King of the Mountains

If, like me, you’ve just bought a digital SLR camera then you may well have picked one that can use older film lenses. First, a caveat: Not all can do this with equal success. You may get some slightly unpredictable results. In my experience Pentax are fine, but I can’t comment on others.

With that out of the way, some advice on buying lenses. Older lenses can suffer from dust or worse fungus inside the lens. Check for both, and don’t pay top price for a lens with either. I would personally avoid any fungus-afflicted lenses as there would presumably be a risk of transferring fungal spores to the mechanism of the camera.

Dust, providing that it is not in ridiculous quantities, doesn’t affect image quality hugely. You’re unlikely to see noticeable blemishes in your photos but you may notice a loss of sharpness. If the lens is cheap, then it’s probably worth a go. 

Never be tempted to try to remove dust by dismantling the lens. Unless you’re a trained technician with a clean room then you will make things worse rather than better! 

Obviously you should check that the focus, zoom, and aperture rings move smoothly. It can also be worth checking for excessive oil or grease on the aperture blades. 

If you buy your lens from a good camera shop then you shouldn’t have any trouble with these. However, buying online can be a bit of a lottery. Some sellers will provide plenty of photos and assurances that the lens is dust and fungus free. In these cases you should have little trouble with gaining a refund if the item is not as advertised. If you’re interested in 28-80mm or similar zooms, then try searching for film SLRs that are being sold with one. The camera is usually worth next to nothing in an internet auction, so you can buy it solely for the lens. 

Do your research before buying. Some lenses don’t attract much interest at all, quite often because another similar model is a far better performer for similar money. If you can’t find any information on a lens then caution is advised. It may be great, but then again it may be a complete dog. There is, however, considerable entertainment to be had from buying the cheapest lens you can find and playing around with it. While it won’t be useful for serious photography any strange effects it has could well result in some interesting images.

I’ve had my Km for a couple of months now, and shot around 500 images.

The Km is Pentax’s budget digital SLR camera, borrowing its name from a 1970s vintage mechanical SLR. In the rest of the world it sells as the K2000, again a name partially borrowed from that photographic icon the all-manual K1000. I, like many SLR enthusiasts, started with a K1000 aged about 14 and still have it. 

First impressions are good. The camera feels solidly put together and has a pleasing heft to it. Pentax have used a metal chassis rather than the plastic commonly found in lower end SLRs. It’s surprisingly compact too, in the tradition of the old M-series Pentaxes. Controls are well laid out and labelled, to the extent that I’ve only needed to consult the manual in order to find out things such as how to print directly from the camera (more on this later). Those who find some cameras too small for their hands to operate easily will like the Km.

A major advantage of the camera is that it can be as easy or as complex to use as you like. Select Auto Picture Mode and your grandmother could take good photos. Select Manual and you’re back with your old K1000. It is also possible to select from the usual auto modes for portraits, landscapes, night, shutter/aperture priority, etc.

Serious enthusiasts will probably switch off at this point, but another handy feature is the ability to tweak the auto modes. For example, as delivered the camera will pop the flash up and use it as it sees fit. A quick stroll through the menus and you can safely take photos in areas with a "No Flash" sign, as it will only deploy if you press the flash button. 

The camera includes image stabilisation, which does wonders for reducing camera shake. In the old days, if you could hear the mirror raise and lower (a clatter rather than a click) then you knew to expect a horrible blur when the film came back along with a smug little note about camera shake. With the Km, you can take astonishingly good photos in low light. A brief test with the camera hand held at dusk produced an image with only slight blurring. As a useful side effect, the camera can also agitate its image sensor to shake dust away. This can be set to happen automatically when you switch on. 

Continuing on the subject of dust, there is a very neat option in the menu to check for dust on the sensor. Simply point the camera at a uniform light-coloured surface, follow the instructions on the screen, and you will get an image showing whether there is any dust, and if so, where it is. Another option locks the mirror up to allow access with a puffer bulb. For obvious reasons you should never touch the sensor. So far, the self cleaning seems to work.

As with most digital SLRs, the large LCD on the back does not act as a viewfinder. It displays the settings that you have chosen. It is possible to take a preview image in order to check things such as white balance, and review photos. The screen also comes into play when you use the built-in image editing software, which is a lot more useful than you might think. It won’t replace a photo editing package on a computer but it will correct problems with brightness and colour intensity, as well as offering some neat digital filter effects.

This came in handy when I decided to try the Pictbridge function. For those who’ve not encountered it, Pictbridge is a standard allowing digital cameras to print images directly when connected to a printer supporting the standard. I tried it with a spare Canon iP90 and got excellent results, although I did have to use the built-in image editing options on the camera to bump the brightness up a couple of notches. Obviously this is an expensive method of printing, but for a few photos it is easier than copying them all to a computer and printing in the normal fashion.

Battery life is much better than expected. The same set of AA batteries that came with the camera are still in there and show no sign of expiring. A paper manual and CD of photo editing software were also included, although I have yet to try the latter.

I bought my Km in a kit with an 18-55mm zoom lens, which is a perfectly acceptable bit of kit. As the camera uses the existing Pentax K mount it is possible to use any K mount film lens, although for obvious reasons you may want to restrict your purchases to ones equipped with auto focus. I have tested mine with 28-80, 35-80, and 100-300 zoom lenses, all of which produced fine results. Unlike some other DSLRs the image stabilisation mechanics are in the body, so you can fit these older lenses and still enjoy the benefits.

In short, if you already have Pentax K mount SLRs, or simply like the sound of something a bit more advanced than a compact digital camera, the Km is well worth a look. 

If you’ve bought a new mobile phone within, say, the last three years it’s likely to have a camera built in. On the first models these were little more than toys, but they are improving. My Nokia has a 1mp camera built in which is pretty low resolution compared to the latest crop.

The main problem with these seems to be that people do not know how to use them. The number of shaky, grainy photos you see that people have taken with their phone is astonishing. And yet good results are perfectly possible. The secrets seem to be as follows: Stand still. Do not attempt to take a photo while moving as the camera cannot cope, and the camera shake will produce a blurred blob. Also, aim carefully. Quite often you will find that by shifting the aim of your camera by a small amount you will be able to drastically improve the light balance and contrast. With a bit of practise you’ll be able to turn out photos worthy of your computer desktop.