[waterbender]

Is it possible to make lenses work on the K-30 without the ‘A’ setting on the aperture ring? I’ve heard that this may be a problem on the camera, but I don’t know if that’s true.

[Reliant K1000]

Is it possible to make lenses work on the K-30 without the ‘A’ setting on the aperture ring? I’ve heard that this may be a problem on the camera, but I don’t know if that’s true.

Definitely can be done ( I do it all the time) and it's been discussed many times before if you want major detail...but I happen to have the URL for the Pentax site that discusses this very thing...

Using K-30 With Older Lenses | Pentax Support

[RKKS08]

One should add that the menu settings as shown in the Ricoh Pentax link don't need to be re-done if you change back to other lenses. They can stay forever without doing any harm.

[Na Horuk]

It won't be a problem, its just that the camera won't know what aperture your lens is set to, so it won't be able to meter.
Go to menu, enable aperture ring. Now just go to M mode and set the aperture on the lens and the shutter/ISO on the camera. You can press green button and it will stop down the lens to your setting, meter, and then set the shutter speed. You can also use Av mode and it will meter automatically, but it will not stop down, it will shoot wide open. In Av mode you can probably also use Auto ISO, which can be helpful in dark situations where you shoot wide open anyway. There are a couple of threads with more detailed explanations if you are interested. Here is the one that I usually link to when this question pops up:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/pentax-lens-articles/110657-how-use-meter...k-x-k-7-a.html

The manual lenses obviously don't have AF, but AF confirm can still work. You can use CiF (Catch in focus, focus trapping), live view with focus peaking, or even learn zone focusing. Manual lenses are a lot of fun and often have IQ that rivals modern lenses (in some cases even beats them)