Reprise of Pentax

You know when there’s something you always come back to? Something reliable, familiar, almost comforting? You may own technically better, more superior things but you still crave the old stuff? That’s me and Pentax. I have acquired a very cheap Pentax K5II S. It’s in great shape and it’s been on my wish list for a couple of years. It’s the highest rated Pentax DSLR on Pentax forums, out doing the K3III and full frame K1 II. It was released in 2012 and has a 16mp sensor without the anti aliasing filter (unlike its brother the K5 II).

They don’t come up for sale very often, partly I suspect because true Pentaxians who own one, don’t sell them on. They have that great Pentax image quality but it’s sharper, capable of resolving more detail. I have few autofocus and manual Pentax lenses which all seem to work well on it.

It won’t replace my Nikon gear but it’s a gem for landscape photography. We travelled over to Marsden View, a ridge of rocky outcrops overlooking Marsden Moor on the recent bank holiday Monday. I had my Nikon Z7II and a couple of lenses. I took lots of photos looking out over the rocks over this epic landscape. I returned a few days later with my Pentax and took a few more as a comparison but also as it was quieter and the weather slightly more moody. I’ve studied the raw files from both cameras and you can’t tell them apart! Strange that one is a full frame 45 mp full frame camera and the other an APSC 16mp. You would have thought the Nikon would out perform the Pentax but I can’t tell the difference tbh.

It’s hard to describe why it’s such a joy to shoot with an old DSLR but it feels more intuitive somehow. Simpler, less options and somehow more relaxing. The rear lcd screen isn’t the highest quality so you can’t really appreciate the quality the camera captures until you download the images. The peace of mind of having a battery that will last all day and take twice if not three times the number of shots as my Nikon cameras, is a big plus. Pentax lenses are generally excellent, the cameras and some lenses weather resistant but the real pleasure is that all historic K Mount lenses are backwards compatible and easy to capture focus.

It won’t be used for my professional assignments but several images will be turned into prints. It’s such a capable, lightweight professional cropped sensor camera, it is hard to resist its charms. You can trust it to capture what you see the moment before you press the shutter. It delivers the expectation all photographers have in that split second before. As I’ve said before, I’m not a landscape photographer exclusively but I do love shooting landscapes. We are very lucky to live in such a dramatic part of England and within easy reach of both coasts. It’s an easy choice to take a Nikon and a Pentax but I suspect my K5II S will be with me more often than my Nikon. I love using the Nikon but it’s heavier, the lenses are bigger and it feels as if I shoot with a bit more trepidation than with the Pentax. I don’t expect as much from the Pentax and yet it delivers every time. Creating art requires a certain amount of freedom and less expectations. I can take the Pentax and two or three lenses, they will resist pretty much anything the weather throws at me and do what I want them to do.

Pentax might be considered a forgotten camera brand. They’re not in the top five, barely in the top ten of camera sales but they do make exceptional equipment. The older models are increasingly hard to come across and when you find one, you need to get one while you can. I don’t think I’d opt for the full frame K1 II although I hear it’s a stellar performer. It’s very heavy, the lenses are bigger and when the cropped sensor bodies can deliver, why add more weight and pressure to produce exceptional images just because it’s full frame? Summer is slowly fading and autumn approaches. My favourite season especially photographically, I suspect my new/old Pentax will see a lot of action over the next three months. It has certainly reignited a desire to go out and shoot which seemed to be somewhat missing over this summer. I’m not built for hot endless summers, I’m more at home in colder, moody seasons, trying to capture natures drama, when it sheds its summer clothes and prepares for the coming winter.

High Drama!

It was a very windy, blustery, gusty afternoon up on Bridgestones Moor. The sky was stormy but magnificent, The moor, standing 1400ft above sea level, was relatively dry underfoot. I ventured forth with my Canon 6D and 16-35 f4 IS lens to capture some drama. The raw images turned out great but there was something missing in the straight edit of this excellent

There are occasions when you want to capture the scene ‘as is’. Product photography, commercial shoots and such that require the realistic colours and textures of the items you’re shooting. I have done such shoots and they can be satisfying but for me, landscapes are a different beast.

