Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

 Hi Photographer friends,

I haven't been blogging for most of this past summer. There's really no good reason why I didn't, except that I was very busy and that it has been my best summer ever (photography wise).

I spent the summer photographing for my lowest salary ever, and yet, I enjoyed my summer job more than any other job I ever had. Yes...you probably think I've gone crazy. Let me explain:

I spent the summer working for the YMCA, photographing kids at summer camps. Yep...the salary wasn't great, but the experience more than compensated for it. 

I'm retired now and around April or May, while reading the local paper, I saw an ad looking for a photographer for the summer. The assignment would be taking pictures of summer camp activities at two local YMCA summer camps. I didn't think I could get the job, as I was sure there were many younger candidates. To my surprise and satisfaction, I got the job. Sometimes, experience wins.

So I gathered my faithful Pentax K-3, my Pentax 50mm f/1.4, my 10mm x 17mm wide angle lens and a 300mm telephoto. This combination got me all the results I needed, without being too heavy to carry around.

The camps are located in the San Bernardino Mountains, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles. You can look at some of the landscape images below. It’s easy to appreciate the locations. At elevations ranging between 6,000 feet and 8,000 feet, the air is thinner but certainly less polluted than in Los Angeles.

I took hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures and videos ranging from landscape, actions, activities, and the summer camp kids.

One thing that every single one of these ordinary children had in common, despite their different ages, background, ethnicity, or religion, was bright, discernible spark in their eyes. The kind of spark that, in previous generations, has produced the most extraordinary of people – those with the intelligence or persistence or determination to change humanity. People like da Vinci and Einstein and Newton and Beethoven and Hawking and Tesla and many others that have achieved so much...they had the spark.

The spark isn’t reserved for those few and far between anymore. Kids today are smarter, more empathetic, more aware, and more progressive than any other generation before. They have access to more information at any given time than anyone else before them and they want to learn. These kids will use all the resources given to them by those extraordinary predecessors and make this world their world, making it extraordinary as well. Our newest generation is entirely extraordinary, and it shows.

They all have the spark.

 Now, for you Pentax owners, I do have e-books for most of the Pentax DSLRs. You can check this site ebooks4cameras.com and even download any e-book for checking the contents. 

The K-1 e-book is available NOW.

Click on the image above to visit our e-book store. You can also download sample e-books and get the free AF front and back focusing adjustment charts at this e-commerce.

http://www.ebooks4cameras.com/

Thank you to all my Pentax followers and blog readers. This week I reached two million visitors since I started this blog over six years ago.

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com 

 Hi Photographer friends,

It's hard to believe, but I will have been hosting this site for seven years this July. It's a relatively small site compared to the mega sites such as Pentaxforums and DPReview, but I love the interaction, the emails I get and the friendship I made through they years.

People from all over the world are tuning in. The image below represents the visitors for the last 12 hours. 

It's always interesting to see the number of people following the blog from their local time. Europe, Asia and Africa log in while I sleep and as I awake, I see more people tuning in from the North and South America.

Thank you two millions times,

Yvon Bourque

What's going on in the Pentax Digital Camera world?

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

 Hi Photographer friends,

The entire Digital Camera world seems to be quiet at the present time.

• Not surprisingly, RiceHigh's blog keeps making a fool of himself by yet publishing another rumor about a Pentax Full Frame by next Halloween. Whether or not this actually materialize, it is about the tenth time he makes predictions about what Pentax will do next. Eventually, he'll have it right just by persistence alone. He will then claim that he is the only one that knew what Pentax was up to. Google his site and you will see what kind of egotistic person he is. He is "special" ! 

• Pentax Forums has a write-up about Pentax lens prices going up again.  

Are Pentax lens prices going up again?

• PENTAX FULL-FRAME DSLR MYSTERY DEEPENS Pentax Ricoh Imaging will neither confirm nor deny that is working on a full-frame DSLR, following remarks reportedly made by a top official in China.

  Read more 
  
  
  
  
• Adobe Photoshop is discontinuing the release of future revisions of its software package. They have decided to sell subscriptions instead. That means working in the clouds, and sometimes that is not possible. You may be in the field where no internet connections are available or where it's very expensive. How are you going to work on your images then? TOP has a complete article about. Must read.

• The latest new Pentax DSLR is the K-30 which was released at the end of  the third quarter of 2012.   The upgraded K-5 (K-5 II / K-5 IIs) were released a little later the same Month. There is no doubt that the K-5 series of DSLRs has been the most successful DSLRs they have produced yet. If you have a K-30 or any of the K-5 series, look at our e-books covering these cameras and many more. 

Click on the e-books below to download a partial sample of the K-5 or K-30 e-books.

See all our e-books for Pentax Cameras.

Thanks for reading,

Yvon Bourque

The new Pentax MX-1, Why I will get one for sure.

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

Hi Photographer friends,

Credits: The Pictures below were taken by http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/pentax-ricoh/1209242-pentax-mx-1-handson-review.html. I do not have access to the camera yet, but I was lucky enough to try it at the CES in Las Vegas. Clubsnap Forum, in South East Asia, has more about the camera with lots of pictures and comments. I urge you to check it out. They were lucky enough to get a pre-production model from Ricoh/Pentax.  All the images are from a  pre-production model and we all know that it's only going to be better as the firmware gets completed.

