(03-02-2010 09:05 AM)Some Other Jackass Wrote:  I know what this is going to sound like but this K-7 has a "toy camera" digital effect that is pretty fun. Much like some of the Holga type 110 film cameras and such, when you select the filter the images it can produce are sort of selective focus, contrasting with slight vignetting and blurring. I'll post some images later.
Some of the buttons and functions differ slightly from my K10D and it is smaller; so there is some transitions going from one to the other. But this K-7 is another very pleasurable tool from Pentax!

Sounds sweet. Definitely post some pics.

Here are a few for Jonny. Pentax now and then.

My mom still has her K1000. I might end up signing up for a photography class and using it again. I'm not sure if I want to do film or digital with the class because there are some nice things about film.

Here are a few examples of the digital filter tricks employed by the Pentax K-7. Sure you can get this software tools in a few Photoshop like packages and with a little more powerful engines but they are really fun to have in camera also.
These are all straight out of the camera and resized. These effects are created at the time of the image capture and added to the file to create these effects:
Here is the "retro" effect. It adjusts color levels and white balance and adds a Polaroid like border to the image (which is not easily seen in the forum's background screen color). This was taken very recently. This table cloth and this effect go perfectly to give the appearance of any dinner table in America in the year 1971, I think.

Here is the "custom" effect which I have set to a more or less inverse color aspect:


Here are examples of the "toy camera" setting. More or less like images produced from the pin hole and other ultra low technology cameras:



This is the above scene demonstrated with no effects:

There are ten effects altogether I believe. A fisheye, high contrast, color removal, soft and I cannot think of the others.
This K-7 is super sweet in so many ways.

A few nights ago I wanted to try using two teleconverters on this Five Star 500mm lens just for fun. I recently got a MG film body and various other manual lenses and equiprment including another 2x teleconverter. I coupled the two 2x teleconverters together and then to the Five Star 500 and camera. The resulting images were considerably better than I thought they would be. With two, 2x converters, I effectively made the 500mm f8 lens into a 2000mm, f 16 lens so I really needed ideal conditions to get usable images.
This one was using a sensitivity of 1600, a shutter speed of 1/20 and I had the aperture set to f11 but since I was using two 2x tc I was losing two stops. Again at such magnifications and slow shutter speed, best to use the mirror lock, delayed shutter release with remote and a damn sturdy tripod.
This is uncropped and only brightened slightly.



This image also marks the 40,524th shutter activation. Using PhotoMe software just for fun I wanted to see how many shutter cycles have been put on my camera. I bought this K10D on the first of April of 2007 and it now has more than 40,000 shutter activations. And some of those pictures are good.
My K10 is passed 40 just like me.

I got myself a Sigma 170~500 finally. It was used and was a really good deal on Amazon.

I have read a few remarks from people who have that lens instead of the 50-500 "Bigma" and they seem to like it. Congratulations! I'm sure you love it already. Now throw away all your plastic tripods and shop for something sturdy and a remote shutter release. Maybe try mirror lock up on a three second timer release and start doing bicep curls for training on birds in flight shots with that mother.
Later today I will post a few images and remarks about where I have been this past week.

My family and I made a road trip to Florida to see a shuttle launch and some Disney fun. I purchased NASA Causeway launch viewing tickets and can highly recommend anyone interested in seeing any of the last few shuttle launches that they pursue Causeway View tickets. Anything less would be regrettable in my opinion. Really great overall experience with the Causeway tickets.
I had a video camera running on a tripod, one dslr with the 50-500mm lens on a tripod using remote shutter release and snapping a few with another dslr handheld with a 200mm lens.
Here are some of the more remarkable shots:










There were somewhere around 8,000 people along the bank of the Banana River with the shuttle a little more than six miles away at Cape Canaveral, that early morning on April 5 of this year. Just an incredible experience.
As we waited in one of the final launch holds, the International Space Station could be seen just nearly as big and bright as the planet Venus, streaking from horizon to horizon. It's path appeared to go very close to the moon from our perspective and in the direction of the shuttle waiting to be set free so it could begin it's journey to servicing that very same space station. So thought provoking for us. We, here on earth, about to witness the liftoff of this spaceplane while overhead, the sun reflecting off the orbiting laboratory. And that the two would soon be meeting in space.
This one is going very high on my list.

So far I love it. my only real complaint is that it doesn't have a zoom lock and has a tendency to slide out.

Mig29, what is your understanding of lens mounts for today's Canons? What year did Canon first produce a lens that will mount to a digital body without mechanical restrictions?
To put it another way and speaking from personal experience, Pentax introduced the K series body and lens in 1975. Any k-mount Pentax lens can be mounted properly and without any adaptors to any modern Pentax dslr.
Do you know what is involved with using an older, manual focus lens with an aperture ring when used on a digital Canon body?