I took this with my old Pentax K-mount 50mm prime lens. As much of a technology geek as I am, there’s something joyous about going old school every now and then and shooting completely manually. I’m reminded how difficult shooting film really was – if you wanted to be good. And with the K-mount lens, I’ve no other choice than to go manual. This particular lens is a beautiful Pentax 50mm f/1.4, made sometime around the late ’70s. It’s sharpest around 1.7 or 2, and the clarity when shooting with this lens is hard to beat. The JPG compression did nothing here to show that off, but the RAW file looks gorgeous.

Shooting with this lens reminds me that I keep meaning to pick up a more modern Canon 50mm f/1.4 as it’ll fit my body natively, autofocuses, functions more like an 85mm on my APS-C body, etc. Still, there’s something magical about taking my time to get the manual settings just so….

50mm at 400ISO, f/1.7 @ 1/10