Originally posted by klh I stopped by a well-known camera store in Indianapolis to browse. They keep a small collection of used Pentax lenses, but unfortunately it was all overpriced and mostly junk. They were asking $85 for an M35/2.8 which they had rated a 7 out of 10 even though the aperture blades were sticky as molasses.
Anyway, as I was looking, the salesperson asked what camera I had. After I said a Pentax K20D, he told me not to bother looking at the old lenses because they wouldn't work on a digital camera. I tried to explain that Pentax cameras were backwards compatible to the screwmount era if you didn't mind stop down metering. However, he said that mounting an old lens on a Pentax would prevent the camera from even turning on, and that was why Pentax digital cameras were a failure.
It wasn't worth an argument.
I wish Pentax would at least get some advertising out to the masses. They've got a great product, and only a few of us know it.
This is not so much a fault of pentax, but of the entire photo press.
Shutterbug magazine at one time published an article about using old lenses on new cameras and really did not explain that pentax lenses were fully backward compatible. In a later edition of shutterbug, they has someone write in about old lenses, and were told to get an adaptor for a canon or nikon body because they were the only cameras that could use old lenses. In the same edition, there was a report about one of the new pentax bodies, where they stated it could use every pentax lens ever made./ The point is, not even the press know what they are talking about, so unless someone actually sits down and plays with the cameras to know what they can do, how do you expect them to know.
You said they had only a collection of old pentax, does that mean they no longer carry new pentax stock. If so, then how do you expect them to know about something they don't carry, other than the misinformed press.