would take a group of people standing at 15ft and one used f/4.
That was with a 50mm lens which with an APS-C camera equals about a 35mm lens today, or 25mm if shooting Micro Four Thirds.
Today I must admit being completely confused by the variable involved in using a zoom lens with zoom-able flash and the automatic coupling flash the camera so I leave it to the camera to sort it out and find they do this very well. I am too old to bother about learning the new ways when I have an intelligent camera to work it out for me.
The thread I was contributing to was a newbie to digital asking for help though based on some unspecified experience with film. So had I been not cut off at the gate I would have suggested he use the on-board in preference to getting a modern flash and the inevitable fumbling that working with new gear often results in.
I am reminded of my boss those many years ago taking me to the pub to celebrate my birthday and having got me to drink a couple of whiskies with him gave me an assignment.
I did not normally drink anything so was quite plonked …. so setting my camera to f/8 I took everything at about 7ft rather than try to change things for each shot. It was a business reception with everybody drinking so my state didn’t matter and of course the photos came out good as gold 
There is a lot to be said for the KISS principle for situations were one is not sure of oneself.

Winston etal aftermath

Every time there is a weather related disaster up in the islands we hear about "fifth day and absolutely no aid' while the beaurocrats say "we must establish the needs first to avoid waste".
For heaven sake how many more disasters have to happen before people wake up and insist that supplies of tarpaulins are immediately available along with water ... water and shelter ... the immediate needs every time.

A ridiculous statement

I read what I consider a ridiculous statement which was that one cannot shoot action with other than a DSLR camera.
Since I used a bridge camera, several over the years as they developed, and had no difficulty in shooting 'action'.

When should the working day start?

There is talk in the NYT that children should be permitted to sleep in for a better learning ability when they awake later in the day .....

I remember my younger days that my natural inclination was to stay awake late and rise latter and the regular 8am job start was pure hell and I was frequently late, particularly on Tuesday mornings which followed my attendance at the local cine club which was an all enveloping interest before I achieve my ambition to work in the industry. I remember my delight of a 10am start in that first TV job for which I was never late .. partly becuase my hobby interest had become my work of course.

People go on about the layabouts who have difficulty, alleged, of getting up early to go to work after an evenings activity when perhaps industry and other employers should look to different work hours to cater for their workers natural inclinations.

Now in retirement I regularly am awake at 5am and find early appointments a cinch .... but apart from them I have no need to wake early. I am also often in bed by 9pm when younger folk are perhaps just thinking of going out for the evening.

My Attitude to Photography

Originally posted at Photo.Net ...

I strongly disagree with Robert K ... after all what is the point of paying for a camera which is very capable of quickly getting the answer for you and then working in manual .. really quite illogical [ ignoring the fact that 'simple' cameras' are not made these days ]

NO ... my attitude is that I try and hope I recognise situations where I need to work in manual and do so ... a very small proportion of the shots I take ... the rest of the time I give the camera its head to use a horse riding term:-)

A second attitude is that I aim to obtain a file which will be suitable to be turned into the final product in editing. I believe I am a disciple of Ansell Adams with this as I read recently. He used a darkroom I use a computer. Which enables me to do so much more much quicker than ever I did in the fume room

I shot Manual out of neccessity for perhaps fifty years and luxuriate in the help the modern camera gives me, has given me the past decade :-)

I remember back when I bought my first 'automation', it just estimated the exposure, nothing else. The 'experts' of the time said it would never work .... in fact the only bad exposure I got was when I once thought I knew better and over rode the camera ... LOL
That was back in the sixties with just one of the many cameras I have owned and used and only in the last decade have I got truely clever cameras with digital which enables me to concentrate of the image rather than the technicalities for most images.

Obviously for a newbie, and this forum is for them, I strongly advise that they learn the technicalities and practice them until when they are needed they can use them to over ride their gear. But do not discard the help the geeks at the factory have organised for you to get good results which builds your confidence in the very complicated activity called photography. The essence of which is getting images with meaning not operating a machine.

