[Uluru]

Aperture coupler request is the most boring request ever. Well, not because it is a bad request per se, but because it comes over and over again by the same folks. Even after almost a decade of the digital Pentax DSLR. If it was not implemented in the beginning, it surely will not be implemented now.

So it worries me not only that same question comes over again, but what worries me truly is the lack of any sense of reality in those request, especially after so many years. And also, it is the matter of delicate respect towards the manufacturer. It's like children nagging over and over again about the think they know they are not going to get. Why? Perhaps Pentax has better ideas than that? I, for sure, welcome lack of aperture coupler if it meant coming of the new line of DA Limited lenses! But with that damn coupler, more people would be using old glass not designed for digital, and there would be less incentive to deliver new, better lenses. Pentax needed smaller lenses, old lenses were not matching the need Pentax wanted to achieve and niche to conquer, and coupler would throw Pentax further back in time. To me, it's the end of story.

And on the other hand, I know from the experience that majority of old glass is not so glorious on digital machines. It is fine, yes, but nothing truly special. Only a handful of lenses are really good, but the rest is best when using film. So at least expand horizons, buy a film camera with an aperture coupler and enjoy best results — a design that real matches its designation!

If one goes to all the trouble to shoot with old glass on a super-modern camera, he / she may as well learn how to use a green button properly, and understand best exposure compensation for the lens. Or simply buy a few rolls of film, grab a film camera and shoot all day.

After all, you who ask such feature are great photographers, right? Film or digital, doesn't really matter for your amazing photographic capabilities and knowledge of mediums. And not only that, you know how to assemble aperture coupler and know as well it is not an amazing engineering feat. So I don't understand why you contradict your own knowledge and skills, and with it, lose sense of respect, and of space-time continuum.

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Last edited by Uluru; 02-13-2015 at 07:09 PM.

[jcdoss]

Hypothetically speaking, one could choose to purchase a Sony a7II instead of a Pentax, if all one wants is an image stabilized platform on which to use legacy manual focus lenses. Lost customers are hard to win back.

The other option, I think, is to remove the long aperture control pin and there you go, your lens behaves on a Pentax DSLR just like it would on an adapted mirrorless. I've actually thought about doing this for some lenses... but I'm afraid of screwing up the lens and/or losing the parts.

[mee]

I think it is illogical for an organization geared towards making money to cater to the smallest niches around. Mainly, here, a small band of largely older people looking to use even older camera lenses.

The company wants to show it is looking ahead at what it can do and not behind at what it did in years gone by. Those times are over. That ship has sailed. There is little money in selling a camera body that lets one use old lenses perfectly from which they will not be generating any more profit. It just makes no sense from a business point of view to give the end user every single thing they want all the time. So we have K mount which DOES support many older lenses to a degree but that isn't the goal to just make a super adaptable camera body and then be done with you and sales. They have K mount because it does have a history and allows Pentax to pad their lens lineup depth chart.

So I don't expect this coupler or anything else related to support older gear specifically to be included on the first FF body. They want your money. All of it. So buy some fancy new lenses with that camera body and get a 'free' battery grip, SD card, and voucher for a free order of fries with any purchase at your neighborhood Mcdonalds.

[boriscleto]

The other option, I think, is to remove the long aperture control pin and there you go, your lens behaves on a Pentax DSLR just like it would on an adapted mirrorless. I've actually thought about doing this for some lenses... but I'm afraid of screwing up the lens and/or losing the parts.

Just search evilBay. Some Canon FF user probably did it for you already...ask @monochrome

[Tanzer]

I petition that next time we have a Q&A with Pentax, we propose a firmware solution to the problem instead of asking them the same thing time and again and expecting a different answer.

Yes, this is the question we should be asking them! Their response would be along the lines of "Umm, uhh, well OKAY, you caught us! Dang it, we DON'T want to support your old lenses!! Now give it a rest already, it ain't gonna happen!"

At least it would put the topic to rest.

[rullrich]

Aperture coupler request is the most boring request ever. Well, not because it is a bad request per se, but because it comes over and over again by the same folks. Even after almost a decade of the digital Pentax DSLR. If it was not implemented in the beginning, it surely will not be implemented now.

So it worries me not only that same question comes over again, but what worries me truly is the lack of any sense of reality in those request, especially after so many years. And also, it is the matter of delicate respect towards the manufacturer. It's like children nagging over and over again about the think they know they are not going to get. Why? Perhaps Pentax has better ideas than that? I, for sure, welcome lack of aperture coupler if it meant coming of the new line of DA Limited lenses! But with that damn coupler, more people would be using old glass not designed for digital, and there would be less incentive to deliver new, better lenses. Pentax needed smaller lenses, old lenses were not matching the need Pentax wanted to achieve and niche to conquer, and coupler would throw Pentax further back in time. To me, it's the end of story.

And on the other hand, I know from the experience that majority of old glass is not so glorious on digital machines. It is fine, yes, but nothing truly special. Only a handful of lenses are really good, but the rest is best when using film. So at least expand horizons, buy a film camera with an aperture coupler and enjoy best results — a design that real matches its designation!

If one goes to all the trouble to shoot with old glass on a super-modern camera, he / she may as well learn how to use a green button properly, and understand best exposure compensation for the lens. Or simply buy a few rolls of film, grab a film camera and shoot all day.

After all, you who ask such feature are great photographers, right? Film or digital, doesn't really matter for your amazing photographic capabilities and knowledge of mediums. And not only that, you know how to assemble aperture coupler and know as well it is not an amazing engineering feat. So I don't understand why you contradict your own knowledge and skills, and with it, lose sense of respect, and of space-time continuum.

