Mirrorless Pics: Huck the cat with the Pentax Q-S1

The Pentax Q-S1 that debuted in 2014 would turn out to be the final iteration of the Q series. It was basically a Q7 with the outer shell re-sculpted into more "Leica-rangefinder-esque" contours.

I was headed out the door yesterday with the Q-S1 & 8.5mm f/1.9 01 Standard Prime lens in my jacket pocket when I noticed Huck napping in the window seat looking adorable, so I snapped a couple photos.

The upper one is taking the .dng RAW file and running it through Photoshop's RAW convertor, and the lower one is a monochrome .jpeg straight out of the camera.

DSLR Pics: Huck the cat with the Canon EOS 40D

With the 1.6X crop factor of Canon's APS-C sensor, the EF 50mm f/1.4 lens is transformed from a normal lens into a short telephoto, ideal for portraiture work. It's fast enough for available light work indoors, even on the old EOS 40D!

The Pentax Q7: A Review

The summer of 2013 saw the third iteration of Pentax's Q-series of subcompact mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras. In the form of the Q7, the littlest MILC had arguably finally come of age.

Externally, the Q7 was identical to its predecessor, the Q10. It had the same "tiny SLR"-shaped polymer body shell and was available in black, classic panda, and the whole array of kawaii color combos that the Q10 came in.

From a controls standpoint, it was completely the same as both preceding models, so you can refer to my Pentax Q review for a rundown of the buttons and knobs.

The big change was an increase in sensor size from 1/2.3" to 1/1.7", while maintaining the same 12 megapixel resolution. The larger sensor was the size most commonly found in enthusiast compacts, and by spreading the same number of photosites over an area one and three quarters times the size, low light performance was increased while noise was reduced.

Interestingly, looking at the crop factors and the focal lengths of the lenses, one is forced to assume that Pentax had intended to use the bigger sensor all along. For instance, the 5-15mm standard zoom and 15-45mm telephoto have fields of view equivalent to 27.5-83mm and 83-249mm on the older cameras. On the new Q7 with its larger sensor, however, they are 23-69mm and 69-207mm. That's so close to the classic pairing of a 24-70 and 70-200 zoom as to make no nevermind.

Despite the larger sensor, the Q7 held the price point of the Q10, with an MSRP of $499, with the 02 kit zoom included.

2013 also saw two more additions to the Q-mount lens library: The adorable little 07 Mount Shield fixed focus 11.5mm f/9 lens which was basically a body cap with a lens element, and a new 08 Wide Zoom. The latter was a 3.8-5.9mm f/3.7-4 that gave a field of view equivalent to a 17.5-27mm lens on a 35mm camera.

All of the above photos were shot with the 5-15mm 02 Standard Zoom on my Q7. 

My Q7, as you can see in the photo that opens this post, is black and it came packaged with a matching black kit zoom. The only other Pentax Q lens you can get in black is the 01 Standard Prime, but they bring blood money on the 'Bay, so I've held off so far.

So far...

(If you want to play with a Pentax Q7, Roberts Camera here in Indy has a classic-looking black-on-silver "panda" Q7 with three matching lenses: 01 Standard Prime, 02 Standard Zoom, and 06 Telephoto Zoom for sale at the time this post was written. The whole shebang is $549.99. I have no affiliate relationship with them, but I'm a very satisfied frequent customer.)

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Merry Christmas!

Pentax Q10 & 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 02 Standard Zoom

Merry Christmas to all you folks out in Digital Fossils Land! Dust off an old camera and take some fun holiday snaps with it!

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Mirrorless Pics: Mustangs with the Pentax Q7

The Q7 was the third iteration of Pentax's subcompact mirrorless line, after the Q and Q10. It used a sensor with the same 12MP resolution as its predecessors. However rather than a 1/2.3" sensor like the previous cameras, the Q7 used a larger 1/1.7" backside-illuminated CMOS unit.

