Camera Review: Pentax P30T

The Pentax P30T, attached to a lens from a
Vivitar v4000 that suffered a sad fate.

I didn't know much about the Pentax P30T when I saw it pop up on a Craigslist ad for $30. Of course, I looked it up before sending out the email, but there wasn't much to say, it seemed. It was the pictures that drew me in. It just felt so... 1980's. All of the controls flush against the top panel. The pewter colored body. The big "P30" etched vertically into the hand grip rubber in that TV interlaced style that was so common back then.

This camera looked like something from Blade Runner.

Camera Review: Canonet QL17 GIII 35mm Rangefinder

It took a while, but I finally got around to running a few rolls through my Canonet QL17 GIII 35mm rangefinder camera (purchased for $50!).  I've already mentioned it in a couple of previous posts, including a short how-to on adjusting the rangefinder spot, but I never really got around to reviewing it.  So here we are!

How Extension Tubes Work

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions out there regarding extension tubes and how they work, and if you're just getting started with them, it can be a little frustrating when you're not getting them to behave how you might expect.  I've talked a few people through it to clear up questions they had, so hopefully by writing up a post about it, it will help someone else one day.

Extension Tubes Are Just Spacers

An extension tube

Some years back, I ran across several product reviews for a set of extension tubes that were unnecessarily negative. The main reason was because the users expected to be able to "zoom in" farther with these tubes to allow the subject to better fill the frame. What they were probably thinking of was a teleconverter, which introduces additional lens elements to effectively increase the focal length of the lens it's attached to.  Extension tubes are different.  They have no optical elements at all; their only purpose is to add additional distance between the lens and the film plane. If you really wanted to, you could actually make your own extension tube with a cardboard toilet paper tube! That's how simple they are.