Originally posted by jojomosgo I just was given a beautiful Zenit 58 mm F2.0 lens and I'm trying to get it to work with my K200d. I am able to shoot with it, but it does not stop down and the camera does not seem to know what F Stop it is set for. Am I able to use this lens or am I missing some setting on the camera?
Any help appreciated. The manual leaves a bit to be desired...
You're probably talking about a Helios 44-series lens.
Since this lens was made when your grandpa was a lad, it has no means of "talking" with the body via electronic contacts. You're surely mounting it to the body through an adapter. This makes all commands fully manual - you have to twist the aperture ring to change the aperture, and the focus ring to.. focus.
If the aperture doesn't close as you twist the aperture ring, either the lens is set to "auto aperture" (a pin is pressed at the back of the lens when the shutter is depressed, which stops the lens down to a pre-selected value - if this is the case, look for a switch on the lens barrel that switches from auto to manual diaphragm control), or the lens is "auto only" (does the same as the one with auto aperture, but with no manual override - this is trickier to solve as it would require to keep the pin pressed at all times)
Or maybe it's just broken.