Yes, very well said! As I tried to say above I don't expect to have a super fast handling lense when using M42 or K/M-Lenses. And the push on the green button is really something that's not to much expected from me. But people already start talking about failed/missed/doomed features that Pentax was as always not able to comprehend/see/engineer. Pentaxland!

[pacu]

Generous? I think you could look at an empty glass and call it half-full.

Camera bodies from the 1970's, which were smaller than today's cameras, somehow had space to fit the coupling lever. Aside from a warp in the space-time continuum, it really doesn't make sense that there is now not enough space to fit the lever.

Maybe the SR system has something to do with it? Who knows. Either way, it's an insult to our intelligence to not explain it. My ZX-5n is also smaller than any DSLR, yet it has space for the lever.

---------- Post added 02-13-15 at 02:10 PM ----------

When I use my ME Super and ZX-5n, I often think about the fact that current dslrs are less functional, in this one particular regard. That seems like a giant step backward.

When I see cutout images like this http://www.popphoto.com/files/imagecache/gallery_image_626x__white/_images/201209/_l4c0898.jpg. i am impressed with how little empty space there is. Digital cameras have a lot of staff that film camera diddn't.

[blende8]

If green button metering would work satisfactorily, I wouldn't complain. Unfortunately it does not.
From the K20 to the K5 there was an improvement, but it is still not linear.
At larger apertures (smaller numbers) it is underexposing, at closed apertures it is overexposing.
Attached is, as an example, the A50/1.2 from aperture 1.2 to 22.
On the y-axis is the grey value of the image.

[Gimbal]

If green button metering would work satisfactorily, I wouldn't complain. Unfortunately it does not.
From the K20 to the K5 there was an improvement, but it is still not linear.

Yeah, I just wish there where someway one could compensate the exposure somehow. Some kind of manual mode or something. Oh wait, there is.

[Not a Number]

Wouldn't OTF metering like on the LX be a work-around? With K and M lenses you could set the aperture with the aperture ring, and the camera would meter the light hitting the sensor and close the shutter when enough light has hit the sensor.

Isn't that more or less what LiveView metering is doing?

[Alizarine]

Camera bodies from the 1970's, which were smaller than today's cameras, somehow had space to fit the coupling lever. Aside from a warp in the space-time continuum, it really doesn't make sense that there is now not enough space to fit the lever.

I'm no expert nor engineer but cameras back then also had a lot less electronic parts inside them that do take up space- film is a lot thinner than a sensor and mainboard + all the wires and circuits. I'm not sure how the aperture coupler works inside a film camera and where it connects to, but I guess putting it back would indeed make again some redesigning of the internals to fit everything in. Gadgets today are so tightly-packed that the parts are either mostly integrated or just really, really tiny. But nonetheless take up space. That's just the physical part.

As the others mentioned there are other reasons why it wouldn't be profitable for Pentax to install the aperture coupler back to the modern KAF3 mount. The 645D/Z has it because I believe the system still has a better share of use with old glass - and probably there's also some manageable space inside so the Pentax guys had the chance to retain it there.

[fuent104]

I'm no expert nor engineer but cameras back then also had a lot less electronic parts inside them that do take up space- film is a lot thinner than a sensor and mainboard + all the wires and circuits. I'm not sure how the aperture coupler works inside a film camera and where it connects to, but I guess putting it back would indeed make again some redesigning of the internals to fit everything in. Gadgets today are so tightly-packed that the parts are either mostly integrated or just really, really tiny. But nonetheless take up space. That's just the physical part.

As the others mentioned there are other reasons why it wouldn't be profitable for Pentax to install the aperture coupler back to the modern KAF3 mount. The 645D/Z has it because I believe the system still has a better share of use with old glass - and probably there's also some manageable space inside so the Pentax guys had the chance to retain it there.

The only likely explanation for me is that they simply don't want to include it. Mankind has gotten pretty good at engineering. Every year, someone comes out with a camera that does something that "couldn't be done" before. Sony has fit a full frame sensor and a stabilization system into a camera body smaller than a dslr. If Ricoh doesn't want to add the coupling lever, that's their choice, but I don't believe they haven't included it because their professional engineers are not capable of doing it.

[mythguy9]

After all, they do need to sell new lenses.

I use a lot of legacy glass myself, but I'm not sure how much of us consist of the entire Pentaxian population. If they add the coupler, they are adding cost into a part that maybe not the majority of population uses, and they are not gaining from old glass anyway...

---------- Post added 16-02-15 at 10:43 AM ----------

If Ricoh doesn't want to add the coupling lever, that's their choice, but I don't believe they haven't included it because their professional engineers are not capable of doing it.

They didn't say they can't do it, they said it's because of the size factor.

---------- Post added 16-02-15 at 10:46 AM ----------

If green button metering would work satisfactorily, I wouldn't complain. Unfortunately it does not.
From the K20 to the K5 there was an improvement, but it is still not linear.
At larger apertures (smaller numbers) it is underexposing, at closed apertures it is overexposing.
Attached is, as an example, the A50/1.2 from aperture 1.2 to 22.
On the y-axis is the grey value of the image.

Nice graph, I wonder if Adam et al. can test this properly with larger sample size...

Another way to please us, Ricoh can indeed improve the algorithm of the green button for extreme aperture ends.

[blende8]

Nice graph, I wonder if Adam et al. can test this properly with larger sample size...

This has been done already.
There was a thread here around 2010. Perhaps someone remembers it?

K10, K20, K7 were basically unusable.
There was an improvement with the K5.
What I don't know is how the K3 behaves in this respect.

[.a.t.]

This has been done already.
There was a thread here around 2010. Perhaps someone remembers it?

Is this the one you're thinking of?

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/10-pentax-slr-lens-discussion/124627-k-5-...-m-lenses.html