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

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.

Have you ever wonder how Pentax DA Limited lenses working on the film SLR cameras? Boris Liberman has collected a bunch of photos made with three DA Limited lenses mounted on the 35mm film SLR.

Pentax DA 21mm Limited shows a strong vignetting at every apperture up to F/22 while DA 40mm Limited and DA 70mm Limited are quite good even wide open.

UK’s one of the most trusted photo magazine Amateur Photographer has raised the curtain on Samsung’s plans to join Canon and Nikon on the full frame battleground.

Samsung has hinted at plans to develop a full-frame CMOS imaging sensor for use in a ‘professional’ standard digital SLR.

So far, however, the sensor has only reached the design stage and it is far from clear whether it will become a reality.

We also understand that, late last year, Samsung Electronics set up a secret team within its HQ in Suwon to begin research on a professional DSLR.

Of cause, we will not see any full frame professional K-mount DSLR neither from Samsung nor from Pentax until 2010 but the knowledge that Samsung is working on the full frame CMOS sensor sweetens the pill of the recent 645D news.

Akihabara News and Impress Watch have published the photo reports from the Pentax booth at the Photo Imaging Expo 2008 which was held in Tokyo Big Sight complex in Japan last weekend. The key products were, of cause, latest Pentax K20D and K200D DSLRs. Upcoming DA lenses (highly anticipated DA 17-70 F4, DA 60-250 F4 and DA 55 F4) were shown as well. Here you can find the Akihabara’s report in English (they’ve mostly focused on model rather than gear) and Impress Watch’ one in Japanese.

LetsGoDigital’s Ilse Jurriën has interviewed Jon Carlson – Pentax Imaging USA product manager and the chief K20D evangelist – at PMA. He has told about Pentax and Samsung cooperation background, plans on future lenses and why the digital medium format development was suspended. But the most of attention was given to the Pentax flagship DSLR.

Thanks to the CMOS you have less energy consumption. The sensor of the Pentax K20D is capable of transferring the received information very quickly. What they did is decrease the picture to 1.6 Megapixels so it can be transferred from the buffer to the memory card speedily. This is how you reach 21 pictures per second… …Someone even told me that he uses Photoshop CS3 Extended and he attached 150 pictures sequentially as a QuickTime movie and it looks like a real movie recording.

…

We are now showing three SLR lenses that will get introduced later, hopefully this year. We have a 17-70 mm one that is considered as a replacement for the 16-45 mm but offering an SDM engine. And we have the extreme light sensitive 55mm and the 60-250 mm.

Pentax UK has informed the European Pentax customers that some of the 3-pin plug cords supplied with Pentax K10D and some of the Optio digicams after 17th November ’06 may reveal a manufacturing defect.

To identify the cable in question hold the cable by the end with the 3-pins. Turn the pins to face away from you and look for a box containing the text “Approved BSI KM 45980″ All affected cables also have a red fuse holder on the 3-pin plug.

Look at the pictures at this Pentax UK page to get a hint.

Under certain conditions a crack may appear in the connector that connects to a battery charger may lead to electric shock and attendant injuries.

Affected cords were supplied with the following cameras: Pentax K10D, Optio A20, L20, S7, T20 and W20. If you have bought one of these cameras outside Europe or haven’t identified your cord as shown on the pictures above you have nothing to worry about. Otherwise contact Pentax UK by free-phone 0800 2889410.

According to Business Wire, the dual-axis gyroscope that works as a part of Pentax Optio A30 Shake Reduction system is InvenSense IDG-1000. The same announcement also said that this device will be used in the future Pentax digital cameras. So, perhaps, we will see more Pentax digicams with Shake Reduction feature soon.

InvenSense, the leading provider of integrated motion sensing solutions for consumer electronics, today announced that Pentax Corporation has selected its IDG-1000 series dual-axis gyroscope for use in the Optio A30 digital camera and for next generation digital still camera (DSC) models with optical image stabilization features. InvenSense’s gyro is used to precisely measure the camera user’s hand shake which is compensated for using Pentax’s Shake Reduction (SR) technology for improved image capture in low-light settings and telephoto use.

This is a good sign and a good answer for all those doomsayers who are saying that Hoya will drop imaging division or shrink it down.

A guy from Poland nicknamed desperadodrugi has made his own vertical grip at home. It looks a little creepy, weights around 400 grams and can’t handle batteries but it has a second shutter release button. This handmade grip was sold for 12.50 Polish zloty or around US$4.5.

Pentax France team are having a photo contest. Different week – different topic – different Pentax digital camera for the winner. For example this week’s topic: “Me and fish”. If you have Pentax camera, live in France and want to have fun, register here and post your best photo on current topic. Maybe you will be the lucky one, who will get the next Pentax “appareil numérique”. Thanks to Benjamin Kanarek for this news.