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insane pelican

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I'm from ontario, 18, and have limited photo experience. I took a course last year, gave me a basic introduction into the use of cameras, but at that time i was unable to afford one. A couple of weeks ago, i bought an old Richoh KR-5 for around 50 dollars shipped off of ebay.

I am happy with the camera, have only taken one roll of film with it, but i am am now in the market for new lenses. The lens that was shipped with it is constantly zoomed in, and its anoying when im trying to get up close. I will also be spending a few weeks up in alonquin, and i want a lense that allows me to take scenery shots, as well as closeups of any animals that i encounter. So any sugestions to which type of lens i should go for? Or if you could tell me any names that i should be looking for would be greatly apreciated.

*edit*
Though i should include a price. As of right now, i am poor. Very poor. No job will do that to you, so i am only looking to spend at the maximum of 50 bucks per lense. What i was thinking of doing was buying a normal lense, that gives the exact same view as the human eye, without any zoom, as well as a telephoto lens, that i can use for macro and zooming in on objects. I was also planning on buying off ebay. As i said before, any help or sugestions would be great.
 
Look for Pentax brand lenses. Any Pentax lens with a K-mount (not screw mount) will fit on your camera. The older, manual focus, fixed focal length lenses go for pretty cheap. Look for a Pentax 50mm f/1.7 ;at a used camera place they usually go for $75+, but sometimes you can find a better deal. You'll have no problem finding a Pentax 50mm f/2 for less than $50 if you can't find a deal on the f/1.7

You can also get an adapter that allows the use of the older Pentax screw mount lenses on K-mount cameras (Pentax, Ricoh...). Those lenses usually go for cheap, and they are excellent lenses, at least the fixed focal length models.
 
insane pelican said:
so what type of lens should i be looking for here? Any specific words i could search for on ebay would be great.
Do a search for Pentax lenses; read again what Matt wrote up there for the specifics. You want to stick with a 50mm lens for starters. You should end up with something very nice for the money. :)
 
The 50mm lens is just what you are looking for.

Skip the zoom lens unless you are getting it dirt cheap. Even though the auction says it's a Pentax brand lens, by looking at the photos we can see it's an Albinar brand lens with a K-mount. Albinar might make a decent lens, but we know Pentax does, and they aren't much more expensive, particularly for the manual focus models. Pentax auto-focus lenses will also work fine on your KR-5 (minus the auto-focus of course).
 
If i could pick that lens up for under 20 bucks should i go for it? It will probably go above 20, but if not, good deal? I am so lost when it comes to buying camera accessories, i know hardly anything. Very unedumacated.
 
No. I don't trust that brand. You shouldn't either

Brands you should buy for your k-mount camera (in order of best to worst)
SMC Pentax
Tamron/Sigma/Vivitar
Any other brand
 
A good deal on any Albinar lens is probably about $3. $15 would be a bad deal. :)

Besides Ebay, you might want to check out www.keh.com and www.mpex.com
The gear will be a little more expensive, but come with return policies, etc...
 
Look into helios 58mm f/2 It's russian, the design is german. The quality is slightly soft wide open and excellent stopped down to f/4

The bokeh is bee-aaa-uuutiful. And the price is 8 to 15 bucks. Also look into zeiss glass there are many 50 or 45mm f/2.8 around which are multicoated and give you nice quality. They're not popular because they're slow, but are optical gems.

Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 135mm f/3.5 goes for around 100 bucks and is valued for it's bokeh and good performance wide open.

There's russian jupiter 85... goes for around 50 bucks. Lots of aperture blades, good build, nice background blur.

I have no clue about good wide angle lenses.
 
I have the Pentax lens that you are looking for and it is a really decent lens, especially considering that it was a kit lens when my wife bought her ME Super years ago. It can really take some crisp, sharp images. I recently bought the 50mm AF pentax lens though as I sometimes had a difficult time telling when the focus was spot on with the manual lens. Looks like there's quite a bit of variability in price on Ebay. You might want to search for the ME Super as you can sometimes get a cam w/ the lens for $50 or so even if the camera is being sold for parts.
 
insane pelican said:
...i want a lense that allows me to take scenery shots, as well as closeups of any animals that i encounter.

i see your last ebay link posted. a 50mm 1.7 as, mentioned is a decent
prime lens. a bit OTT that you would have to buy a camera body and another lens too if you dont need those things..although the 75-200
may be useful. a 50mm for wildlife is only good for saying hello to horses over barbed wire fences and a few wading birds etc.

p.s vivitar designed a decent 28-200 (72mm filter-ring) lens, which can be found 2ndhand with a pentax k-fit cheap
these days. 28mm will give you better landscapes than the 50mm and the 200mm-end is reasonable for some wildlife pictures.
 
2framesbelowzero said:
p.s vivitar designed a decent 28-200 (72mm filter-ring) lens, which can be found 2ndhand with a pentax k-fit cheap
Decent? nikon and canon can't design decent lenses in that range.

I'd stay away
 

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