[PaulF]

Hi folks,

Today I received my latest Ebay purchase, an ALBINAR-ADG 80-200. To my horror I could not mount it on my K10D. The metal fin which is next to the latch was simple much larger than it is on normal Pentax lenses. After a bit of searching on the Net, it turns out that its a Ricoh mount, which seem to be causing trouble on newer Pentax cameras.
To me there was only one option: Cut of the some of the fin. So after half 20 minutes of cutting and cleaning, the lens fitted perfectly. I took great care to remove any metal-dust before letting the lens near my camera, so hopefully I will not have any metal floating around the CCD.
Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the mount before the cutting -- Just had to see it working :-). But I'll put up a couple of pictures of my work shortly.

I am rather happy with my work and the lens, but I can't stop wondering if there are things I should have been aware of before cutting the lens? And any suggestions to why Ricoh-mounts have longer fins at all?

Cheers,

[Lowell Goudge]

the same issue occurrs on the Vivitar Series 1 70-210 F3.5 zoom.

I have read several posts where someone cut doen the fin that protects the apature control.

The best way to do this is to disassemble the fin from the lens, cut it down to match the "standard" pentax arrangement and then reattach it. Use removeable loc-tite on the screws, and paint the exposed metal flat black to stop internal reflections.

Depending upon construction you might have to take the mount off first.

[mediaslinky]

Lens works great now, and takes great pictures.

Still, I was nervous cutting it down.

[PaulF]

Here are some pictures, as promised. They should give an impression of how much too long the fin was. I might add, that I didn't measure the length of the fin on Pentax lenses, but just guessed :-)

Haven't painted it, as I'm unsure about which paint to use. Furthermore, I doubt that it causes any trouble without painting it. Haven't noticed anything yet.

(The images have been taken with the K10D and the kit lens, and have been cropped)

Attached Images

       

[Olrocker]

<Haven't painted it, as I'm unsure about which paint to use>

I'd just hit the bare metal with a magic marker...

Scott

[Ole]

You should paint the blabk metal matte black. Light can reflect from the sensor back out, hit the blank metal, and reflect back in and cause a ghost image. Every surface in the mirror chanber is matte black to absorb the reflected light - you don't want anything shiny in there!