Within a few days of receiving my Pentax K200D DSLR I had built a light box (which worked well), ordered a proper light tent, remote shutter release and various other bits and bobs for my camera from EBay. Shortly after that I felt the need to get my hands on some new and interesting “glass”.
Knowing my dear old Dad was himself a bit a keen photographer back in the day I paid him a visit and raided his stash of old goodies. They may not have been new and interesting, but they were certainly interesting.
I came away with 3 very nice manual lenses, a 2x Teleconverter and a tripod.
The lenses are a Vivitar 28mm, a Richoh 135mm and a Tokina 300mm. Both the Vivitar and Ricoh have apertures that open to 2.8 which I found pretty interesting considering the fully automatic and *not* 30 year old DA lens that came with my Pentax will only go to 3.5 @ 18mm - move the zoom a touch and it stops down to 4.0 then 4.5 and ultimately 5.6 at 55mm. Since my Pentax has a a sensor that is 2/3 of the 35mm film standard these lenses are designed for I have to multiply their focal length by 1.5 to get their 35mm equivalent value when used on my camera. They become 42 mm, 205mm and 450mm lenses. Seems everything is bigger in the future. I worked out the focal length equivalents to try and work out where my new manual lenses slotted in compared to the 18-55mm zoom lens the camera came with. Of course after I did the research and got the figures I found that the lens on my camera really is 18-55mm and not marked as a 35mm equivalent. It does of course make sense because focal length is merely the distance from the lens to the sensor, but it means DSLRs with different sized sensors will produce different results when coupled to the same lens
The 28mm, while a very nice (and fast) lens, sits in the middle of the range of my nice new auto lens so I don’t think it will get a lot of use. The 135mm and 300mm however are awesome. I went out to Parramatta Park yesterday shooting with my good friend Dr Ax0r. The 300mm lens barely left the camera, and when it did, it went straight back on. We were mainly shooting birds, but also the odd person if they did something interesting.
The 300mm was the hot favourite until we headed to Lake Parramatta and tried to take some landscape shots. At this point we realised just how much zoom we were playing with. We dropped the 18-55mm back on, zoomed it out and popped a couple of shots before heading home to check out the shots and play Pixel Junk: Monsters (until 3am - damn).
Some of the better shots below - all were taken with the 300mm Tokina except the landscape which was the 18-55mm Pentax DA (@ 35mm).
