The K20D in Action!

Gull 2, originally uploaded by zesty-pinto.

The new Pentax DSLR saw some action during Meadowfest, where we manned a booth in one of the hottest days of the week. The weather was awful, but it was manageable to a bare degree. It was made worse with a poorly prepared booth and kids that wanted to do something else aside from man a booth that had no one really going to it.

Tested models involved:
Pentacon 200mm/4
Pentax SMC-DA 50-200mm/4
Tamron “Telstar” 400mm/6.9

The Telstar was interesting since it actually unfolds. Unfortunately, I can’t say much more about it. The sharpness on it was pretty blah and only manageable when the aperture was at F/11 or higher. For example, this photo? One of the only usable shots I got from it and it was pretty close considering the distance range. It might be because it uses a T-mount instead of an M-mount. This means gibberish to you folks, but it’s the difference between being able to take full advantage of my lens versus not even trying.

The Pentacon was a different story, actually being very usable at its range but half of the time I was switching between screw mount and normal, so I did not have time to notice the difference. I should have brought the 115 with me, since it promised a faster lens at f/2.4 and was in an interesting intermediate range.

The Pentax was performing really well in general as most of my usable photos came from it. Unfortunately, 50mm is still pretty far, so I had to range myself carefully to take any spontaneous shots of people around me. I can't even think of bringing this to shoot events unless I'm in the deep background. I'm going to need a shorter lens.

My general consensus feeling is that this camera is not discreet. The noise produced by the S3 was barely audible compared to the whirring click of the Pentax.

All the same, I have the underrated Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm Macro coming in the mail, so I’ll have almost every base covered aside from a better telephoto and a wide-angle. I missed out on getting a decent one this weekend because I was goofing off. Argh.

By the way, did you know they sell blow-up rifles? I saw them at Meadowfest and all I could think of was Dr. Schlock from Sluggy Freelance and his inflatable technology.