It was a Very Good Year
Best of Pentax Forums Newsletter 2024 Year in Review
Editor’s Note: The Best of Pentax Forums Newsletter publishes on Wednesdays. Given that the next two Wednesdays are Christmas and New Years, we’ll be taking a break. We’ll be back with the newsletter on January 8, 2025. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season, and we’ll see you in the new year!
A Very Good 2024 for Pentax and Pentaxians
2024 draws to a close accompanied by more good news about the Pentax camera business. Parent company Ricoh has consistently singled out its Ricoh Imaging division as a bright spot for sales and profitability. Ricoh’s latest report, issued November 8 for the half-year ending September 30, is even more effusive in its praise for the Ricoh Imaging division, which includes Pentax, Ricoh and Theta 360 cameras. The camera business performed well due to the contribution of new products, resulting in increased revenue and profit. Ricoh Imaging’s new products introduced in 2024 include:
What’s the most interesting new 2024 product from Ricoh Imaging? Vote in our weekly poll, and then tell us more about your choice in the comments!
Elsewhere in this week’s newsletter, we have the most popular threads of 2024; New Member PaulC gets a great deal on a Mitakon 28mm F2.8 MC; New Member joe8 reviews the Tamron SP AF XR LD Aspherical IF Di II 17-50mm F2.8; and Site Supporter Vaskebjorn has a powerful submission to this week’s Glass photo challenge.
If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, please take a moment to join the more than 1,400 Pentaxians who have subscribed to our free currated compendium of the hundreds of great images and post shared each week in our Pentax community. Please let us know your thoughts here in the comments and on our Pentax Forums, and have a perfect Pentaxian holiday season!
Threads of the Year:
The most popular 2024 thread in the Pentax News and Rumors Forum: Latest News about the coming PENTAX K-1III Site Supporter photogem got things started on September 11: Latest News about the coming PENTAX K-1III Source is the German Pentaxians forum member Parrot (he claims to love parrots and ducks)
I offer just the translation into English:
The most popular 2024 thread in the Pentax DSLR Discussion forum is Are we really THAT rare? This thread, which dates back to 2010, kicked off 2024 with this January 18 post by Site Supporter Alex645: Tally for this semester's photo classes: 25 Canon; 11 Nikon; 3 Minolta; 2 Sony; 2 Pentax (K2, K70); 1 Olympus; 1 Praktica. 41 SLR/DSLRs; 4 Mirrorless
The most popular 2024 thread in the Pentax SLR Lens Discussion forum is The Bokeh Club. This thread, which dates back to 2011, kicked off on New Year’s Day with this post by Pentaxian Mbaez: Agnes' Flare: Playing with flare; Sony A7R3a + XR Rikenon 45mm F2.8 @ f/2.8 1/640 ISO100
Pentaxian User Reviews
Third-Party Pentax Lenses
Mitakon 28mm F2.8 MC
Reviewed by New Member PaulC
Review Date: December 16, 2024 Recommended | Price: $2.50 | Rating: 8
Pros: Inexpensive, mechanically excellent & good IQ when clean
Cons: Curved plane of focus
Sharpness: 8 Aberrations: 7 Bokeh: 6 Handling: 8 Value: 9 Camera Used: P30 film; APS digital
Here's another inexpensive 1980s lens with all its expected attribute and issues.
I paid £1.99 GBP, about $2.50 in November 2024 on UK eBay. The rubber lens focus grip was missing - but I took one off an old dud lens and it now looks great.
Testing on a chart, you find:
central sharpness and softer edges and minor vignetting wide open that improves as the aperture closes
accentuated by field curvature
with some minor barrel distortion -
And because there are no floating elements, close focus is only 35cm, or about 12 inches.
i.e. near everything you could predict to find out about 3rd party wideangle lenses from that era. In real life, this matters far less unless you are doing architectural photography, as if I want to photograph a flat object at near distances for edge-to-edge sharpness I will use a 50mm lens (ideally my 55mm macro) held rigid.
In addition, because there is probably no high-density glass or asymmetric lens elements there is chromatic aberration in the corners with high contrast subjects.
Almost none of this is visible as a problem when the lens is used for its likely design spec' - printing 6x4 - 7x5 prints from 35mm negative film or 35mm transparencies to show at home with a projector. Today that also includes viewing with no or only minor crops on a laptop screen or tablet computer.
As with all these type wide angles used on digital cameras, the rear lens group is critical to get clean; the relative diameter is small compared with the front element, and the usual retro focus design means that the rear lens element surface is close to the sensor and can reflect light back. Near all these lenses have a rear group that is easy to remove if you have a spanning wrench - and can be cleaned with alcohol. Even the "clean" looking lenses I have had from this 1980s era improve as it seems near all have at least a thin film of haze laid down from vaporized lubricants in the lens. Just know how to test for decentering when you put it back together.
