[zapp]

Support was long enough - ok Pentax still mentions long+ term compatibility. How long should support last how munch money can Penta make here - nothing.

[froeschle]

I ordered and bought one of the very first K-1 s in Europe . Support of K/M*/A*/F*/FA* lenses still is imho appropriate. APS-C lenses, however, are out of date . Who still knows what f-stops are?

[JimJohnson]

The camera body will tell you the current aperture for DA / DL lenses. Of course there is no guarantee you won't have vignetting unless you use crop mode. What I miss most about DA/DL lenses is the lack of focus distance and depth of field scale indicators or read-out from the camera body. All the Pentax bodies still have a focal plane indicator that frankly is useless without knowing the focus distance and DOF for the lens. There are still times I want to manually pre-focus for a specific distance and know what my DOF will be.

[Nicolas06]

I ordered and bought one of the very first K-1 s in Europe . Support of K/M*/A*/F*/FA* lenses still is imho appropriate. APS-C lenses, however, are out of date . Who still knows what f-stops are?

Theses APSC lenses still work well and are compatible with you K1, no issue Half of the APSC prime also cover the FF just fine too, so that not that big issue.

[automorphism]

This might be a silly question, but why can't the K-mount be "decrippled in software"? It might not work 100% as well as true metering, but for example:
-Tell the camera the max aperture of lens, say f/2.8
-Set the aperture ring to f/8
-Set the aperture in Av mode to f/8
-Camera meters the scene at f/2.8, wide open, and then recalculates the exposure based on the approximate shutter speed/ISO needed to go from f/2.8 to f/8

[LensBeginner]

This might be a silly question, but why can't the K-mount be "decrippled in software"? It might not work 100% as well as true metering, but for example:
-Tell the camera the max aperture of lens, say f/2.8
-Set the aperture ring to f/8
-Set the aperture in Av mode to f/8
-Camera meters the scene at f/2.8, wide open, and then recalculates the exposure based on the approximate shutter speed/ISO needed to go from f/2.8 to f/8

Cumbersome and error-prone.

I already have to input the FL for a given manual lens, I don't want to have to fill-in a questionnaire every time I turn on the camera... plus I'd have to match the aperture on the ring with the one in Av, and that's two things to do instead of one, every time you change aperture.

[krazykat]

plus I'd have to match the aperture on the ring with the one in Av, and that's two things to do instead of one, every time you change aperture.

Currently with green button metering you have to do two things every time you change the aperture anyway, change the aperture and then meter with the green button. Moreover you have to press the green button every time the lighting changes. This way once the aperture is set you can just fire away, no matter the light. So it saves time, which means less potential for missed shots.

This functionality would be perfect for me on the K-1's custom dial, at the moment I'm struggling to put anything particularly useful there for my shooting style. Being able to quickly change input aperture via a dedicated wheel would be great for me.

[LensBeginner]

Currently with green button metering you have to do two things every time you change the aperture anyway, change the aperture and then meter with the green button. Moreover you have to press the green button every time the lighting changes. This way once the aperture is set you can just fire away, no matter the light. So it saves time, which means less potential for missed shots.

This functionality would be perfect for me on the K-1's custom dial, at the moment I'm struggling to put anything particularly useful there for my shooting style. Being able to quickly change input aperture via a dedicated wheel would be great for me.

Whoa, pushing a button and entering a value are not on the same level... and with your method one could have false EXIF information on top of a wrong exposure.

A dedicated dial instead of entering a value is a slightly better implementation that what I was thinking in the first place, but not all cameras have dials in excess... one of the advantages of using old-style lenses is that you get a dial for fre... on the lens!

[JimJohnson]

You can fool your Pentax dSLR into thinking every pre-KA lens is a KA lens. (see links below).

1. Use manual exposure with the lens wide open (think K1000 match needle techniques).
2. Determine final focus.
3. Set the body indicated f/stop on the lens - with the lens stopped down to this value.
4. Release the shutter.

The process is barely slower than using an actual K1000.

The trick is to short out the correct pins on the camera body. The only alteration to the body is shorting the KA pin - takes less than 10 minutes and is fully reversible (although you really don't need to bother - I've left my K-r, K-30 and now K-3 and never undo it). And so long as the lens mount covers the other pins on the body, you only need to apply some bits of magictape (stuff used for gift wrapping) to the lens to act as insulators.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/22-pentax-camera-field-accessories/113756...ml#post1965512 (scroll down a couple posts for a supplement with pictures)

And this discussion expands into the use of P-TTL flash with the above artificial pin shorting techniques:
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/125-flashes-lighting-studio/190819-high-s...ml#post2021062

[TaoMaas]

I still think Pentax could make their current DSLRs more legacy lens friendly without much effort. Install a split-prism focusing screen and make them meter better with lenses that precede the "A" series.

[krazykat]

Whoa, pushing a button and entering a value are not on the same level...

Yep, you're absolutely right. If you were taking just a few shots between changing aperture then the current system of green button metering would be easier. However, if you were taking a sequence of say 30 shots maybe not. I'd rather enter a value once rather than press a button 30 times, especially as the button presses occur between frames rather than at the beginning of the sequence. Of course, YMMV.

and with your method one could have false EXIF information on top of a wrong exposure.

Yes, this is also true but you do get at least partial information. With green button metering you get zero aperture information. However this way you get what the camera thinks the aperture is, which is either correct for a correct exposure or incorrect if it doesn't match what's on the lens' aperture ring. But, if you've forgotten to update the aperture setting to the correct value you at least get a clue as to what the correct aperture is. For example, if the setting says 2.8 but it's 2 stops under-exposed you can work out what the actual lens aperture was likely to have been by a simple calculation.

A dedicated dial instead of entering a value is a slightly better implementation that what I was thinking in the first place, but not all cameras have dials in excess...

There's a custom one on my K-1 that's not doing much atm...

[reh321]

Yep, you're absolutely right. If you were taking just a few shots between changing aperture then the current system of green button metering would be easier. However, if you were taking a sequence of say 30 shots maybe not. I'd rather enter a value once rather than press a button 30 times, especially as the button presses occur between frames rather than at the beginning of the sequence. Of course, YMMV.

If light remains constant, why do you have to do anything more than once??

[krazykat]

If light remains constant, why do you have to do anything more than once??

Because when it's not it isn't.

[reh321]

Because when it's not it isn't.

I guess I'm not clear on the meaning of "sequence of thirty shorts". If this is a burst, lighting isn't likely to change much; if this is a slow sequence, with my making changes between shots, then aperture could easily be one of those changes, and having to dial in that change each time would drag the whole thing out a lot more than pressing the {dreaded} green button would.

And this would be a good time to remember that the only Pentax lenses this applies to are those made 1975-83, a small fraction of current stock of K-mount lenses.

[tim60]

I am glad I can use all my old glass and the thoughtfulness required to use it augurs well for applying the thoughtfulness to get reasonable pictures.