I just took the first five people who asked to be included. I've gotten lots of private emails from people asking to be considered; please forgive me for not answering you personally. It would kill an hour that I don't have to spare today.
The first five people getting the Pentax Monochrome are: Steve Rosenblum, MikeR, Rob Spring, Todd Scholten, and William Lewis. Like I say, they were just the first five to ask, no special treatment. I'll be emailing them later tonight, or tomorrow. John Camp had a nice suggestion about the timing of shipments: each person should ship it to the next on the second Monday after they receive it. That insures that each person will get the camera for two full weekends and a solid week in between. That's for people who work a nine-to-five and are free on weekends. Nice thought. We'll adopt that.
I'll include two small primes (to keep the package light), the charger, one battery, and of course the camera body with a strap. I'll also include a list of the five people and their addresses, a timetable, and a checklist of the box contents. I'm also going to suggest that the six of us open a text chat so we can talk amongst ourselves.
If this all goes smoothly, we'll do it again in the Fall with five more readers.
Mike
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Featured Comments from:
Mike, your offer exemplifies why I've been reading your writings probably from your earliest contributions to photography magazines, and then this blog. Generous, kind, honest and thoughtful comes to mind, but I probably missed a few. Amazing! Thank you. This doesn't let you off the hook with regard to some of your tangents, though, but I'll let that pass.
As you know, I'm north of the acceptable boundary and wouldn't take part in your offer in any case because I've been shooting with M Monochroms since they came out. I started out with b&w film in the 50's and a monochrome camera is the last one I'll part with. I'm very interested in what these recipients think of the camera, or rather the shooting process and how their shooting is influenced by only being able to shoot in b&w.
In my professional photography work I was often asked to provide both b&w and colour prints. I would ask the client which was more important for their needs and explained that depending on what I was focussed on that day, that would turn out better. I had trouble producing my best work if I had to switch back and forth between the two on the same job or day. Now most days I go out with a b&w camera, only shooting colour in 'snapshot' mode; ie, less thoughtful record mode.
Posted by: Henning Wulff | Saturday, 19 July 2025 at 02:39 PM
Mike,
I thought the chosen five might want to know the camera’s SD card specs…in case they want to buy one before the camera arrives. It has dual SD/SDHC/SDXC slots. UHS-II cards are supported in slot 1.
This is going to be a fun project. Looking forward to everyone’s feedback.
Ned
Posted by: Ned Bunnell | Saturday, 19 July 2025 at 03:11 PM
Mike: I checked lensrental.com and it costs about $127 to rent this camera for a week (no lens). Just putting that out there if folks can't wait. :) It also highlights the generosity of the offer!
Posted by: Benjamin Marks | Saturday, 19 July 2025 at 03:26 PM
Lucky for once :) Since I have a K3 Mk 1 it will be interesting to see how the B&W jpgs it produces compares with the output from the K3Mk3 Monochrome.
Hopefully the primes will be ones I don't already own - so I can have fun testing them too!
Thanks for this opportunity, Mike. I'm looking forward to it.
Posted by: William Lewis | Saturday, 19 July 2025 at 09:58 PM
Any chance of Zambia becoming an honorary state of America?
Posted by: Richard Alton | Sunday, 20 July 2025 at 08:26 AM
My z6 has two abi-normals.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C-iCe7_6l1ChZoZRU1lbvuubDvRW1No4/view?usp=drivesdk
Posted by: Jim r | Sunday, 20 July 2025 at 03:59 PM
I'm so looking forward to reading what they all have to say about this. I don't do b&w (yet?) but I'm sure it will be interesting.
Thanks for organising this!
Posted by: Thomas Paris | Friday, 25 July 2025 at 02:22 AM