Pentax?

S

shoook

Active member
Hey guys does anyone on here use Pentax lenses? I'm looking into the different brands and I'm intrigued by how much less Pentax lenses cost. But I'm wondering if this is one of those you get what you pay for kind of things.
 
i just built a DIY adapter and i also have a pentax K mount with a SMC 1.4 lens. Pentax has great lenses, its just that they're often overlooked :(
 
Pentax is one of the oldest names in modern photography and is known for making some excellent lenses in terms of both image quality and mechanical build. They were one of the first company to introduce high-level features in their entry-level DSLR items like metal-mounts on their 18-55 kit zooms, sensor shake to remove dust on entry-level cameras and weather proofing on their mid-level cameras. Pentax is all about taking the features that Nikon and Canon reserve for their highest end products and inlcuding them in their entry/mid-level products.

Check out this review of their line of premium autofocus primes: http://luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-02-05-02.shtml

Disclaimer: I own a Pentax K100d, a 50mm 1.4, a 35mm f/2 and a 18-55 f/3.5 zoom.
 
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hey guys, im planning on building my own DOF adapter, my dilema is that I have both canon and pentax lenses and am not sure which would be better, i have all the same lenses in each brand, telephoto, wide angle, tele converters etc.

i guess which would be easier to aquire the mounts for?
 
Apart from flaws like CA, breathing etc. you should choose the lens you personally think looks better. I don't know how experienced you are with your different sets of lenses, but there is no such thing as one brand is better than the other, they all have unique lenses. If you don't own a digital photography camera house, try f. ex. to borrow a Canon EOS camerahouse and get a cheap pentax lensmount adapter for it, and do a lot of test shots in different environments with all your lenses, and then pick :)
 
simplehuman said:
hey guys, im planning on building my own DOF adapter, my dilema is that I have both canon and pentax lenses and am not sure which would be better, i have all the same lenses in each brand, telephoto, wide angle, tele converters etc.

i guess which would be easier to aquire the mounts for?
Click to expand...

canon mounts are more readily availible than Pentax, but it still comes down to personal preference. keep in mind however, that if your using canon, their EF lens' do not have manual-control aperture but are electronically adjusted.
 
longshanks, thanks for the info on the lenses, both sets of lenses are over 30 years old so I think it might be hard to find the mounts for either.

what I might do is use the mount off of the outside of the canon tele converter lens because I rarely use it and I got it for free from a friend.

if I end up using the pentax lenses I might go back to my highschool and see if they have any old K1000's laying around I could take off their hands.
 
simplehuman said:
hey guys, im planning on building my own DOF adapter, my dilema is that I have both canon and pentax lenses and am not sure which would be better, i have all the same lenses in each brand, telephoto, wide angle, tele converters etc.

i guess which would be easier to aquire the mounts for?
Click to expand...


I built an adapter to mount my pk lenses on my FX1. The SMC pentax primes are excellent in my opinion. I also have a few tamron adaptall2 lenses with both canon and pentax mounts. These lenses can be picked up relatively cheaply and perform very well also.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=162920 (my build)
 
What kind of mounts are your sets of lenses exactly?
Ebay is crowded with various cheap lens mounts(even old ones) for EOS body.
 
All my tamron lenses use the adaptall 2 interchangable mount system. I have the canon FD mount and pentax K mount that can be used with them.
 
Smettli -- Do the Pentax Limited lenses focus the proper way? Like Contax Zeiss lenses?

You've definitely gotten me interested in owning a set. They're pretty nice!
 
simplehuman said:
longshanks, thanks for the info on the lenses, both sets of lenses are over 30 years old so I think it might be hard to find the mounts for either.

what I might do is use the mount off of the outside of the canon tele converter lens because I rarely use it and I got it for free from a friend.

if I end up using the pentax lenses I might go back to my highschool and see if they have any old K1000's laying around I could take off their hands.
Click to expand...

no prob! I should point out also that if your canon lens' are over 30 years old, its likely they're the FD mount. which, depending on how you make your adapter, will require a special mount that has glass inside of it in order to focus on infinity. check out this FD to EOS adapter here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/CANON-FD-Lens-to-EOS-EF-Body-Mount-Adapter-450D-50D-5D_W0QQitemZ330284025853QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLens_Accessories?hash=item330284025853&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1234|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

oh, and old SMC pentax lens do not have this problem :Drogar-Dum(DBG):
 
Yeah, the Pentax M42 lenses focus the proper way. They also have a rotation of almost 360-degrees so they make pulling focus very accurate.


Marco
 
Kholi said:
Smettli -- Do the Pentax Limited lenses focus the proper way? Like Contax Zeiss lenses?

You've definitely gotten me interested in owning a set. They're pretty nice!
Click to expand...


I'm not familiar with Contax Zeiss lenses, but with the limited's and my other smc's lenses, when I'm standing behind my lens(and camera) I turn the focus ring clockwise to pull focus towards infinity. A thing with the limited's is that the focus ring only requires a light touch, opposed to the other smc's which have more resistance in them. So I'm extra careful when pulling focus with the limited's so I don't "jolt" the focus.
 
i was checking out my canon lenses, and it looks like they dont have manual aperture unlike the pentax, so it looks like i will be using the pentax lenses for my project.
 
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