Last night I developed the first film I'd run through my Pentax Z-20 slr and this morning I've scanned the resultant negatives, so this post is to highlight the Pentax Z-20 sample photos.
Pentax Z-20 sample photos
My first impression is that the negatives are a little under exposed and flat. As they were scanned, the histogram for each negative was very bunched up in the centre of the display, and therefore the entire dynamic range of the picture was scanned over a quite narrow range of bits. Although it could be that I didn't develop them for long enough, I also developed a film from my MZ-3 last night using the same development times, and that seems to have come out with much better contrast and 'body' so I think it is more likely to be under exposed.
Another problem I noticed is that there appears to be some severe vignetting, but I've realized that this is actually caused by a collapsible rubber lens hood which I had fitted to the lens, which was a Sigma 24 to 70 mm zoom. Although I couldn't see it in the viewfinder, the outer edge of the lens hood has just been caught in the extreme corners of the pictures when the lens was set to its widest setting.
Overall, the pictures are OK but not spectacular. I'm fairly happy that the film (which was Kodak ColourPlus 200) was OK, so it's possible that the Sigma lens I used was not terribly good.
All these pictures were scanned on an Epson V550 perfection and imported to Lightroom for (minimal) post-processing.