1/1.7" is the size that was most commonly used in higher-end enthusiast pocket cameras and boasts a surface area nearly 1.75 times greater than the smaller 1/2.3" sensor. All else being equal, the same number of photo sites on a larger chip will mean better low light performance and less noise at higher ISO numbers.

The Pacific Green SN95 Mustang GT convertible and Velocity Blue S550 Mustang GT were snapped using the 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 02 Standard Zoom on the Q7.

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Digicam Pics: Squirrel with the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS

Purists may gripe about the chromatic aberration (and I'll gripe about the inability to shoot in RAW), but a stabilized lens with a 720mm equivalent focal length in a lightweight camera that will sit in the palm of your hand and which retailed for under three hundo is a modern miracle.

When announced in summer of 2012, MSRP of the Canon PowerShot SX500 IS was $329. In March of the following year I bought an open-box unit at Best Buy for $149.

Spotted this squirrel while I was out walking yesterday. These are SOOC un-cropped JPEGs, all optical zoom (I keep the digital zoom turned off, because eff that noise.) Your cell phone won't do this.

DSLR Pics: Home Remedies with the Nikon D3000

Back in 2020 my roommate had a little fun by making "home remedies" with various bottles that wound up around the house and some found objects. She'd even type up whimsical labels for them.

I photographed them with a Nikon D3000 & the excellent 35mm f/1.8 G prime lens. Unlike Canon, who seems to think that crop sensor shooters should go be poor somewhere else, Nikon has made a slew of really good DX lenses, and their APS-C equivalent of the "Nifty Fifty" is definitely among them.

Digicam Pics: Terlingua, Texas with a Nikon Coolpix 990

In July of 2003 I took a roadtrip with a friend from my home in Knoxville, Tennessee to visit another friend down in Telingua, Texas on his birthday

These photos were all shot with a Nikon Coolpix 990 from the front yard of his house, halfway up a mountainside overlooking Terlingua Creek.

I don't have many digital photos I took before 2008 or so. Most of them are quietly succumbing to bitrot on the hard drive of an old Wintel box in the attic.

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The Pentax Q10: A Review

Pentax’s original Q debuted to reviews that were equal parts enthusiastic and bemused. Back in 2011 nobody was really sure how the new field of mirrorless cameras was going to shake out. What, in effect, were these new cameras for?

The original Q offered a lot of “real camera” functionality, but its sensor size made it seem like a fun “play camera”. Its sturdy magnesium shell and eight hundred dollar price tag had it competing with established DSLR systems, but its lens selection was limited to the 01 Standard Prime and the 02 Standard Zoom and a handful of plasticky novelty lenses: the fixed focal length, fixed-aperture trio of the 03 Toy Fisheye, 04 Toy Lens Wide, and 05 Toy Lens Telephoto.

In 2012, Pentax leaned into the fun kawaii aspect of the tiny camera and replaced the Q with the Q10.

Pentax Q10, with Nikon D2X for scale.

While it also sports a 12MP 1/2.3" backside-illuminated CMOS sensor like its predecessor's, Pentax claims some hand-wave-y improvements, as well as faster autofocus. The most important change between the original Q and the Q10 was the price drop. Whereas the earlier camera had been $800 with a fixed-focal length prime lens, the new one was two hundred bucks cheaper and came with the 02 Standard Zoom in the kit.

It accomplished this by replacing the magnesium body of the Q with an entirely polymer outer shell. The new body had a slightly more sculpted top plate and a deeper finger grip that somehow gave it more SLR-like lines.

If you read my earlier review on the Q, all the buttons and controls are in the same place on the newer camera. However you could now get your kawaii little mirrorless Pentax with a hundred different combinations of body and grip colors. It's what attracted me to the camera in the first place; I thought it would be neat if Tamara Keel could get a camera, teal.

The other improvement to the Q lineup in 2012 was the addition of the 06 Telephoto Zoom, a 15-45mm f/2.8 zoom lens that had a field of view on the 1/2.3" sensor equivalent to an 83-249mm lens on a full frame camera...and yet it was about the size of a shot glass.