 

Take a look at the camera images and the actual pictures below. Following the images, I write about why I will get the MX-1 for myself. Some reasons are technical while some are personal choices.

 

The original 35mm Pentax MX, 1976 to 1985

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at the details.

 

100% crop

 

Extreme close up is possible with this camera.

 

Clear image in this selective focusing image.

 

That is pretty good bokeh for such a small sensor.

 

• I can't claim that the MX-1 will be better than my K-5, but I can't bring my K-5 with me everywhere I go. However, I can bring the MX-1 as it is about the size of the iPhone but thicker. As a backup or "with-me-all-the-time" camera, it's perfect. This is an excellent choice for "in-your-face" street photography.

 

 

• The image quality at 12 Mega Pixels (1/1.7" sensor) is pretty impressive. What's more, you can take pictures in RAW format (DNG - Adobe standard raw format) and post-process them later if you wish. I shoot RAW most of the time and I use Photoshop Lightroom to tweak the images further. I can always improve an image in post-processing.

 

• One could say that the camera is not practical without a viewfinder, and I usually would agree. That's the way I feel about the K-01, although I do like the K-01. The difference is that the viewing screen of the MX-1 can be tilted on the horizontal axis. That makes taking pictures much easier in bright sunlight. It reminds me of the earlier waist-level finders Medium Format  cameras. Your body will keep the sun reflection off of the screen. A hood can also be used.

 The MX-1 with the screen horizontally tilted with + the monitor hood below = Waist-Level Finder.

 

 

 

• I love the retro look, even taken to the extreme, with brass top and bottom plates. We used to judge a camera's usage by what was called "brassing" which occurred when the camera strap would rub on the paint for long enough to wear it out. You then could see the bare brass metal. Too much brassing and you knew that the camera had been used or abused for a long time.

• The lens used on the camera appears to be the same as used by  the Olympus XZ-2. It is  a 28-112mm equivalent with a  bright F1.8-2.5 aperture across the zoom range. In turn, this produces excellent bokeh for such a small sensor. On the other hand, because of the small sensor, it is possible to take extreme close-up with this camera. It will focus as close as .39" or 1 centimeter.

•  I like to take video every now and then. The K-5 might take good video footage, but the files are large and the software to convert the files to h.264 video / MPEG-4 is slowing my PC with the Intel I-5 and 16 gig of ram to a crawl. It's not much better with my iMac. What's more, the MX-1 records sound in stereo. I would have prefer also having the capability to use an external stereo mike, but it's not an option. If you don't use the AF or zoom during video taking, you will not hear the mechanism grind through the incorporated microphones. 

There you have it...my claim.

Thank you for reading,

Yvon Bourque

P.S. I will be writing an e-book for the MX-1. I like it that much.

 

You can purchase an e-book for most of the Pentax Digital cameras here:  Yvon Bourque e-books

 

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year to all my Cyber friends all over the world.

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

Hi Photographer friends,

The flags below represent today's last 500 visitors from all over the world.

Thank you and Happy New Year to all from California, USA

Yvon Bourque


Visit us for Pentax e-books.

 

 

Download our free front / back focusing correction charts.

 

 

 

New Pentax K-30 e-book "Everything you need to know...and then some" coming out the first week of September.

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com 

 Hi Photographer friends,

The new PENTAX K-30 combines a compact, lightweight body with many advanced features found only in higher end DSLR camera models, such as a weather, dust and cold resistant body, a glass prism optical finder with 100% field of view, state-of-the-art autofocusing, and full HD video recording capabilities.

You knew that already.

I am introducing my newest e-book for the Pentax cameras.

The Pentax K-30 "Everything you need to know...and then some."

The e-book will be available the first week of September, on this site. This is my 8th e-book and I hope it will help many Pentax users better understand the capabilities of the K-30 and photography in general. It has well  over 200 pages of information, photography tips, video "how-to", and is chuck full of high resolution images and illustrations. My e-books are always written in a non-technical way and entry-level photographers all the way to advanced amateurs have learned to use their respecdtive Pentax camera  to its full potential.

Some photographers have purchased my e-books for each of the Pentax cameras they upgraded to since the K-100D. 

Watch for it.

A downloadable preview will be available shortly.

Thank you so very much  for your encouragement and business for the last five years. It's always a pleasure and a privilege to pass along what I have learned through  years of photography, and years of using the Pentax equipment exclusively.

Yvon Bourque

Do you have a Pentax K-5? Are you buying him/her a Pentax K-5 for Christmas? You need this e-book.

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com

 Hi Photographer friends,

Do you own a Pentax K-5, K-r, K-x, K20D, K10D or K100D? Are you buying him/her a Pentax K-5 for Christmas?  Then...you need this e-book. It's never too late for this as a Christmas gift as the e-book is electronically downloadable within 15 minutes or less, after purchased. 
We also carry e-books for most of Pentax DSLRs.

You can also download a demo to check it out.
We also have e-books for most Pentax Digital SLRs. Link: 

Keeper or dud? Image 19 / 365

Email: brqyvn@gmail.com