Brian,
When Jay started the M club a few months back he began by saying:
“We (I myself included) tend to get caught up in all the anticipation and hype over
the newest/best/priciest glass out there and soon to be out there. I'd like to
take some time now to give a little appreciation the humble Pentax SMC-M's
- All manual, no A setting, they're not new, and they're not Super Taks - kinda the
Jan Brady of the Pentax lens lines.
Next couple days or so I'm going to try to find the time to walk around with
one of these four on my camera and take some snapshots, and post them here. We can't let these little beauties go unappreciated. “
Mission accomplished Jay!
We have now had 378 posts in this thread and almost 12,000 views of the activity to be found here. I think we have had shots from every M series prime now and the results have been very impressive in my mind. The same is true of the K series thread. I suspect the fact we have to take more time with this old glass and think about the shot, aperture and shutter speed has something to do with it. Pentax has a long history of making fine lenses. They still do today. As Mike Johnson said in his 2002 article when writing about the Pentax Limiteds:
sm-02-05-02
“when it comes to the best autofocus lenses in the world, whether for a viewfinder camera or SLRs, it's still Zeiss and Pentax, baby, same as the old days.”
The secret is out guys. The Ms are from the “old days” and they are pretty damned good.
Cheers,
Tom G