The Q10 is a fun little camera, and with the addition of the longer zoom, you could now have a reasonable three-lens kit: a standard zoom, a long zoom, and a fast standard prime. Within the limitations of the smaller sensor, the Q series had become a viable, if quirky, alternative to more normal entry-level DSLRs and mirrorless cams.

Q10 with 02 Standard Zoom

Q10 with 02 Standard Zoom, using "blur control" mode to simulate background blur

Q10 with 02 Standard Zoom

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Mirrorless Pics: Monochrome cars with the Pentax Q10

As I mentioned, I keep the little Pentax mirrorless cameras set to record both a RAW (.DNG) file as well as a high-res monochrome JPEG. This Maserati Quattroporte Q4 and Mercedes-Benz W213 E-class both look dramatic in monochrome (the Maserati was black and the Benz was silver) and were snapped using the 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 02 Standard Zoom lens.

DSLR Pics: Squirrels with Nikon D2X and D7100

The leaves are off the trees and the squirrels are plump and active, foraging for acorns to bulk up for winter. It's too cold to sit outside at Fat Dan's and wait for neat cars to drive by, but primo squirrel-spotting season, and that means it's time for longer zoom lenses on my walkabout cameras.

The upper photo was shot with a ten year old Nikon D7100, wearing a 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom. The 120mm equivalent long end on this lens makes it a little short for optimum squirrel spotting. The little dude upside down on the tree trunk was only a dozen or so feet away, but only the 24MP resolution of the D7100's sensor allowed me to crop it down to something useful.

The photo below was shot with the 2004-vintage Nikon D2X & 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II combo. That extra focal length helps, as this photo didn't need near as much cropping, even though the squirrel was twice as far away.

Digicam Pics: The Moon with a Canon PowerShot SX500 IS

While cell phones have demolished the general point & shoot camera market, a few niche generes are hanging on. High-end enthusiast cameras are still there, as are the ruggedized waterproof adventure cams.

One other type of point & shoot that still endures is the superzoom bridge camera. These things pack ultra-long focal length zoom lenses that no cell phone cam can compete with, and are popular with everybody from birdwatchers who don't want to mess with a more expensive interchangeable lens camera, to vacationers who don't want to miss a shot on the trip of a lifetime due to lack of zoom abilities.

For a while I used a Canon PowerShot SX500 IS, which I affectionately termed the "ShowerPot". Dating to 2012, the SX500 has a 16MP 1/2.3" CCD sensor and a 30X zoom lens that gives it a focal length range equivalent to a whopping 24-720mm in full frame terms.

I remember the first time I casually pointed it at the moon and popped off a shot...

Uncropped straight out of camera JPEG

Mirrorless Pics: Obsidian knife with the Fujifilm X-E1

Every year since 2018, I've made a point of buying a knife from the flint knapper in the Pioneer Village at the Indiana State Fair. This one, with a blade of rainbow obsidian, was the first.

These photographs were taken with my Fujifilm X-E1, wearing the Zeiss Touit 32mm f/1.8 lens.

The X-E1 was Fuji's second camera in its X-mount lineup. It's essentially an X-Pro without the bulky and expensive electro-optical hybrid viewfinder. Instead, it has a conventional high-res OLED electronic viewfinder, albeit with higher resolution than the electro- part of the X-Pro's hybrid finder. It's also got a bit more plastic in the body shell than the rugged X-Pro. The 16MP APS-C X-Trans CMOS sensor is the same as the one on the more expensive camera.

No Training Wheels

Out on the web doing some research on the Canon EOS-1D Mark III for a future review here, I came across this excellent blog post written by a guy who'd acquired one in 2017 and was doing a sort of 10th anniversary retrospective review on it.

I did find one observation of his to be interesting, though:

"Bulk aside, the most peculiar aspect of shooting with it was the lack of auto ISO. I typically shoot aperture priority, with auto ISO enabled, and use exposure compensation to bias the exposure whichever way I need it to go.

