Thursday, August 5, 2010

Tit for Tat

So my earlier post comparing my two babies (My Olympus Pen F & My Pentax K1000) came about because I wanted to better understand the differences between the two. This exploration began back in February when I set a challenge out for myself to help me learn more about my newly acquired Pentax (I was a little discouraged after a poor turn out  from a roll taken over Christmas time and so I kept falling back on using only my Olympus).
One Saturday afternoon when Jeffrey and I were heading out for one of our photo adventures, I couldn't decide which camera to bring with me... so, like any good woman would do when faced with indecision, I brought both! I decided to take each picture - frame for frame, setting for setting - with both of my cameras. It was a very interesting experiment and a great learning experience. However, I have been putting off writing this post because the pictures taken with my Olympus came back looking far inferior to those taken with my Pentax (It kind of broke my heart a little cause I love that little guy so much). But, since then I have had several other rolls of film developed (taken with both cameras) and have come to appreciate the uniqueness of each; also how to photograph differently with each and how to determine which is better suited to different situations.
So please don't judge my Olympus by these photos, he was simply serving as a sort of "visual-sounding board" for me to learn about my Pentax.
Church - Pentax
Church - Olympus
The shutter speed setting for the Olympus was too low, but came out beautifully on the Pentax.
Generally because of the lens and aperture I use on the Olympus, I set shutter speed higher.

Rail yard - Pentax
Rail yard - Olympus
This is a great example of how my eye is (was?) so accustomed to the half-frame, portrait style that I am able to frame these types of photos more easily. I prefer the Olympus shot in this case because of that.

Life persists - Olympus
Life persists - Pentax
Thank goodness for a zoom lens! It comes in so handy when you want to photograph things in other people's yards and you don't want to go trampling in there. I actually never would have taken this photo with my Olympus because it was just too far away (though it is such a good shot that I may just have trespassed, but shh, don't tell!)

So, in summary:
Olympus - Amazing detail on close-up shots, great depth and detail because of low aperture settings, small and portable, can be limited due to lens
Pentax - Yay for zoom! Allows for greater diversity of shots, gives great texture (now that I have figured that out - more to come on that later), Not so portable due to size and weight.
All in all, between these two babies I think I have a pretty good start to my camera family. Afterall, diversity is the spice of life right?

1 comment:

  1. This is a great idea. Seeing the two different camera results side-by-side is so interesting, although as you mentioned the settings were not optimized for the Olympus. The Pentax shows some gorgeous colors. At the Salvation Army this week I saw a Pentax K1000 with a zoom lens, but unfortunately it was priced at over $100 (still a good price, but not an impulse-buy-price).

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