For days I've been trying to send messages to the PDML with no success. Presuming this gets through, here is a compilation of some of those messages. SORRY for the barrage--if it's a bit much, please accept my apologies and scroll past. --Mike J. > This makes me see red. :-) Who do they think they are? > > Ralf > > (angry) This makes it sound like you think Pentax are entirely in control of the situation, Ralf. In fact, they're not--they're subject to a hundred variables which change almost daily, all of which can affect the final product. The fact is, the company will have to devote production facilities to the new camera. Where those facilities will be, what the prevailing costs are for a manufacturing run at those facilities, what the production standards are there, are all variable. Pentax will not really know what the camera will cost them to build until they build it. What if they had planned the run for a facility that makes a product that is generating unexpected profits, and therefore can't be turned over to the new project? They have to make other arrangements. What if a key part or assembly they expected to have made in mainland China cannot be made there because the trial run had too high a rejection rate? What if assembled cameras are showing evidence of design problems that must be fixed? There are a hundred things to cause unexpected delays. These are just a few examples. The process of bringing a complicated electronic product to market is complex, and the problems can be daunting. This is especially true when it is a low-volume run of a product that is both heavily front-end-loaded (complicated design) and *also* heavily dependent on manufacturing quality control--and has only a small chance of producing a good return. Factor in all the complicated currency, trade, and capital factors involved, and it can get very complex indeed. What if a company sees the market for a product being mainly in one particular country and that country experiences a recession? What if the exchange rate of a key market or producing country unexpectedly changes? Forgive them. You should assume neither that their purpose here is to make you angry, nor that their delays and indecision is caused by venality or irresponsibility. --MJ > I started with the 50mm, and dis perhaps 20 exposures with > it. I decided I wanted to try a tighter composition so I tossed > the 77mm onto the LX (my wife didn't notice the bright chromey > finish) and rearranged the composition to suit the new focal > length. One of the candles was casting a perfect reflection from > the lens to between the two people. The 50 1.4 didn't do it, but > the 77mm did. Go figger. It's a reflection from the filter. If you look for it, you can see this effect in published work. Usually it happens when there's a much brighter object in an overall darker scene, and the reflection usually occurs opposite the axis from the real image. There's a published shot of Bill Allard's of a little hacienda of some sort way out on the desert at dusk, and a faint image of the neon sign hangs in the sky. I actually used this effect on purpose once, to get a faint, enigmatic image of a full moon. Try the shot without the filter and see if the reflection doesn't go away. --Mike >> Umm, I also must check to see if the SMC filter is the culprit. >> I had forgotten I had a Skylight filter on the lens when I >> posted originally. >> http://www.accesscomm.ca/users/wrobb/General/Linda_Gary.jpg I don't know if my messages to the PDML digest are getting through. That's a filter reflection. The middle of the negative, I strongly suspect, is midway between the middle bright candle and the spurious reflection you're complaining about. The filter reflection occurs directly opposite the bright source through the axis, and an equal distance from the axis. The axis, the middle of the negative, is right by the woman's chin. The other two candles are creating the same sort of reflection but in both cases those are lost in the background. Believe me, I've seen this many times and can point to examples both in my own work and in published photography. Try a similar shot without the filter and there will be no reflection. --Mike > (1) The 77/1.8 does not have this ghostless coating, which I would expect > all lenses in its price range to have, particularly portrait lenses. > > (2) The SMC, which is supposed to increase transmitted light to > 99.8% (I think), can still reflect objects that it *really* shouldn't. > > (3) Pentax's marketing department, which should tell us which lenses have > the ghostless coating, which ones have the FREE design, which ones have > the all-glass aspherical lenses and which have the resin molds, etc. etc., > sucks. Big time. Sorry to say so, but the above is basically all wrong. The reflection was due to the filter, not the lens. Take the filter off and the reflection disappears. Try it. Pentax coatings have been among the best in the industry since the original technology was developed in the 1960s. This is how rumors get started...the manufacturers just hate stuff like this. --MJ > Rodinal turns black in a hurry. Three months, it should be fine > (especially if your film came out okay), but I wouldn't keep it more > than six. > > That's why I never buy the big bottles...I don't get through 'em fast enough! Then you've never used 15-year-old Rodinal. I have. Don't worry about it. --MJ >> Hi, my name's Mike, and I'm a lens purchase enabler. > > You really are an agent of the devil, aren't you? Didn't I just say that? <g> --MJ > Who is Mike Johnston? He can write all my TV reviews from now on. > Outstanding! Thanks, John. I used to be editor-in-chief of _PHOTO Techniques_ magazine and wrote a regular column called _37th Frame_ which is currently looking for a home. Over the years I've not-very-seriously pursued an avocation as a photrography critic and have been published here and there in the U.S. and U.K. (in the U.K., usually under a couple of pseudonyms). So far the highlights of this "career," such as it is, are that Helen Levitt told me my review of her one-woman retrospective at the Met was "one of the the three best things ever written about my work, #1 being Agee's," and that A.D. Coleman called my essay about John Szarkowski "The most beautifully written piece ever to appear in _Camera & Darkroom_ magazine" (significant because Allen also wrote for _C&D_ at the time!). I need to do more writing.... --MJ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes [for his "three" lenses]: >> It would be flat out impossible for me to choose just three--primarily due >> to only owning two. But I'd definitely take both of them: FA 35/2 AL and FA >> 100/2.8 Macro. ;-) Dan wins the PDML 3-lens-choice contest. Most people are naming 4, 5, 8, even 10 lenses as their "three." Some people have actually gone so far as to list three, but so far I think Dan's the only one to list two. Just wait until I get a 50/1.2 and sell everything else I own...<g> --MJ That's all for Sunday. Again, my apologies for presenting all this this way--it wasn't intended to be a mass compilation, it just worked out that way because of technical problems. - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Visit the PUG at http://pug.komkon.org.
