| Palmor : it's just my own cross-interpretation of the two following points:
1 - an 18-55 f3.5/5.6 expose "quite right" (without any underexposure).
2 - the original focus screen is not linear, thus inducing heavy underexposure with fast lenses.
So, "highlight savings" is IMO just a byproduct of their focus screen design (made to improve viewfinder brightness with all A-lenses, by the way, which would be a good idea if the meter was calibrated accordingly).
You increase the screen's brightness, the meter will think it has a brighter scene, and finally underexposes the scene...
They calibrated the meter to expose "just right" with the kit lenses (and that makes sense to me).
And when they finally tried with fast lenses, they surely went "hey, okay, this underexposes quite a bit, but this way we won't overexpose things, so we won't get flamed by customers"...
As there is no lenses slower than f/5.6 in the current pentax line (and the occasional 1000/8 lens does not qualify, I think!), the overexposure problem below f/5.6 went unnoticed.
I'm quite sure they went right to the "anyway, 95% of customers will stick to kit lenses, so what's the point of changing this now?".
I still think their decisions (even if not for the reasons I gave above) were good, but they could have documented this a little more clearly, and mentioned that a LL60 screen solves the problem for those of us that want to use stop-down or PK-m lenses...
Anyway, now, my FA50 f/1.4 exposes just like my 18-55... |