Originally posted by deus ursus That feature with the Spotmatic F and older lenses sounds like how today's DSLR's work with M and K lenses. #historyrepeating
Ummmm, sort of...
The installed base of non-supporting lenses at the time was huge and the fail-over for non-SMC glass was to work in the same manner as the traditional use of those lenses. Both types of lens were used according to their design intent with essentially equivalent meter performance for both...genius. The crippled mount OTOH was a definitive gaff. The long-standing fail-over for non-A glass was to operate according to the original design intent, Av or M mode with open-aperture metering. The crippled mount required a poorly documented and poorly implemented* protocol for stop-down metering for lenses that have well-implement support for open-aperture metering.
Shame
Rant over
Steve
* Although better than a decade ago, stop-down metering with current-model Pentax bodies still suffers from poor accuracy and poor linearity.