Miasmatic Review

New Camera

I’ve been an amateur hobbyist photographer for years. I love to take pictures and to be a little bit on the artistic side at times. I’ve used the same camera for almost 20 years now, a Pentax K1000. I’m telling you folks, this is a great camera. It doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that most cameras had, everything had to be done manually, but it was nice. I loved it; it did everything I wanted it to. I used this camera for anything I wanted to take real pictures of. The great photos from last year’s vacation all came off of this camera.

But then it broke. It wouldn’t function properly and the picture quality started to suffer. I took it to a local camera place to see if it could be repaired, and they told me that what was broken on it, could not be fixed. They don’t make the parts anymore. So I asked them what they had in the line of replacement cameras. They started off showing me all of these digital cameras, that were nice… but they are digital. I’m not a fan of digital cameras. I’ve always been able to tell the difference between a digital and a film photo.
When I asked to see the film cameras, I found out they have completely stopped making them. If I wanted a camera that still used film, I would have to find a place that sold used cameras.

The guy behind the counter and I had an argument over the quality of digital cameras. The quick version goes like this:

Me: Digital photos suck, I can always tell the difference.

Salesman: With the new cameras you can’t tell the difference.

Me: I saw pictures just last week taken on a new camera, and I could tell they where digital.

Salesman: Then the place that printed them out didn’t know what they where doing.

Me: Well my father had them put onto paper here.

Salesman: …uh… It must have been set on a lower quality.

Me: My father is technologically stupid; it’s on the factory basic settings that always put it at the highest possible quality. He doesn’t know how to change it, and wouldn’t in fear that the camera would break by him doing something to it.

Salesman: …

Me: So there are no film camera’s here at all?

Salesman: Only point and clicks.

Me: Sorry to have wasted your time.

That was 6 months ago. After doing a lot of research I verified everything the guy had said. They don’t make anything short of point and clicks anymore that still take film. Which is a shame. Finally I got around to coming with the terms that if I wanted a new camera, it was going to have to be digital.

Finally on Tuesday I went out and bought me a new camera. I stuck with Pentax because their last camera was a great camera, and served me well. I ended up getting a Pentax K10D. To be honest it has a ton more features then not only am I not used to, but I probably won’t use. Since then I’ve been taking pictures of everything, just trying to get use to the way it handles. Which is the nice thing about digital, it doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg in film to do that… and you can instantly see what you did wrong. On the other hand it also has a fast drive motor on it, so you can take a rapid series of pictures. I’ve always wanted a camera that could do that.

So I’ve been following Ktreva and the boys around the house taking their pictures over and over. It’s starting to drive them nuts. I think they are getting the feeling for what it’s like to be followed by the paparazzi. So expect to see a lot more photos of the family and stuff over the next couple of months while I break it in.