[Serkevan]

Welcome to the forums! If the reviews are anything to go by, you're gonna love that 50/1.2 (and I can personally vouch for tve 135/3.5, absolutely lovely rendering).

[johnha]

Welcome to the forum. The LX is a special camera. I'd forget about the 40/2.8 pancake and look at the FA43 Ltd instead - it's almost as slim but is a much better lens in all respects. It's an AF lens but mostly metal with a smooth but lightly damped manual focus feel. The LX size doesn't really benefit from the super slim pancake.

[Sandy Hancock]

Welcome!
For me, as a teenager at the time, the LX was a pipe dream. It is now the only film camera I still own. The viewfinder image through a f/1.2 lens is truly a thing of beauty. Enjoy!

[taktoon]

Welcome to the forum!

[Kerrowdown]

Welcome to the forum, IMHO the LX was one of Pentax’s finest hours.

[kevinWE]

Welcome aboard.

[VILLAINofOZ]

Another welcome from Australia here.
Nice buy! Some nice glass with the LX indeed.
Enjoy the forums as they are a wealth of information and experience.

[nonpigliounoshoot]

Greetings from Italy and good continuation.
Welcome!

[pres589]

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your LX. They seem very nice.


I've got an M 40 f2.8 and I don't find it to be all that great. I prefer my M 35 f2.8. It's quite small but big enough to actually focus easily; the 40's focus ring is super thin to the point that it's not so easy to use. The 40 also isn't that sharp wide open; it's happy at f5.6 or 8 but wider than that isn't so great. I've never owned or used one, so take this next bit with a bit of salt; I'm not that impressed by what I've seen of the FA 43. It is tiny, fast, well made... but the out of focus rendering is often busy if given the chance based on the background. And I don't think it's so great wide open, either, although it sharpens up quickly just a stop or two down from f1.9. The only other lens I could really see competing for your interest here that came in native k-mount is the Voigtlander 40mm f2.0 Ultron but those haven't been sold new for some time and are not common or inexpensive.


The M 20 f4 is quite nice and there are folks using it on today's K-1/K-1 II digital cameras with great resulting images. Nothing really comes to mind that performs as well for the size of the lens. I've got a Tamron Adaptall 17mm f3.5 that is pretty nice but needs stopping down to really perform well. That lens has its own odd caveats though. The Samyang 14mm f2.8 is also pretty nice but really large and sometimes just too wide. There's a number of manual ultra-wide options on the market today for k-mount cameras.

[sergysergy]

An Lx + a 50 1.2 is a very nice way to say hello

[fiddlefye]

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your LX. They seem very nice.


I've got an M 40 f2.8 and I don't find it to be all that great. I prefer my M 35 f2.8. It's quite small but big enough to actually focus easily; the 40's focus ring is super thin to the point that it's not so easy to use. The 40 also isn't that sharp wide open; it's happy at f5.6 or 8 but wider than that isn't so great. I've never owned or used one, so take this next bit with a bit of salt; I'm not that impressed by what I've seen of the FA 43. It is tiny, fast, well made... but the out of focus rendering is often busy if given the chance based on the background. And I don't think it's so great wide open, either, although it sharpens up quickly just a stop or two down from f1.9. The only other lens I could really see competing for your interest here that came in native k-mount is the Voigtlander 40mm f2.0 Ultron but those haven't been sold new for some time and are not common or inexpensive.


The M 20 f4 is quite nice and there are folks using it on today's K-1/K-1 II digital cameras with great resulting images. Nothing really comes to mind that performs as well for the size of the lens. I've got a Tamron Adaptall 17mm f3.5 that is pretty nice but needs stopping down to really perform well. That lens has its own odd caveats though. The Samyang 14mm f2.8 is also pretty nice but really large and sometimes just too wide. There's a number of manual ultra-wide options on the market today for k-mount cameras.

On the topic of the 40mm f2.8 - I had figured it to be a Tessar formula lens like the Zeiss/Contax pancake, but it isn't as it has five elements rather than the four in three groups of a Tessar. I don't really need one with the 50 f1.2, come down to it. I've some very nice Tamron Adaptall zooms to fill in that need plus the 90 f2.5 macro (lovely lens!). I do use a 20mm quite often in my Nikon system so the 20 f4 would be something to keep an eye open for perhaps. In the 35mm category, how does the f2 compare to the f2.8?

[ben.p]

Welcome to the forums

[jack002]

Welcome from the USA

[pres589]

If you look at the optical formula for the M 40 as well as the DA 40 XS and DA 40 Ltd, they're 5 element / 4 group designs. I believe the arrangement is basically a Tessar + a correcting element. I don't know if there was a white paper published by the lens designers to explain their goals or anything like that with the design. Agreed on the 90 f2.5; I picked one up for an M42 screwmount kit and ended up just leaving the k-mount on it. It's a nice lens.

When I went looking for a k-mount 35mm f2.0 lens, based on samples and reviews, I picked the K-series 35mm f2.0. I think it's a touch sharper in the center than the M-series 35mm f2.0 wide open. The out-of-focus rendering seems more like the older Takumar lenses than the M's, A's, and so on. The M-series lens is quite a bit smaller, though, which may be of some benefit to you. Between the 35mm f2.8 and f2.0's from the M-series, I think at f2.8 they're about equally sharp. There are other people here with more first-person knowledge than myself. I do think that, with Pentax lenses anyway, at 35mm you can't really go wrong (save for possibly the DA 35mm f2.4 which doesn't really apply here anyway).

[WillWeaverRVA]

Welcome to the board!