The photographer and YouTuber Martin Castein, mentions in one of his videos about white balance and how it can convey different emotions to a photograph. Landscapes when you’re out in them, invoke certain emotional responses that commercial shoots don’t. Sometimes you want to present an exaggerated vision of the moment captured and the landscape in which you were shooting. High winds and stormy skies can be portrayed in a more dramatic fashion than just actual documenting the scene when you were there. I created a Lightroom preset to edit the raw images and just tweaked exposure and aspect to suit the shot

The Bridestones sit on top of the aforementioned moor, high above Todmorden in Calderdale, West Yorkshire. They are an outcrop of gritstone moulded and shaped by erosion known as weathering. The indentations, the cracks, the smooth edges have been made by hundreds of thousand of years of exposure to the elements. To those of us living in upper Calderdale, they are an iconic spot and much visited. I have been there many times but interestingly, it is never busy like the famous Cow and Calf rocks above Ilkley. They are in many ways, superior in their location and general wildness in my humble opinion. The high Pennine moorland of Calderdale is vast compared to say Bradford district, although the two run into each other high above the Worth Valley and Bronte country.

I know these types of representations are not to everyone’s taste but I find they convey how I felt at the time of taking the photos. Coming down off the top, I felt truly windswept, as if I’d had some sort of extreme spa treatment. On several shots, I had trouble holding the camera still enough to take them but an increase in shutter speed and a solid camera body helped. One of the many things modern photographers and YouTubers don’t say about full frame DSLR bodies is that their weight and ergonomics are useful at times. Yes, they are heavier than mirrorless cameras but they feel great in the hand and the weight adds stability taking hand held shots. I really don’t get on with tripods, they are a faff and you have to decide on a composition rather than move around quickly to get the better one. I’m loving my return to Canon DSLRs. They are a joy to hold, to use and I love the colours and detail you get out of what is seen as old technology. On commercials shoots, they are a dream because of their rugged reliability. They are also quicker to operate than mirrorless and are instantly ready from when you turn the camera on. The battery life is twice if not more of their mirrorless equivalent which is another advantage when using them commercially.

I hope you like this selection of landscape images and that they convey a little bit of time and place.

Sunrise & Sunset

We had a break in North Wales last week. The hotel we stayed at is at the mouth of the Conwy estuary and we were fortunate to have a suite with a terrace overlooking the estuary. As far as photo locations, it’s about as easy as you could get for capturing great sunsets and sunrise images. I took my Sony cameras and lenses and shot at a variety of focal lengths, capturing various stages of the sun coming up and going down.

I kind of fell out of love with sunset photos a couple of years ago, as I tended to overdo them. Living in the upper Calder Valley, there are some great vantage points to capture amazing sunsets and spectacular skies. If you repeat a subject too often, you can get fed up of it. I had reached that stage and shied away from regular posting of orange skies and silhouetted landscape features.

These sunrise photos were taken using the Sony 20mm f/1.8g and the Sony 40mm f/2.5g. I say sunrise but the sun hadn’t quite risen so they more blue hour than sunrise. The location lends itself to these images as it’s a tidal estuary so water levels create fabulous detail in the sandbanks and the meandering path of the river Conwy out to sea. We were also fortunate to have some beautiful weather for these types of photo. Most landscape photographers like moody skies, fog or challenging conditions but clear skies and warm weather can bring benefits too. The colours rendered up in the early morning were stunning.

If you think the sunrises were good, the sunsets were incredible. The sky was on fire and add to that, beautiful rich patterned clouds topped the deep orange horizons. This image was taken with the Sony 24-50 f/2.8g lens which pretty much was glued to my camera throughout the days of our break. It is a superb piece of glass that covers the wide to standard focal lengths in a small package. I took a Sony 70-200 f/4 lens as well but didn’t really enjoy using it as it struggled with contrast in bright sun. I decided whilst away to trade for a Tamron 70-180mm f/2.8 g2, in the hope I will get a better long telephoto option. This view looking west towards the mouth of the estuary and marina was the perfect spot to get the best of the dying sun. It reignited my desire to take sunset photos and also to spend more time at the coast.

This final image over the marina was taken ten minutes before the sun went down and was taken with the 70-200. It’s a great lens but also a dust magnet (for some reason) so let’s hope the Tamron performs a bit better. There is something magical about the going down of the sun but I also loved the early mornings. I’m an early riser and the onset of summer is a gift for my photography. I need to get out more early morning and late evening, I have spent a few months in a state of apathy regarding my landscape photography, maybe born out of a lack of self confidence, a worry about sharing in a saturated area of photography and a bleak winter. I used to be an autumn/winter fan but in my older age, I find myself appreciating spring and summer more. if you haven’t visited North Wales, I urge you to go. It is a beautiful region with great beaches, stunning mountains and some of the best locations for sunset I’ve ever experienced.