No, I do
not know from a very reliable source that there is a FF Pentax coming this year. Different story here.
To start from the beginning: I have always been a sucker for subject separation and shallow depth of field which is why I have piled up a bunch of pretty fast glass.
Also, I was one of those fools hoping for a sign of a FF Pentax at the last Photokina for being able to put this onto a whole new level, but there was "just" the K5.
So I recently pushed myself to what I had been thinking about for quite a while already: Hunt down a cheap Canon FF DSLR to use my beloved Pentax lenses with. I managed to catch an old, well used 1Ds.
So far, that is no big news as it has been done before. I remember one thread regarding FA ltds on a 5DII. However, as the aperture lever and protection shield of Pentax lenses protude too far into the mirror box, this requires the infamous leverectomy.
I did not want to do this to my precious lenses - and besides, I wanted to be able to still use them on my K7 - so I decided to do it the other way around: Modify the mirror box. (
This is what it usually looks like)
Clearly visible here, I grinded off a considerable amount of metal and plastic from the left and the bottom of the mirror box. The only tools I used were a Dremel and a black marker which is why it does not look perfectly clean, but it works like a charm. One day I might replace the marker paint with some less reflective matte paint, but for now I am happy with it.
I did not compromise the camera's contacts. Should I ever end up with a Canon EF mount lens, I can still use it on my camera without any restrictions.
Using a PK-EOS adapter that mounts the lens top up instead of at 2 o'clock like most adapters do, the mirror is able to pass the lever and shield and I can use any of my Pentax lenses that have an aperture ring with it. Without any modification to them, just the way they are.
I have barely touched my K7 since then. The 1Ds is a freakin' huge and heavy monster and it makes my K7 look like a high ISO wonder above ISO 400, but in terms of subject isolation it obviously smashes the K7 against the wall. Oh, and the big viewfinder is nice, too.
I am still - or rather even more now - looking forward to a "real" Pentax FF DSLR (at about the size of a K7, pleeease). But until this happens, my enhanced 1Ds will do the job.
Some of the first results:
SMC-A* 85mm/1.4 wide open
SMC-A 50mm/1.2 wide open
Vivitar 28mm/2.0 Close Focus @ 2.4
Last edited by 721; 02-01-2011 at 05:55 PM.