Pentax Users Advice Needed

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Nigel Cliff
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Although a Canon User I have a number of K Bayonet manual focus lenses that I still use occasionally on a film camera,I use these with an adapter on my EOS cameras but stop down metering is a pain,can any Pentax users advise on a K Digital body that I could use preferably one that would give me focus confirmation
 
Although a Canon User I have a number of K Bayonet manual focus lenses that I still use occasionally on a film camera,I use these with an adapter on my EOS cameras but stop down metering is a pain,can any Pentax users advise on a K Digital body that I could use preferably one that would give me focus confirmation

You can use all K mount lenses on Pentax DSLR's, although you will still have to use stop down metering with the original M series Pentax K mount lenses (those which have no electronic contacts to communicate the aperture) as Pentax removed the mechanical linkage from the newer versions of the mount (a lot of people have asked Pentax if they could add the linkage back onto newer DSLR's, but they've not so far).

Stop down metering is not as difficult though as when using the lenses on other cameras: you just set the green button (on the top plate) to provide a shutter speed in manual mode when pressed. Press it to set the shutter speed for the aperture you've set on the lens (it'll momentarily stop down to meter before opening again to allow you to focus, take the shot etc - essentially like how TTL metering originally worked on cameras with no open aperture metering). Its effectively aperture priority, but you have to manually tell it to stop down to set the shutter speed. This works on all Pentax DSLR's.

Any of the Pentax A series onwards lenses (which communicate the aperture via the contacts and have an "A" position on the aperture ring) though will work without stop down metering, and to my knowledge all Pentax DSLR's provide focus confirmation.
 
Samuel has covered it well. On the manual K mount lenses I use on my K5 I get focus confirmation in the viewfinder.

There is only one caveat I'd add, though have to say I have never heard of anyone who has had this problem. Have a read of the Pentax section on this web page - http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-99.html

The A lenses are excellent as apart from having to focus manually (which depending on subject may not be a problem) they operate exactly like modern lenses.


Dave
 
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