On the 1D Mark III, ISO can only be automated by a system called Safety Shift, which works about the same but doesn’t allow you to specify a minimum shutter speed or a range or anything like that. Makes me appreciate how far we’ve come with technology, and how skilled photographers had to be before all the contemporary conveniences."

This betrays a little bit of a misunderstanding regarding the nature of the pro bodies from Canon and Nikon.

It's not that Canon lacked the technology for auto ISO in 2007 when the 1D Mark III came out. After all, my 40D of the same vintage has auto ISO, as does my old 20D which I've handed down to my roommate.

On the other hand, none of my pro bodies (Canon 1Ds Mk II, 1D Mk III, and 1D Mk IV, as well as Nikon D1X, D2X, and D3) have an auto setting for ISO sensitivity. In much the same way, they don't have the range of presets like "sports", "landscape", et cetera, or the fully automated mode represented by a green rectangle on the mode dial of a Canon or "AUTO" on a Nikon's dial.

The target market for these cameras was assumed to be working pros who wouldn't need or use those settings, and so they're just left off.

Scooterin' Santa snapped with an EOS-1D Mark III

Digicam Pics: 1967 Imperial with the Nikon Coolpix A

With its fixed focal length 28mm-equivalent lens, the Nikon Coolpix A isn't my ideal of the perfect choice for car spotting pics, but when this Haze Green 1967 Imperial Crown hardtop sedan rolled past... well, needs must when the devil drives.

The Coolpix A was Nikon's entry in the large sensor compact hipster street photography category, back in 2013. It basically packs the 16MP APS-C sensor from the D7000 DSLR into a shirt-pocket size point & shoot with a crisp, fast Nikkor 18.5mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens. It has the full array of PASM shooting modes, a hot shoe, and the ability to shoot RAW, of course. On the downside, it takes a sec to deploy its lens when initially powered up, and lacks any sort of viewfinder, either optical or electronic. While it stacked up well against the Ricoh GR, the downchecks kept it from really challenging the Fujifilm X100 series, which remain the dominant digicams in that niche.

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The Pentax Q: A review.

The original Pentax Q, which debuted in the summer of 2011, was the most conventionally-styled of the Q-series cameras. It also featured the highest level of build quality.

Its sturdy magnesium shell was shaped sort of like a little rangefinder camera, albeit with a little hump just big enough to emblazon with the PENTAX name under the accessory shoe, where the viewfinder hump would be on an SLR-type camera. Despite that, there is no viewfinder, either electronic or optical; image composition must be done on the rear screen like with a point & shoot. Sacrifices must be made on a camera this small.

There's no sacrifice in the physical control department, however, unlike the early mirrorless efforts from Canon and Nikon.

Atop the camera at the front right-hand corner of the top plate is a prominent dial with the full array of PASM modes, as well as positions for Auto, Scene (the usual array of Portrait, Landscape, Action, Candlelight, etc. modes), Movie, and a setting called BC, which stands for "Blur Control" and will render some "fauxkeh" artificial background blur, with about as much sophistication as you could expect from a 2011 camera. The Blur Control setting allows shooting in JPEG only, obviously.

Immediately abaft of the mode dial is another control wheel, positioned at the right rear corner of the top plate where it can easily be twiddled by the thumb on the shooting hand. This controls the aperture or shutter speed in the appropriate mode, shifts the program in "P", and controls zoom when reviewing images in playback mode.

Immediately to the left of these dials are the shutter release and the tiny On/Off button, which is slightly recessed so as not to get jostled inadvertently. On the other side of the accessory shoe, on the left side of the top plate, are the playback button and the switch to pop the flash up. (And oh boy does the flash ever pop up, on a complex double-jointed arm that gives a surprising amount of offset from the lens axis.)

