Road trip! Weather was gorgeous yesterday (again) so it was just terrific.

I snapped an image of yon poor driver with the old polaroid stock. Didn't warn him. The flash nearly landed us in the ditch. Oops!


We stopped at Burlington Camera on the return leg of the journey. I was very good. I grabbed the winder I had planned on purchasing and only bought one other item, a nifty little 28-80mm FA series zoom. The new/old Pentax rig is complete for now. It looks like this.


Ahhhh. Makes my heart skip a beat.
I expect the Pentax cogniscenti amongst you (Mikey) will be smiling and having 'a moment' as well. I know I really did have a tiny heart-skipping surge when we got the whole thing assembled and I put it up to my eye. Ba-ching! Ba-ching! Ba-ching! I lerv these old winders (Lerv? Woody Allen to Diane Keaton in Annie Hall).

A winder has an entirely different sound and sensation than the self-contained motor drive in our modern DSLRs. The hand feel and balance of this rig is also what I remember from my younger days. It has four AA batteries in it so there is no doubt that the bottom-weighted centre has a lot to do with that feeling of balance.

The ME/Program body suddenly becomes less fraught, less tiny, when you hang a winder on the bottom. That small body has never been an issue for me. I have slender long fingers. People with big mitts and stubby fingers never cared for any of these cameras, Pentax, Olympus, whatever else came out during this era. The winder definitely makes this camera a little easier to handle for those with big hands.

This camera with an FA generation 28-80mm zoomer thrown in is a tidy package. Admittedly the FA comes a little later on the Pentax time-line but it pairs up nicely. The only lenses I would really enjoy more on this body would be a 40mm pancake or a pure 24mm wide angle. Both of those options make a very nice camera.

Still, the glass in the 28-80 is quite good for such a modestly priced lens. I have a 35-70mm that I have never complained about. This black FA series is good value for the money. Not at all like the awful crap offered in the FA-J line which I believe followed the FA (I have warn out and broken one of those infamous plastic 28-80mm lenses).

And of course 28mm means a little more on a full-frame camera.

All in all, two great little acquisitions on a fun day out.