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The Pentax #q7weeksofcolour project!

Last week, I got involved with a little project with Pentax (or, PENTAX as it seems to be in all the correspondence, which is odd retro-futuristic to my eyes… PENTAX THE DESTROYER,  robot from outer space), anyway, yes. They wanted me to test drive a little Pentax Q7 – little being the operative word. It is a very small non-SLR camera with interchangeable lenses. Something in between a point-and-shoot and my beloved and very battered Canon.

Look how small!

It’s a mirrorless camera, meaning there’s no viewfinder – just the LCD screen. It’s very light and, importantly for me, very sturdy, falling off a high counter onto a tiled floor just 3 days into my challenge and being absolutely, perfectly fine (unlike my Canon which smashed its expensive lens into bits during a similar mishap).

You can fiddle with the settings like on a normal DSLR – I like to shoot on Av, so I can change the f-stop (the lower the better), although the zoom function on the Q7 changes the f-stop automatically. You can change the ISO and the white balance too. I tend to stick with Auto on those 😉

It even shoots video, though I haven’t had a play with that yet.

The challenge was to take a photo every day for a week, each with a different colour scheme. This is something quite fun, requiring one to keep an eye out every minute of the day for a suitable photo opp (and sometimes failing and resorting to what one has in hand). I also took it to Rhythm Riot over the weekend before to test it out. Here are some of the test results (these have not been edited in any way):

Rhythm riot
Rhythm riot
Rhythm Riot 2013
Rhythm Riot 2013

Rhythm Riot 2013
I feel that the unedited photos have a slightly vintage quality – might be to do with my inexpert wielding of the Pentax Q7 and very slight overexposure? I’m not sure. All I know is, it took a lovely photo with an extendable flash that helped in dark conditions. I’ll be writing up the Rhythm Riot properly next week by the way, with a few more of these photos and several of other people’s too.

And here’s the full project! These were all taken on the Q7, emailed to my phone and then put through Instagram, so there are filters added.

Yellow
Red
Paint it #black. Went to Heavy Metal Bowling/BBQ tonight. I'm pretty metal ;) #q7weeksofcolour
Black
Mint Juleps! #green #q7weeksofcolour
Green
Took the little Pentax to town today! Bright #white lights & sparkle! #q7weeksofcolour
White
Details for tomorrow. #lilac #q7weeksofcolour
Lilac
Of all the vintage sparkles I have, most of them are #blue! Last day of #q7weeksofcolour - thanks for watching! #nofilter

Blue

What do you think? This was a super fun little project so thank you to Pentax/Ricoh Imaging for sending me the Pentax Q7. These little babies retail from £369.99 so not at the budget end of the camera scale, but considering its tiny size, portability and image quality, it seems very reasonable. Fits in a vintage handbag, too, as I demonstrated at Rhythm Riot. Plus! You can choose almost any colour combo for the body and trim! My boyfriend is planning to buy a wide-angle lens for it, so that should be fun! 
If you fancy winning a Pentax Q7 for yourself, there’s a #Q7weeksofcolour competition running at www.facebook.com/RicohImagingUK – go and enter! 

Fleur xx
DiaryofaVintageGirl.com

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9 Comments

Mim

It's a Compact System Camera – that's the techie term for the little ones with interchangeable lenses.

I bought a compact recently, got fed up of faffing around with D-SLR lenses. There's a lot to be said for a little camera you can just slip in your pocket and have fun with.

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