lineage

The Aged Parents (APs; by their request) arrived today for the weekend so I went to meet them at King's Cross to guide them through the underground system to the house.

At our suggestion they took the train all the way and booked first class which meant getting on at Leuchars and off in London with no changes, a nice quiet carriage, free food, drink and wi-fi. What more couple you ask for?

Apparently their cases were a bit heavier than expected as they contained Christmas presents but also an original K-m. Now you can see where the Pentax leanings come from. Of course that's not the only reason: the K-r that I have was much better than anything else at the price point - in body shake reduction, small and light body, higher-resolution screen, higher continuous shooting, ...

In amongst the haul of goodies was the K-m itself (must get some film to pop in there - recommendations welcome), a 55mm f1.8 SMC M, 135mm f2.5 SMC M and Sigma Z 28mm. The 55mm is lovely giving a much more pleasing image than my existing 50mm f2 SMC A, and the 135mm f2.5 is the much better quality version of the 135mm f2.5 non-SMC M that I have that suffers badly from flare (and isn't massively sharp either).

The only problem with the 135mm is that it's got a couple of nasty blobs of fungus in there. Time to see if someone can give it a clean as it's simply too good not to use.

As +1/3 pointed out: there's no screen on the back. Quite. Amazing how thin film cameras are - no electronics behind the sensor and the back of the camera is effectively the film plane.

A wet start to the day becoming colder; as it was a half day for me there was no music, only work and at that mainly talking to other people by IM, e-mail or in the flesh. All of which meant it was a fitting end to a frustrating week of interruptions. Next week will be better.