Colorado ... the future for the States?

Because of error on Kiwiblog it has not appeared ....

Taking Colorado as an example ... it was a Republican stronghold from the year dot .... now has two Democratic senators and a Democratic Governor .... this as a result of a change in ethnicity of the voters .... no wonder the Republicans are depriving some groups of the right to vote.

One can hope that this is a sign of the future for America ... judging from the Republican's negativity in recent times ... that hopefully the wild west is in the past and the country is moving towards responsibility in government.

In thinking about this one should remember that National in NZ equates roughly to Democrats in the States.

How dumb can you get?

In my city we have a recycling system with yellow wheelie bins and blue buckets. Glass goes in the Blue and metal cans paper plastic in the Yellow. Alternate weeks a truck comes around equiped to empty the buckets and the next week comes the vehicle with hoist to empty Yellow.

Next door there are two flats and one of the occupiers came around to ask me about the recycling and also the black bags for rubbish [every week]. Next day or so I went to City Hall and got a 'rubbish calendar' for each and put it in their letterboxes. That was last week ....

This morning what do I see ... both yellow and a pair of blues beside the kerb ... not empty of course becuase the flat idiots had a party and have filled the blue with metal beer cans and this week it is 'blue week' so the yellow is left untouched.

The mentality of some people ???? You try to help them and .....

The Dancers

A pretty mundane location but putting a couple of close-ups together I think make something.

Cannot make this site work but you can view it at ...http://jcuknz-photos.com on the front page.

2WD !!!

Following a vehicle I was intrigued to notice a small sign on it "2WD". That sort of vehicle is quite common of course but in this case it was a motorcycle and side car and I wonder if it was just a joke on the owner's part or if in actual fact the sidecar's wheel was connected to the drive wheel of the bike.
It sped off ahead of me so I will never find out :(

Help for a tyro

Instead of trying to be a 'photographer' why don't you simply be a 'snap shooter' and use the camera in full automatics. There will still be a few pitfalls even with this like how steady you hold the camera but if you get a run of good photos it should give you confidence in yourself and your gear. For people shots it probably has a face recognition mode which might be an option for you. When I bought a new camera recently, despite sixty years in this game, I set it to full automatic for the first days as I got the hang of it. Even in poor light auto ISO should adjust to keep things about right for you. Personally I now usually work at 400 ISO as I dislike autoISO and find it gives me an exposure to cope with most daylight situations.



Having found that the camera and you can take good shots then is the time to start playing with settings ... just one at a time to see what it will do for you in A or S mode [ Av or Tv] M is a long way down the track ...... otherwise the unlikely situation is back to the shop to check out the gear.



I hesitate to suggest this but it comes down to the 'photographer v. snapshooter' with regard to you trying to put the background out of focus with a large aperture but if you have a reasonably good editor it is so easy to do this in PP I never bother about trying to do it in-camera. I simply duplicate the file, blur the top copy/layer and then erase from it the areas I want to be sharp by revealing the sharp version underneath. Paint.Net or GIMP will do this for you and both are free downloads. Here at PN experienced photographers have told us they normally take portraits at f/5.6 to f/8. Further to Simon H ....imagine how much less DoF at wider apertures :-(

I have an f/1.4 lens but I cannot remember ever using it at that aperture.



For flash you should find the camera has a wonderful brain and will work it out for you if you use the 'on-board' and if when you find it is a bit strong go into the menu and cut the strength back, mine is usually set to minus one stop. The only drawback is that if people are looking directly at the camera you could get red-eye and the camera probably has a setting for this where it fire of several low flashes ahead of taking the photo to make the subject close their pupils. Although I discovered how to do syncro-sunlight work way back when it first became viable [ 1950's ] these days I leave it up to the camera and its on-board.



I used to be a photographer but these days I am happy to be a snap-shooter leaving as much as possible to the camera and I just pick the shots which really is what being a photographer is all about.

I'm BACK !!!!

