Pentax Life

This blog is looking for a fresh blood since I have no time to feed him with mine anymore. I will no longer be working on this blog. Unfortunately, I should place all my time and all my efforts into the other projects.

Since 2006 PentaxLife was my most loved child. As a huge fan of Pentax cameras, lenses, and digital photography in general, I have put all my love into this site. It has a well structured archive, discussion forums and a thousand of of fellow readers who are, after a year of inactivity, still keeping it in their bookmarks and RSS lists.

Closing this blog was a hard decision for me. I was cherishing the hope of restoring its regular work one day. But the time is getting tighter every day and the hope is slipping away.

I would be happy to pass this blog with all its domain name, code and databases to someone who knows how to run a website and loves photography (and Pentax in particular) as much as I do. This blog is on sale now. You can contact me by email: paradoxoff@gmail.com

Official Pentax Online Shop now accepting preorders for Pentax 645D. Those who are ready to pay 948 000 yen (US$10 087) for a D-FA645 55mm F2.8 lens kit or 848 000 yen (US$9 023) for body only will get their shiny 645D’s in the middle of May.

This post is illustrated with the Asahi Pentax Auto 110 compact SLR ad from the early 80′s magazine because this is what Pentax I-10 is intended to resamble. Click the image if you want to take a closer look at one more piece of Pentax history.

Appeared on January 26, 2010 – 30 years after its source of inspiration – Pentax I-10 is already available in the stores, in black and white colors. The price is quite reasonable for a modern 5x wide-zoom (28-140mm) 1/2.3″ Shake Reduction digicam. And reviews (with full size samples) keep coming to help you decide can you “be a serious photographer any minute of the day” with Pentax I-10 as you or your father (or even grandpa) were with Asahi Pentax Auto 110.

Impress Watch have a nice review in Japanese but with a loads of pictures as usual. Also, you can always try the online translation from which you can learn that the Pentax I-10 is built around exterior design, retro style cuteness and easy-of-use. Frankly, design is the only thing that differs Pentax I-10 from the horde of modern mid-range digicams.

This early 70′s Asahi Pentax TV commercial looks very distinctive from anything you can see on a modern TV screen. Well, may be every second Japanese TV commercial was as unusual and creative those days as this one but now it’s easier to understand from where the Pentax ad creativity is growing.

I want to warn you: try not to sing along – it’s quite infectious!

And a little bit off-topic: Yvon Bourque has found some Pentax 645D samples. Not the full sized though but still impressive.

Impress Watch have managed to put their hands on the early beta of long awaited Pentax 645D. Here you can find some text in Japanese and – what’s much more interesting – several dozens of “live action” pics.

But back to text: Takeshi Osamu reports that the Pentax 645D is same sized as well known 645N II but feels lighter. Thanks to tall and deep hand greep 645D is easy to handle even for those with large fingers. Also , not a surprize for a medium format but it’s viewfinder is great. Menu is organized in the similar way to Pentax K-7 DSLR.

I know a lot of people who were waiting for this moment for more than the three long years (and I can remember there are some people who were holding their fingers crossed hoping for a digital 645 or 67 from the times when you could put a several dozens of digital photos on a 3,5″ floppy drive with your trustworthy Sony Mavica). I know that there were several gigabites of forum discussions posted on every single rumor emerged during these very long years. I know there thousands of 645D concept models were built in our dreams. And today Pentax put our waiting, our anticipation to an end. And I think I can name this day the first day of the new era:

The new era of not so cheap but much more affordable medium format than before. Meet the new 100% official Pentax 645D – a 40 Megapixels 44mm*33mm CCD medium format digital SLR.

If you haven’t read the full spec sheet already, do it now at the Pentax Japan website (and don’t forget about shiny new SDM lens). The specs are all awesome and the price tag starting from the $9400 is something revolutionary for such kind of cameras.

Of course, the official announcement wouldn’t stop the rumors. The first one, emerged on a day 1 of the new era says that Pentax 645D won’t be sold in the United States for some reason. Definitely, not the most solid one. Most likely the mix of envy and the poor joke.

Matthew Miller has collected every piece of information on Pentax, Metz, Sigma and other P-TTL compatible flashes on his easy to navigate and useful wiki-like website, which also includes the thorough flash related reference. Here is his own description of the project:

I’ve written a guide comparing in detail the current Pentax flash offerings and P-TTL-compatible third-party options. If you’re not sure what to buy, or even what’s available, this will answer all of your questions, including ones you might not have known you have.

I’ve gathered information from many diverse sources, collected it all together, and presented it in several different useful ways. Not only are there easy guides to the top-level features like flash power and tilt/swivel reflectors, there’s a lot of detail on less obvious (but important!) distinctions that most people don’t learn about until after they make a purchase.

I wanted to make sure everyone is able to get the most out of their equipment. Different photographers have different needs, so there’s no one answer to “what’s best for me?”. This guide makes sure you’ll know the answer to that question before you buy.

And, even if you already own a flash, you might learn something, either about features you have but didn’t realize were there, or about features you didn’t know you were missing.

Pentax P-TTL Flash Comparison: The definitive guide to Pentax hot shoe flashes and compatible 3rd-party options.

Pop Photo Editors have speculating about future pro-grade Pentax DSLR based on the full frame sensor that is probably in development by Samsung:

Pentax We have heard talk of a new pro level camera in the works. The next big offering from Pentax is likely to have improved noise levels and include a full-frame sensor from Samsung.

Samsung The company isn’t likely to make its own DSLR, as its consumer market is more in the big-box and electronics stores. The company probably will continue working closely with Pentax. A full-frame sensor for a Pentax DSLR is likely in the works.

Such rumors are floating around for more than a year, but the sources are becoming more and more credible.

Pentax K20D firmware update 1.01 is ready to download. It fixes the previously reported “hot pixel” bug when taking picture with 2 seconds self-timer mode. To download and install this update follow the instructions here.

Samsung Techwin didn’t posted any firmware updates for GX-20 DSLR (Samsung analogue for Pentax K20D) yet as well as didn’t confirmed the same bug.

According to Imaging Resource, Pentax has confirmed the “hot pixel” problem in Pentax K20D DSLR and assured that the firmware update to solve this issue is on the way:

Pentax USA has confirmed the issue, themselves noting that it only seems to occur when the 2-second self-timer is employed. They said that the engineering team was working on a firmware fix for the problem, and that a fix would be publicly available at some point in the future. No ETA was available for the fix yet, as the engineering team had apparently only just recently confirmed the problem and its cause.

DPReview forum user Pfan has contacted Pentax European Headquarter chief technician and reported that…

Since yesterday evening there is a firmware-fix ready and we implemented it on my K20D – IT WORKS !

This update will be implemented in the next firmware version – it will be available after quality testing phase in the near future.

So they worked fast and fixed it – it´s NOT a hardware question – and everybody can update the K20D´s via normal sd card update process.