The back of the camera is pretty conventional mirrorless camera, albeit shrunk to fit. There's a bright 3" TFT LCD monitor with 460,000 pixel resolution taking up most of the real estate, while the right edge has the stack of little chiclet control buttons. On the front of the body are a focus assist lamp, lens release button, and a little dial that lets you select four user-definable presets.

The solidly-built metal-bodied original Q was a spendy little toy. Initial MSRP in 2011 was $800 with the 8.5mm f/1.9 kit lens, with the 5-15mm f/2.8-4.5 02 Standard Zoom available for another $299. That's the equivalent of $1100 and $400 in 2023 dollars. By way of comparison, the Canon Rebel T3i and Olympus PEN E-P3 were both priced at $899 with a kit zoom in camera stores at the time.

The Rebel T3i had an 18MP APS-C sensor and the Oly PEN E-P3 had a 12MP Four Thirds sensor, while the Pentax Q had a 12MP 1/2.3" BSI CMOS sensor, the size of ones most commonly found in point & shoot pocket cameras. It wasn't exactly a low-light beast, but between the reasonably fast lenses and Pentax's built-in Shake Reduction sensor-based image stabilization, it did okay.

The following shots were all taken with the 01 Standard Prime lens and shot in RAW (DNG) format, converted via Photoshop's built-in convertor.

My first print sale!

Someone in the neighborhood saw I'd taken a picture of her boyfriend's truck and commissioned an 8x12" print to give him for his birthday. That was my first print sale!

1929 Model A pickup roadster, snapped with a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV & EF 24-105mm f/4L IS

I've had photos in magazines and books before...even on the cover of a book...but selling a physical print still felt like a really big deal. I had no idea what to charge. I had to contact a photographer friend and ask him.

I'm a real photographer now!

Mirrorless Pics: Around SoBro with the Pentax Q10

The 01 prime lens is fast enough, with its maximum f/1.9 aperture, to use indoors as long as it's not super dark. (Although the tiny sensor does get noisy fast at higher ISOs.)

The monochrome shots are straight-out-of-camera high res JPEGs, while the color pics are lightly-processed RAWs.

 

Mini Mirrorless: The Pentax Q Series

Back at the dawn of the mirrorless age the cameras themselves took two different approaches. 

For Panasonic and Sony, who didn't have long photographic lineages, and Olympus, who had basically started over from scratch in the digital era, they quickly moved to become standard cameras; competitors (and eventual replacements) for the classic SLRs.

For Canon, Nikon, and Pentax, who were all invested in digital systems that had physical ties back to their film legacies, there was a struggle to find a niche for these new cameras that didn't take market share from their established DSLR lines.

Pentax's solution was to go back to an older camera of theirs for inspiration...

Pentax's mirrorless entrant used a tiny 12MP 1/2.3" sensor, the size usually associated with pocket point and shoot cameras. They boasted that the new Pentax Q was the smallest interchangeable lens system camera on the planet.

While the initial Q was magnesium-bodied and came in white and black, Pentax went full kawaii with the later plastic-bodied models... the Q10, Q7, and Q-S1 ...and made them available in every color of the rainbow.

Because of the tiny sensor, the lenses could be made commensurately smaller and lighter. In the photo below is a Pentax Q-S1 with normal prime, standard zoom, telephoto zoom, and fisheye lenses.

The body and all four lenses combined weigh only a hair over one pound!

I don't know which I like better, the cheerfully colored models, or my all-black Q7, which looks like a regular DSLR unless you have an object of a known size nearby to provide scale...

Over the next couple weeks I hope to do an in-depth look at each of the four models, as well as the lenses I have on hand.

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Mirrorless Pics: BMW 528e with the Pentax Q10

Out and about with the Pentax Q10 in my pocket yesterday, and the 528e was out in the rain, making an excellent subject.

The Q10 was the second iteration of the Q series of miniature mirrorless cameras from Pentax. It has a 1/2.3" 12MP sensor, like the original, with faster autofocus, and with a plastic body rather than the magnesium shell of the original Q.