[PentaxianBear]

Hi there,
My name is Austen. I am new to SLR's and I just bought the Pentax K-X. I have a couple of questions.
1. Will older pentax lenses work on new pentax cameras?

2. Will lenses that were made for a (pentax) 35mm camera work on a digital (pentax) camera?

I have to keep my new hobby on a budget and I saw that there are hundreds of old pentax 35mm cameras with multiple lenses on ebay. I am trying to get two more lenses one specific for long range wildlife and one for macro.

Thank you to all and any that respond!

Sincerely,
Austen

[eddie1960]

Welcome to the forum Austen
in answer to both questions yes any pentax lens ever made will work with the kx. for any lens that predates Auto Aperture (the A setting) you will only be able to use in full manual mode (metering achieved by pressing the Green button) or Av mode if shooting wide open
If you want to get a feel for the lenses have a look here

Pentax Reviews - Pentax Lens Reviews & Pentax Lens Database

Edit

You might also check the marketplace here for lenses for example
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/photographic-equipment-sale/132185-sale-p...f-sale-us.html

[PentaxianBear]

Thanks very much!

[DaveHolmes]

Yep... Old lenses will work and you seem well on the way to a severe case of LBA already :-)

[KxBlaze]

Besides the M, A, FA etc... lenses there are some that you will see called M42. Those will also fit on your Kx but with an adapter and will also be fully manual (like an M series).

**Also a lens made for a 35mm camera will have a different field of view on your Kx. I believe it is 1.5x. Example: a 28mm lens will look like a 42mm lens on your Kx but yes a lens made for full frame (35mm) will still work on your Kx.

[eddie1960]

Besides the M, A, FA etc... lenses there are some that you will see called M42. Those will also fit on your Kx but with an adapter and will also be fully manual (like an M series).

**Also a lens made for a 35mm camera will have a different field of view on your Kx. I believe it is 1.5x. Example: a 28mm lens will look like a 42mm lens on your Kx but yes a lens made for full frame (35mm) will still work on your Kx.

A better explanation is a 28 will look like a 28 looks on the apsc sensor. it's still a 28, however if you are comparing it to what a 28 looked like on your film camera it will look more like a 42 would have (which is pretty close to perfect normal lens on a 35mm the DA43 being a prime example)

you should also hunt around flea markets and junk shops for the lenses. my best buys have never come from Ebay but always from a market or junk shop. a lot of my manual lenses cost $15 or less

[PentaxianBear]

Lba?
:-)

[PentaxianBear]

Thank you everybody for all the great help!

[RioRico]

I've been shooting for over a half-century, but until I got my first dSLR a couple years ago, I'd never used Pentax. And I had no legacy lens collection. I started with just the K20D and three lenses. I now have ~180 lenses, mostly old cheap manual glass. Yes, I'm an optics junkie. Of those 180, just 10 are newer AF (autofocus) lenses. All the rest work quite well on the K1000 and ZX-M manual film cameras I got last year (cheap). And that's a great thing about Pentax -- all the legacy lenses available to play with! So welcome aboard, buy more lenses, ask questions, and remember: you are doomed.

[jonhock]

Lba?
:-)

LBA="Lens Buying Addiction"

Welcome!

[RioRico]

LBA="Lens Buying Addiction"

But wait, there's more!

CBA - Camera-Buying Addiction
FBA(1) - Flash-Buying Addiction
FBA(2) - Film-Buying Addiction
EBA - Enlarger-Buying Addiction
TBA - Tripod-Buying Addiction
BBA - Bag-Buying Addiction

All are subsets of:

GBA - Gear-Buying Addiction

Which could include: cars, boats, computers (four are in front of me and one is in another room), guitars, synthesizers, surfboards, firearms, power tools, radios (don't ask), RC models, et al. All of these can actually be *used* for something. Unlike just the usual collections and accumulations, which mostly can only be admired without touching.

I mentioned my ~180 lenses. (More will arrive soon. Some will be sold. Like the tide, they ebb and flow.) A poll was taken at another forum -- the AVERAGE number of lenses owned by each member was 100. One member had 1500. I am but a piker in comparison. And like I said, most of mine were/are cheap.

Then there's my rather wealthy brother-in-law. He accumulates cameras. Untold hundreds of cameras. Every vintage camera he sees, he buys, and he it wraps in plastic, and stores in a cavernous basement. No inventory, no accounting, just cameras galore. He's not like the guy with hundreds of one-buck toy cameras, no. He may have a few dozen Leicas stashed away, he's not sure. But his future widow assures me that after he drinks himself to death, I'll get to liquidate the collection. Hey buddy, have some more vodka!

But I digress. Once you start buying lenses, it is hard to stop. Welcome to LBA. You are doomed.

[jonhock]

"But I digress. Once you start buying lenses, it is hard to stop. Welcome to LBA. You are doomed."

RATTman and Austen, this is what the previous post was supposed to look like. (the one I just deleted)There's a picture I apparently dropped on the way to the forum

[PentaxianBear]

Thanks Guys! Im off this weekend so I'm gonna fuel the LBA, TBA, and BBA ! lol

[jonhock]

Thanks Guys! Im off this weekend so I'm gonna fuel the LBA, TBA, and BBA ! lol

Don't forget the PDSLRC!
(Pentax Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera)

[Mike Cash]

Welcome to the forum Austen
in answer to both questions yes any pentax lens ever made will work with the kx. for any lens that predates Auto Aperture (the A setting) you will only be able to use in full manual mode (metering achieved by pressing the Green button) or Av mode if shooting wide open

You are correct in a broad, general sort of way, but a bit mistaken on the particulars. M42 lenses can be metered in Av mode at any aperture.

Austen, since you're on a budget I would like to invite you to poke your head into the Lens Club section of the site and take a look at the Takumar Club thread (the most active thread on Pentax Forums, with over 7,000 posts so far) to see what sort of fun and results a good many of us have with lenses from the late 1950s through early 1970s and which are in general extremely affordable and uniformly of excellent optical quality.

The ability to build and use a lens collection from over half a century of lens production is what led me to choose Pentax in the first place. And there is no shortage of people here who would say the same.