40

The 40mm DA Ltd arrived this morning, first time in years that I've been hammered by HMRC. So £45 including Parcelforce's handing fee reduced my savings to just £20 over some our chum's prices. Thats life!

Anyway what an eccentric delight it is, with the option of 30.5mm filters screwed into the back of the lens hood as well as 49s screwed onto the front of the lens. 'Pentax' on the back of the screw on lens cap which you can screw onto the back of the lens hood if you haven't already got a 110 filter there and you want the P word to show. Hey, the black bits are made from metal! Cant wait to get snapping and I have decided to use it solely for the next month.

Just to be really perverse, does anyone know if you can get SMC Pentax 30.5mm UV filters?

Ken

Remember if you want a simple push-on alternative to the screw-in lens cap you can use the lid from a Fuji film canister (the slide films have a black lid which looks quite good on the lens).

The FOV takes some getting used to but after a while I got used to using it as a standard lens, the extra focal length making the subject more dominant in the frame for extra impact.

Enjoy this quirky but very nice lens!

The 18mm wide angle lens for System 10 (better known as the Pentax 110) has a 30.5mm thread so such filters did exist at one time. You may have fun getting one though, try www.pentax110.co.uk, he has them for $9. I don't know for certain if they are SMC or not, but the System 10 lenses are excelent so I would expect the filters to be of comparable quality.

I picked up a "digital" coated UV filter for my 110's wide angle lens from Jacobs, apparently it's a fairly common size in digicams and video cameras. Not Pentax SMC, but at least it's coated.

30.5mm usually standard filter size on JVC camcorders , so should be readily available.

Thanks for the replies, as far as 30.5mm filters are concerned the buzz-word is 'SMC Pentax'

Anyway a brief comparison with the 40 and the 18-55 (which I like and dont think it deserves the reputation it is getting) shows the prime, not surprisingly, to be a cracking performer. When you compare the 40 at f8 to the zoom wide open you would think the pictures were taken on different formats! At same apertures the 40 is noticeably sharper with a slightly cooler colour rendition. Well pleased