I’ve retired the #thursdaythoughts theme for 2025 . In it’s place, while searching for something new, .the new theme is temporarily going to be (and may end up as) Anything Can Happen Day. That was what Thursdays were called on the Mickey Mouse Club, where I stole the idea!
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Old rockin’ chair’s got me
(Old rocking chair got you, father)
Cane by my side
(Your cane by your side)— Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981)
Today’s post continues what has become an informal series about shooting with some older digital cameras, many of which are available for affordable prices on the used camera marketplace. Today it’s the Pentax MX-1…
The Camera
The Pentax MX-1 was a digital compact camera produced by Ricoh Imaging and announced on January, 2013. Some people like to say that “the design of the Pentax MX-1 is reminiscent of that of the original Pentax MX SLR that was produced in Japan by Asahi Optical Co, later Pentax from 1976 to 1985″ but I’m not buying it myself. Instead…
The Pentax MX-1 houses a 12 megapixel 7.44 x 5.58mm BSI CMOS sensor with video recording capabilities up to 1,920 x 1,080 (16:9) 30p. The Backside Illuminated (BSI) CMOS is similar to regular CMOS but these kinds of chips arrange the components differently so that BSI CMOS is around one f-stop better when it comes to image noise.
The Pentax MX-1 uses the same materials as the original Pentax MX, namely brass for the top and bottom plate. I think that’s where the similarity between the two cameras begins and ends. Its built-in lens is a 28-112mm (35mm equivalent) zoom that has a variable aperture of f/1.8 – 2.5. The camera has sensor based Shake Reduction, a tilt screen as well as a build in pop-up flash.
I was surprised to find that you can buy a Pentax MX body (which I would rather have) for around $200, while an MX-1 will cost you more but it was still a fun camera to shoot.
The Photograph
I seem to have a fascination with furniture on porches; You can see my image Tea for Two in Castle Rock or one of my Thursday Thoughts posts for a diffrent look but I think I like this photograph, that was made in Parker, Colorado Victorian Square, best.
Parker, Colorado’s history includes the construction of Victorian-style houses in the 1910s. The town was originally called Pine Grove and was a community where people raised cattle and horses and owned dairy farms. Today you can find a series of historic homes on and around Victorian Drive, just off Mainstreet, where I made the featured image.
The camera used to make this image was a Pentax MX-1 with the zoom lens at 24mm. Exposure for the original JPEG file was 1/1600 sec at f/5 and ISO 100. The final image was lightly tweaked in Photoshop.
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