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Forum: Pentax SLR Lens Discussion
12-31-2011, 06:02 PM
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I quite agree that sharp and in focus mean the same thing now as they did 35 years ago and a major accomplishment of Pentax has been to recognize this and to provide a reasonable solution for using virtually every optic that Pentax has ever made including those that don't even say Pentax on them. If one shies away from zoom lenses which have benefited from improving computer aided design, it's pretty aggressive to claim that modern automation really produces better results
than you can get by turning the knobs yourself. Indeed my first 35mm SLR didn't even have a light meter in it, and the mirror only cranked down when you rewound the camera. I thought an 'auto' camera meant auto mirror return so you could actually look through the viewfinder without rewinding the camera.
I for one, however, have been updating my lens collections whenever my personal finances and the market sort of made it possible, not because the new ones
will take better pictures, but out of a fear that technology might pass me by and and provide some genuine value added to the later generation of lenses.
For example a decade ago, I took note of the crippled K mount appearing on some low end camera bodies. At that time the Pentax-M and Pentax-A lenses were
all selling somewhat interchangeably at near the same price and I had a few bucks to spare, so I fed all of my SMC and Pentax-M lenses into EBay and bought Pentax-A versions.----- The shuffle didn't cost me much but when crippled K mounts ended up everywhere, I had a leg up. Did I get better pictures---well no, but I could turn
my brain off and push the button sort of.... More recently, I noticed that I was n't using the manual focus lenses and was primarily using auto focus stuff, not because
it produced better photos but because I am old and lazy. I have now largely disposed of my Pentax-A family of lenses--but not because they don't take good photos.
Rather, there is some reason to believe that technology is moving forward which may actually lead the newer glass to actually taking better photos (and of course I will never get less lazy. Specfiically, I have concluded that it is likely that soon the camera body will be so smart that it will need to know what lens is attached
to function optimally, i.e. the XDIF will need to be accurate.
This can show up in a couple of ways: a) Shake Reduction (SR) goes fully solid state-----Lens and focal length will be mission critical to the calculations needded for this. b) ever increasing MP counts will overtake the optical limits of the lenses making 'corrections' critical to maximizing the optical capability.
c) Program modes that will take into account the optical characteristics of specific lenses.
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