I never thought I would agree with John Minto BUT really his idea for free puiblic transport could be a winner except for the ideological opposition of the conservatives. As for those who say it wouldn’t work because current transport runs in and out of the city centre the solution is simple with twice the buses there should be enough to operate ‘ring’ routes. I suggested this for Dunedin decades ago in answer to the similar comments. I would think even more viable in Auckland that down here. Actually ring routes feeding rail would be a giant steo forward for both Auckland and Dunedin.




Years ago when $7 of my rates went to subsidising a local bus route past my house I was disgusted at the council becuase I only had 13 buses a day, today it is 19. I would happilly pay twice or three times the ‘bus rate’ to subsidise a service which served …. as it is I only use the buses when my car is in the garage for a WOF or other service need. “It has got to pay” and “people should pay for services” are two of the biggest holdbacks to progress towards a sensible society.

A package from England

I have been tracking a package being carried by UPS from England to New Zealand and it is interesting the circuitous route it has taken according to the tracking UK-Germany-China-Singapore and finally Auckland where the message reads
THE DRIVER WAS UNABLE TO COLLECT FUNDS ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT. A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE

GEEZ!  Dont they know Dunedin is at the other end of the country, about 1500km away, and Ravensbourne is not an Auckland suburb :-)

You have to smile at the cluelessness of some people ?

Mery Christmas to everybody except perhaps that guy ... does he/she deserve a greeting ?

EDIT actually as I found out it was simply the driver pressing the right buttons and we should blame whoever invented the crazy system he /she has to work to.

Socialised medicine

I follow the New York Times and Kiwiblog and often read the scribblings of right wing republican writers talking about the dreadful socialised medicine of the civilise world as opposed to the un civilised American and else where system where unless it is an emergency to suffer without treatment if you cannot afford it, or fortunate to have an employer paying for your heath insurance... assuming that the insurance companies don't weasle out of the deal.

Apparently I had a heart attack the other Saturday morning, it was the worse I have had and I was quite scared so I called the white taxi and was in a ward within a few hours with a cardiac specialist checking me.  Rest of saturday and sunday I survived by doing nothing but rest in bed and having a couple of morphine shots when I did something silly like walking across the ward to the toilet.  Come monday off to the Angio Theatre and had things poked up my arm to enlarge the solitary vein which has been keeping me alive for the past twenty five years or so.  Originally I had a quad bypass but three blocked up in a matter of a few years leaving a single vein.

Tuesday lunch I was home.  So really I think these folk who crit socialised medicine are foolish to put it mildly... long may we preserve our socialised medicine.  I am sure it has it problems but nothing on the scale of the American situation and similar set-ups.

New Zealand's Alcohol Problem

I read a pleading letter to the editor in the ODT today while I had a lovely mushroom soup and toast at the Gardens' Cafe next to New World.   Pleading for John Key to do something like raising the age to 20, ban supermarkets from selling alchohol and so forth, the usual stuff.


Really the only solution is for the so called adults in out society to stop abusing the stuff themselves and set an example to their children which would largely solve the problem.  The only hurt people would be the shareholders of the beer palaces and a few workers.

We I raised my son with the help of my wife, and pre-occupied with work it was largely her efforts, we rarely had any alcohol in the house.  We are not teetotal and away on ski-trips I usually put myself toe sleep in our camper van after a hard days ski-ing with a single can of beer.  I am sure our son had the occasional booze up when he left home  and treats the stuff with respect and moderation.   I, in retirement, started drinking regularly, one glass of red wine or a single stubbie each day, for medicinal reasons ... supposed or not supposed to be good for cardiac patients depending on what you read.

Raising the drink purchasing age to 20 will not affect me but banning supermarkets will make me very annoyed as I normally buy whatever beer is the loss leader and with a monopoly I'm sure the liquor stores will not follow this practice, probably the other measure will be some dam fool minimum price regime.

Wild Outdoors

My wild outdoors was a rather angry animal who was very annoyed at me even coming not that close to him, I was using the 280mm Angle of View end of my zoom.
Smails Beach about two miles long, it seemed very long and empty, with just myself and two of these animals on it.   As I edged closer he reared up and openned his mouth to reveal his not too clean teeth, probably covered with nasties to infect me if I survived the attack.