The lens is multicoated - Mitake sometimes called it "pleuricoated" - but on APS, as there is a rim of unused lens outside the "crop" that can contribute to veiling flare, scattering out of image light from bright areas by internal reflection into the "within image" areas, so fitting a lens hood and or shading out bright light sources "out of frame" is important to get the best contrast and performance.
Reading reviews on other sites gives this lens an often bad reputation - but I have seen my old lenses jump from very poor to good just with the rear element cleaning, so I suspect there is a lot of batch-to-batch variation. Also, in this era of excellent lens coatings we forget why lens hoods were considered "essential" in the past. Veiling flare on crop sensor cameras is often overlooked as you compose - precisely because you can't see potential bright areas in the out of area "full frame" image through the crop-sensor viewfinder!
For the price I paid (less than a caffe latte) I'm more than pleased with my copy - which is very smooth to use. It doesn't do anything on digital cameras that a kit zoom can't do - but it does keep my manual film camera skills in practice and keeps me away from setting the camera to "P" mode !!!
Tamron SP AF XR LD Aspherical IF Di II 17-50mm F2.8
Reviewed by New Member joe8
Review Date: December 15, 2024 Recommended | Price: $250.00 | Rating: 7
Pros: nearly perfect sharpness Cons: unfortunately CAs
Sharpness: 10 Aberrations: 5 Bokeh: 7 Handling: 9 Value: 7 Camera Used: k-5
For such an expensive lens I expect best correction of CAs. But as the majority of the modern lenses, it disappoints me concerning this point of view, too. Coloured fringings are visible.
It seems, that the lens manufacturer are presuming, that all RAW photographers make thei workflow after shooting with PhSh LIGHTROOM, in order to correct CAs. This is foolish.
Indeed for a wide angle zoom, it is nearly razor sharp, stopped down a few.
+++ excellent sharpness
+/O bokeh okay, not blowing away, but okay
O CAs sometimes visible
+ good colour rendition
++ high contrast
this is a good lens
Sometimes it suffers of AF precision -reports my son.
recommendation yes - but I'd lent it from my son - not my favorite because of visible CAs on big magnifications. My darker FUJINON 16-50 seems to me better corrected.
Comment of the Week:
Pentaxian reh321 on What was your most used camera in 2024? I started this year using an “ME” with color film and a “Super Program” with B&W film, but I ‘ve taken more photos with the “17” I got on June 17th than with any other camera, and next year I’ll have a Grand-daughter to follow around {even then I expect to photograph Squirrels with an SLR, but I anticipate her being more interesting}.
The Best of Pentax Forums November 6 Poll
What’s the most interesting new 2024 product from Ricoh Imaging? The year draws to a close accompanied by more good news about the Pentax camera business. Parent company Ricoh has consistently singled out its Ricoh Imaging division as a bright spot for sales and profitability. Ricoh’s latest report, issued November 8 for the half-year ending September 30, is even more effusive in its praise for the Ricoh Imaging division, which includes Pentax, Ricoh and Theta 360 cameras. The camera business performed well due to the contribution of new products, resulting in increased revenue and profit. Ricoh Imaging’s new products introduced in 2024 include:
Which of these new products caught your fancy? My answer is easy; there’s a Pentax 17 within easy reach! Vote for your fav in our weekly poll, and then tell us more about your choice in the comments!
This poll closes January 7, 2025.
And here are the results of last week’s poll:
Weekly Photo Challenges
Posted By: rod_grant, 6 Days Ago (Online)
The new challenge is "Glass"
The challenge will be open until this time on the 18 December.
Here’s Site Supporter Vaskebjorn’s submission: I first had the idea of posting an architectural photo, but browsing my Flickr account I changed my mind a chose this “powerful” photo.
PentaxForum Front page stories Dec 11-17:
November "Night Scene" Contest Finalists Announced
Vote for the overall winner!
By PF Staff in Photo Contests on Dec 15, 2024
After the end of the nomination phase of last month's official Night Scene photo contest, we're now ready to announce our top 15 finalists! Click on the link below to view the photos in full size and cast your vote in the poll:
Vote for your favorite photo in the poll
As usual for our monthly photo contests, voting closes in a week, and then we'll announce the winners.
Myriad by Cutasunda: Multi-Format Film Holder Launched
A new product designed by veteran Pentax Forums member BigMackCam
By PF Staff in Product Updates on Dec 15, 2024
Fellow forum member (and "digitizer of film") BigMackCam has spent the past several years designing and perfecting a versatile yet affordable film holder. We are happy to share that just this month, the Myriad has been launched by his new business Cutasunda, and that in early 2025, we will be hosting a giveaway to offer a generously donated unit to a lucky forum member. Stay tuned to the homepage and the film section of the forum for details!