Design Aesthetic

Presenting my newest toys: a 2012 camera on a 2012 tripod with a 1982 lens.

It struck me that someone in the design department at Pentax must have had a fondness for the old gear. Not only does that lens work with the new camera, but it also looks as if it fits, a perfect match of styling between the eras. Recent years have not been kind to the Ashai corporation; they put out a spate of cheap and ugly plastic cameras in the 80s and 90s and it was beginning to look as if the world of photography was passing it by. When digital hit even their mighty 6x7 workhorses fell out of favor.

My new camera is about 2/3 the size and twice the quality of my old one (also a Pentax) and my “new” lenses (all 30 years old) are also very compact. I have a couple of monster plastic zooms but I never warmed up to the concept of toting around an outfit the size of a toaster just to take a few pictures. Most of the new pictures you see on this blog were done with a compact Point and Shoot (albeit with manual controls), but there are times when a higher quality image just can't be beat. I'll have plenty of opportunities to use this new rig in Iceland when I go back—IN SIX WEEKS! SIX WEEKS! SIX WEEKS! OMG! OMG!

I’d better get packing.