Last week I took my recently repaired Pentax 67 to my grandson Charlie Pratt’s little league baseball game. I had purchased a Pentax 300mm F4 lens for my 67 right before I broke the meter chain, so I had not had a chance to use it for almost a year. I was eager to see how it worked.
My conclusion is the Pentax glass is simply outstanding and today, quite affordable. The only downside is the technology is 50 years old, so there is no autofocus, no image stabilization, none of the things we take for granted even on our cell phones. I had to polish up my long-dormant manual focus skills, which is a challenge with a 300mm lens shot wide open.
I also missed not having an easy way to mount my Pentax 67 and 300mm lens to a monopod. There is not a rotating ring on the lens like with my Nikon glass. I don’t have any type of L-bracket for the Pentax 67. So to shoot at all I had to rest the lens on the monopod as best I could, simply holding it in place with my left hand while shooting with my right hand. Far from ideal, but workable for more static compositions. I tried shooting some action scenes but was not able to get those in focus.
I wanted to try out some lenses other than the famed 105mm F2.4, so I mounted up the 90mm F2.8 and shot this photo of my wife Kay (left) and her long-time friend Connie taking Charlie’s brother Jamison and sister Jemima to the concession stand.
I shot these with Ilford HP5 black and white film rated at ISO-400 so that I would have a bit more shutter speed for these photos with a long lens.
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