andrewg_ny

<p>Any thoughts on Lens Turbo affect on bokeh -- for example, how the same lens looks on NEX+LT vs. A7?</p>

<p>Do you mean the five LED lights on the right side of the viewfinder (the light meter) no longer work?</p> <p>Or do you mean you can't see the current aperture setting through the 'Judas' window anymore?</p> <p>MX is all-mechanical except for the lightmeter -- shutter, aperture, and film advance can still function but you'd have to estimate or use external meter for exposure.</p> <p>That piece (first photo) is pretty tiny. Do you have any idea where that came off of? Did it come from the exterior, out from the back film chamber, or out of the mirror box when the lense was removed?</p> <p>There's an <a href="http://pentax-manuals.com/manuals/service/servicemanuals.htm">MX service manual available here</a> that includes an exploded parts view near the end -- perhaps you can identify this piece (I've finding it difficult).</p>

<p>Hin, I'll definitely agree that the Taks are really easy on the eyes. Almost (but not quite) enough to distract me from the homely Sony A7 body you have them mounted on. It may be a great camera, and it allows you to mount some cool glass...but aesthetically, IMO...uh...yuk.</p> <p>Hopefully you'll share some pictures captured through these Asahi beauties.</p>

<p>You should also be able to easily adapt M42 screwmount lenses, such as the Pentax Super Takumar 24/3.5.</p>

<p>FA 20-35/4 is nice and would probably be my first choice though it will cost more than the FA-J 18-35, and it's not quite as wide. </p> <p>The F 17-28 3.5-4.5 fisheye zoom would also cost a bit more. Note that in terms of angle of view the 17-28 is considerably wider than its focal length would suggest -- it can see 180 degrees at 17mm, and 90 degrees at 28mm, though with increasing amounts of distortion as you go wider.</p> <p>If you don't need to go quite that wide, there are numerous 24mm alternatives including the very good FA 24-90/3.5-4.5 zoom, the F 24-50/4, A 24-50/4, M 24-35/3.5. Sigma made a pretty decent 24/2.8 'super wide' autofocus prime. Pentax had manual focus A24/2.8, or you could adapt 24/3.5 M42 screwmount.</p> <p>In general the current new lenses are designed for digital and are not designed to cover the film frame -- the Pentax-branded examples of these are prefixed with "DA" or "DA*". Lenses with F, FA, D-FA, FA-J are all full-frame-capable autofocus).</p> <p>Some of the wide DA zooms might work OK if you avoid the wider parts of the zoom (corners will start to black out) though this strategy is perhaps more appealing if you're buying primarily for digital and only want it for film occasionally.</p> <p>For manual focus, another alternative is it the Voigtlander 20/3.5, I'm not sure how easy these are to find.</p>

<p>I am thinking it might be available at a discount come Black Friday & holiday season. It's still not clear to me how much better it is vs. some of the better-performing zoom alternatives (e.g. DA* 16-50, DA 17-70/4, Tamron or Sigma 17-50/2.8 or Sigma 17-70/2.8-4), though clearly from a size/weight/build perspective it's a bit more prime-like than most of these.</p>

<p>No news I've seen. I wouldn't make too many assumptions about the specs of that roadmapped standard zoom either.</p>

<p>I would avoid the X-5. Both specs-wise, plus I handled it in a store -- disappointing.</p> <p>Not sure exactly what the difficulty is with your eyesight vs. K1000; do you just need autofocus, or would it be better to compose with the rear LCD screen instead of an eye-level optical viewfinder?</p> <p>If you just feel you need autofocus now but SLR with optical viewfinder still sounds like it would be of interest, a modern DSLR like Pentax K50 or K500 would fit the bill. The two are pretty similar, I believe the K500 loses weather-resistance, active focus point in the viewfinder, and might not come with a rechargeable battery (relies on AA batteries out of the box). Of the three, the 2nd item is most relevant as it helps you know what you're focusing on (though if you always use center-point focusing then it's probably less important).</p> <p>I'd probably start with the 18-55/3.5-5.6 kit zoom lens and/or DA L 35/2.4 lens (if you're used to a bright, fast 50mm on your K1000).</p> <p>As an alternative to DSLR with optical viewfinder, if you prefer composing and shooting using the rear LCD screen, you might want to try something else like Micro 4/3. You CAN compose and shoot using 'Live View' with current DSLRs, but they're not optimized for this. If you see yourself shooting this way most of the time, you might be better off with Micro 4/3 from Panasonic or Olympus -- the output will be nearly as good, the camera smaller & lighter, and 'live view' rear display focusing should be better.</p>

<ol> <li>Only AF lenses (Pentax-F and newer) identify themselves uniquely to the camera. Camera knows nothing about adapted or Pentax-K or -M lenses, and very little about Pentax-A lenses (only min/max aperture, and doesn't know anything about zoom setting or whether max aperture changes during zoom). I'm not certain the degree that all third-party lenses identify themselves *uniquely* to the camera either. I've seen terms like "SIGMA LENS" in the EXIF, don't know whether each lens actually has a unique ID or not.</li> <li><em><strong>I</strong> </em>am not certain whether the micro adjust settings have any bearing on the AF sensors themselves -- this value <em><strong>*may*</strong></em> be applied only when operating the AF motor in which case it would have no affect on manual focus. If you want to experiment with this, change adjust to maximum in one direction and see if you can even tell the difference.</li> </ol> <p>At any rate I don't this would be very effective anyway -- the focus confirmation in the viewfinder just doesn't seem exact enough that a generalized tweak one way or the other would help. If you really want that level of precision you should probably be focusing using magnified live view. I would give the same advice for AF lenses (it's my understanding that the AF micro-adjust has no effect on contrast-detect AF either).</p> <p>Just to throw one more wrench into the works, there can be some degree of focus shift as the lens stops down. Phase-detect AF is normally executed with lens wide open. I don't expect the system to take any shift of this kind into account, and furthermore, you'd probably want to fix lens wide open when determining micro-adjust settings if you weren't already.</p>