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The Pentax K-5: It’s A Matter Of Tradition
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DSLR News, DSLR Reviews, News
Joe Farace • Posted: Nov 11, 2011 • Published: Oct 01, 2011 • 2 comments

Pentax has a long history of innovation as well as a rabid fan base that loves the company’s tradition of optical excellence and originality. In fact, this fan base is the reason I’m writing this review. If you’re not already a Pentaxian you probably didn’t know that Pentax (derived from PENTAprism refleX) built the first camera to incorporate a penta-prism viewfinder and reflex mirror system in 1957 and went on to introduce the first TTL metering system in 1964. While late to the digital SLR game, when they finally arrived it was with a series of entry-level cameras that delivered impressive image quality at affordable prices. Over time they’ve dipped their toes into the semipro market and the K-5 is the latest model with professional aspirations yet it retains all the quirky uniqueness that all Pentax cameras have and that endears them to so many photographers.

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The Pentax K-x; What’s Black And White And Red And Blue All Over?
Joe Farace • Posted: May 01, 2010 • 2 comments

The awkwardly named yet highly competent K-x is another entry-level D-SLR from Pentax (www.pentaximaging.com) that combines impressive for-the-money 12.4-megapixel resolution with copious amounts of style. The K-x is available in your choice of white or black as well as special, limited edition red and navy versions, all with a body price...

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The Pentax K100D; Image Stabilization & Millions Of Lenses In An Affordable D-SLR
Joe Farace • Posted: Oct 01, 2006 • 0 comments

Lots of people don't know that Pentax built the first Japanese-made Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera. In 1952 the Asahi Optical Company of Japan created the Pentax (PENTAprism refleX) line of cameras and were the first to incorporate a penta-prism viewfinder and reflex mirror system into a camera they called the Asahiflex I. This camera featured a cloth curtain focal plane...

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The Pentax K10D; The Digital K-Mount World Expands
Joe Farace • Posted: Aug 01, 2007 • 0 comments

The Pentax K100D is an awesome camera for the price and works with all the 24 million Pentax lenses made since 1964. Now Pentax Imaging is "kicking it up a notch" with the K10D, a more serious, even professional, D-SLR as evidenced by its stainless-steel chassis. The camera is weather-resistant with 72 seals, including shutter release and all switches, levers, and...

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The Pentax K2000; A Great Entry-Level D-SLR
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DSLR News, DSLR Reviews, News
Joe Farace • Posted: Nov 01, 2009 • 0 comments

Beginning with the launch of the Asahiflex I in 1952, Pentax (PENTAprism refleX) was the first SLR that incorporated a penta-prism viewfinder and reflex mirror.

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The Phase One 645DF; Medium Format Muscle
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Medium Format Camera Reviews
Joe Farace • Posted: Feb 01, 2011 • 1 comments

Now I know how my erstwhile colleagues at our sister publication Motor Trend feel when they test drive a $1,770,000 Bugatti Veyron.

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The Photographer & The Blog; To Blog Or Not To Blog, That’s The Question
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Web Profiles
Joe Farace • Posted: Jun 01, 2007 • 0 comments

"I'm not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative." --Steve Ballmer

Like it or not, Mr. Ballmer, blogging is a fact of life in this millennium. I'm always surprised by how many photographers' websites also have blogs. It...

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The Photographers Eye
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Web Profiles
Joe Farace • Posted: Oct 01, 2003 • 0 comments

Travel Photography With A Big Difference
Glen Allison (www.glenallison.com) is a LA-based travel photographer whose imagery captures the...

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The Right Lights: Our 9 Favorite Lighting Tools & Accessories
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Lighting News, Lighting Reviews, News
Joe Farace • Posted: Oct 10, 2016 • 0 comments

In contemporary lighting equipment there are trends and there are fads with some gear seemingly having equal parts of both. And they just aren’t boxes of light anymore; they are lightsabers, small studio lights with big output, and everywhere you look it’s LED lighting in every size, shape, and price.

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The Right Tool For The Right Job: Finding Captain Nemo
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Digital Innovations
Joe Farace • Posted: Aug 02, 2013 • Published: Jun 01, 2013 • 0 comments
“Where ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1.5 tons.”—Popular Mechanics, March 1949

The above quotation makes you wonder about the nature of predictions because a common fallacy is in believing that technology is always going to move in a straight line and not branch out to form a paradigm shift. Or sometimes people, as in the quoted magazine, just didn’t know what was going on in the rest of the world. Bell Labs’ John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for research on semiconductors and discovery of the transistor effect in 1947. Yet even today vacuum tubes are not dead and there is a booming if small market in analog audio components. And in our neck of the woods, witness Harman’s announcement of building a factory to make 35mm film cassettes. It might just be too soon to start chiseling film’s tombstone—or not.

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