My Frenemy, the Normal Zoom Lens

Foto.Feola.Friday for May 9, 2025

Shakedown 1979
Cool kids never have the time
On a live wire right up off the street
You and I should meet

Junebug skippin' like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never see an end to it all

Foto.Feola.Friday

I got my first reporting job in 1979 working for a little weekly newsletter called The Whale on the South Fork of Long Island, New York. Here’s everything you need to know about The Whale: the name was originally a shot at the town government after a dead whale washed up on the local beach and spent weeks rotting and stinking up the area while officials argued futilely over what to do about the problem.

My first day on the job my boss handed me a Pentax ME with a 50mm lens. We don’t have money for photogs, he said. And so I was a photojournalist.

Fell in love with photography. I liked the ME, but wanted more control. So I bought an ME Super, which normally came with that same 50mm normal lens. But the camera store guy talked me into the SMC Pentax-M 40-80mm F2.8-4 instead. And soon we were frenemies!

I soon had a million zillion Pentax lenses, and this little zoom rarely makes it out of the cupboard. But over the years I’ve learned the problem was really me. I had a tendency to stand around like an idiot zooming in and out with these lenses. With a prime, I zoom with my feet, working the subject, and getting better results.

June 1 is the 50th Anniversary of the Pentax K Mount. I thought it would be fun to celebrate by looking at some of my oldest K Mount lenses, and taking them out with the K-3 III Monochrome, the latest Pentax dSLR. I was kind of surprised how well this old lens performed on the exacting Monochrome

Next on Perfecting Equilibrium

Sunday May 11 — Happy Mother’s Day!