I have a one second review of the shot I have just taken and he must have started moving as I took the photo ... but it was not until one secopnd later that I saw him coming at me and beat a hastie retreat ... I guess I am here becuase he couldn't be bothered to follow through.  Anyway my shot .... "Say Arrrgh!"

I missed the meeting so I don't know what the judge thought of it or if his comments brought forth different results than the print competition mentioned earlier.  I hope so

Stripping banned in Iceland [2010]

Found this in my drafts from 2010 when I read a thread about the new Icelandic law which bans strip clubs ... no mention of prostitution apart from a suggesting that strip clubs are a front for it.

Seems to me that a woman should be able to use her talents in whatever way, that is legal, she wishes. We should be very careful of making things illegal. I'm proud to live in New Zealand where we have made prostitution legal for the basic point it gives women who work at it the protection of the law instead of being at the mercy of anybody likely to be 'shopping' her, and perhaps demanding her services for not doing so.

Production gimics

Way back when Television started it was felt that commercials should be separated by 'optical wipes' and somebody had organised hundreds of these things, little short wipes which were spliced in between commercials.   At the same time there was a French magazine programme called Image de France which used to insert proper optical where one picture wiped into the next ... but we ...TVNZ .. had to edit in these pure white and jet black strips of film ...I never heard from the technicians what effect it had on transmissions.  Cutting to a shot with a large amount of clear white sky would upset the electonics I'd been told when I used to shoot the odd newclip when our cameraman was already out on a job.   One time the Journo slung off at me for being 'artie' ...I orgaanised the branches of a tree across the sky above a building.
I did it to avoid bounce on transmission, he though I was trying to be clever :-).

So from all that you can guess I have an aversion to all the fancy wipes people insert in the videos and projected still programmes becuase it is what TV does so it must be good ... yuck!

So when I saw the British RPS show last year I was disgusted at the short 'shot length' which didn't give you a chance to appreciate the excellent photography ... I gave up after awhile and closed my eyes.   This year we had a programme from the same source and each shot was shown for more than enough time to appreciate it but also the duration of largely facile comments by some organiser guy ... trying to be humourous in many cases and falling flat IMO.

However the programme had been produced by some guy with two lots of letters after his name on his credit, the acceptances were only given one lot in the commentary, but sadly this two lettered guy inserted opticals between every shot ... some were very apt but most simply a interuption between images, themselves very competantly done [ if you like that sort of thing].  See my other post on that :-)

When I saw his production company[?] credit my thoughts were well I won't reccomend him for sure, he may know how to win letters with his photos BUT....

A recent occasion when I also closed my eyes was with a programme with fabulous shots of trees in various settings and lighting treatments .... it should have been highly enjoyable BUT ... the main picture occupied the centre of the screen, which was too small to give jusstice to the shots, and a derivative of that photo was used as a drop-edge background.   It was great to start with but very quickly I simply didn't know where to look for movement in the background attraction my eyes ... it was a horrible presentation of really top quality imagery.   The double picture effect used sparingly would have been good, but throughout the whole programme ... URRGH !

Well that is my beef for today :-)

A Video Editing programme

I am rather pleased, hence this post, that at long last I have found a programme to handle my MOV file which I shot two years ago when on holiday in the States and the UK shot with my Panasonic FZ50.

I bought at great expense Corel's X4 video ediiting programme and found it didn't handle MOV, wasted more money on some conversion programme which resulted in just the audio being heard ... so I was rather frustrated and simply left it subject alone.  As a retired Film-Video editor I am not sure I really want to bother with film or video anymore ... prefering the simpler still photography.

But it would be, and now is, nice to be able to edit together those MOV files and trim them and I am at the moment in the middle of doing a compilation .... Yippee.

Oh the programme you wonder? weill search for AVS4YOU and you will find what I'm using.

Enjoy ... I hope  :-)