|
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-17-2013, 07:17 PM
|
| |
I've been looking around the web at the advantages of pentax, and what better place than pentax forums to bring up the topic...
1) Best value for money by far it seems. I read about the lenses spiking up in price last year, but they seem to have gone back to their more reasonable prices. Now much later after the fact, anyone know why Pentax spiked up their lens prices or what this could mean for the future?
2) People often mention that Pentax is an innovator, a non-conformer. Can anyone shed light on how Pentax does this?
3) Image stabilization and autofocus in DSLR body. How significant is this or how and to what extent is this an asset?
4) I even came across someone saying that Pentax image quality has more of a film look than Canon or Nikon. In addition to this point, is there anything to be said of the differences in image quality that Canon, Nikon, or Pentax DSLR's create? I'd imagine no, that it's too subjective of a topic, and that all three brands sometimes use the same sensors in their camera bodies. But if there's anything to be said on the topic, I'd enjoy hearing about it.
I've been getting back into film photography and am looking at getting a DSLR. In general Pentax looks good, and I'd appreciate any additional insight to the above points.
What I'm actually most interested in is backwards compatibility, meaning I'd like to use old film lenses with my DSLR. Wikipedia states that, "The large variety of F-mount compatible lenses makes it the largest system of interchangeable flange-mount photographic lenses in history. Over 400 different Nikkor lenses are compatible with the system." Can anyone verify this? I had previously surmised that more K mount lenses existed. Perhaps it is that more third party K mount lenses exist than any other mount? Wikipedia lists more third party K mount lenses than F mount lenses.
Than there's the actual backward compatibility of K mount and F mount lenses. Pentax's in body image stabilization and autofocus seems a great plus for using older lenses. So can anyone contribute as to which lens mount they think is more backward compatible?
Here's an excerpt from another forum on someone making the case for Nikon: "In 1977 [Nikon] they added Auto Indexing as you say and you have to convert a pre-ai lens to AI if you want to use it on a D50, D70, D80 or above Nikon... Ai is backwards compatible. Some lenses you have to add an indexing hook to use on an older 1967 body...But basically with little effort and no adapters Nikon lenses from 1959 until now will work on modern Nikon DSLRs...Pentax comes the closest but requires adapters to use their older screw mount to K mount, and most Pentax owners would not consider a 1968 lens for day to day heavy use on a modern K5 camera using that adapter. I doubt there's a way to electronically couple it or input the lens data into the camera both of which are common with Nikon without adapters. You'd have to stop down meter probably."
Lastly, I found this elsewhere on this forum and find it quite interesting: "Nikon has the longest registration distance of any of the major SLR manufacturers. This makes Nikon an almost universal donor to other SLRs but makes it impossible to adapt other SLR lenses to Nikon without optical correction. You can force fit a Nikon manual focus lens to Pentax but not the other way around."--so is it true that older Nikon film lenses can fit on newer Pentax DSLRs? It'd be great if this were true, to be able to use older K mount and F mount lenses on a Pentax DSLR.
I know this is already a lengthy post, but I've also found mentionings of people seeming to believe that Pentax could go out of business. Anyone think there's any truth to this? Or anyone think it's total bunk?
|
