Ads Against Photographers In Vancouver

Just a quick note to make people aware of some new Translink Ads in Vancouver in prepration for the Olympics. I had thought that we were safe up here from some of the paranoid, big-brother insanity that you hear about from south of the border, but it seems note. Please note that Jennifer from the Translink's blog, has commented and explained a bit of what was going on, but the issue still is (IMHO) that the ads say to the public "suspect photographers with DSLRs", and perpetuates the impression that photography could be bad/wrong/illegal. Lets be serious here, if you're a "bad guy" and you're doing surveillance, you're going to be doing your photography way less obviously.

Anyway, there's lots of good discussion in that forum thread. Time to break out the "Photography is not a crime" stickers?

PMA 2009 Wrapup

Well, I waited a few days after PMA finished (totally not because I got busy and lazy, definitely not...) just in case some some dark horse products appeared. Sadly no such luck.

DPReview had a nice wrap up of what was released, the two interesting products from Pentax are:

• The Pentax X70, a 24x super-zoom (26-624mm/2.8-5.0), 12 megapixel, multi-aspect ratio, 2.7" LCD, EVF, monster. I think it does RAW as well, but that doesn't seem to be on the page. Kinda cool, stepping in and stepping up to the realm of the Canon SX1-IS range (which my wife has and enjoys the zoomability of).
• The DA 15mm/4.0 Limited, another in the line up of Limited lenses. This is another one where I'm not sure if I'd get it as my main lens is the 16-45/4, and I'm not sure if that 1 extra millimeter, at the same f-stop, is worth the $500-600, even at the the optical quality of the Limited series. Unless of course you're specifically using only primes or only limited lenses of course. That's not to say that I wouldn't gladly evaluate this lens for the site :)

Other than those two the DPReview lists a couple of point and shoots, the E70 and P70, which sadly blend in with the billion other point and shoots. So no K30, no K3 or K2, full frame or anything else.

Oh well, maybe next year something new and exciting will appear! Until then, time to keep on shooting!

Pentax K30D Rumor Diary

Found out that 1001 Noisy Cameras has a K30D rumor diary. Reminder that PMA starts tomorrow, so fingers crossed for something good/revolutionary for us Pentaxians.