... and camera realism

Since my last post I have spent some time looking at my budget, considerably reduced since I am between jobs and since there are a lot of purchases done since the robbery in October...

I have also spent some time looking at how much the cameras I liked in the Canon and Nikon range still cost, both on ebay and with dealers, and realised maybe since I was not bought into a system I could possibly look at the other brands...

* Olympus is still going strong creating some nice digital cameras (especially this year) and they also have some very nice lenses. I used to like some of their film cameras.

* Minolta is gone, but was purchased by Sony. So all the recent Minolta lenses work happily on the new Sony alpha. That's pretty cool.

* Pentax has released some good digital cameras, and the brand new K10D is just awesome. And almost every lens released in the past 30 years will work with them. And they made some awesome lenses. There's literally hundreds to choose from, if you don't need autofocus (and I'm pretty good at manual focusing)
2007 camera + your grandfather's prime lenses = how cool is that?

You guessed it, I did the smart thing and bought an used film Pentax camera, with an eye to snap some lenses and save for the K10D (or GX-10D as Samsung calls it). Or possibly it's successor as maybe they'll even make a pro level one.

The K10/GX10 is cool. All the usual features, very good manual/semi manual functions, anti shake, and weather proofing/sealing. All for the "prosumer" prices. Sweet... so sweet it's hard to get your hands on, it seems.

The one I bought for now is extremely simple, about the same kind of features my A1 had (with the motor). And it's light. And it's FILM

I also got my hands on a decent flatbed scanner with a film scanning implement. I picked the canon 8600 as it was a good price. I know, its not like the super duper film scanners but it will have to do! Besides, if it turns out that after I scanned all my film I have a nice pile that really deserves better quality I can always invest in something better then. Or pay to have the handful professionally scanned. Whatever

I am strill trying to get my hands on another pentax body, a more pro one... or even an old digital Penatx "ist"...

OK, I'm still a camera geek