Camera advice.

Hi, I am in the market for a camera to use with M42 Lens. Have several M42 lens of various focal length that are leftover from My days of Film Takumar, Pentacon, Carl Zeiss Jana etc. Plus more recent acquisitions Helios and others. Current cameras being Nikon that have limitations on M42 Infinity focus the main concern. One camera that has some attraction is the Pentax K5 being in a good price bracket for a limited budget. Is this camera good for use with the M42 range? I realize that it is a crop sensor and a bit aged but specs are okay. Many Thanks, Michael P.

The K5 is still a good camera and, using a simple adapter, will accept your M42 lenses. The best adapter to buy is the Pentax Adapter K, which you attach to an M42 lens. Then bayonet this onto the camera. When you change lenses, just unscrew the lens and screw another one on, the process having effectively turned the K5 into a screw thread camera. The adapter can be removed from the camera when you want to use a bayonet mount lens.

The adapter has no electronics, so the lens will need to be stopped down manually. Focus at open aperture, stop down the lens to the working aperture you want and then press the shutter release. If the lens has an auto/manual lever, then that can be used to open the lens up to open aperture and then close it down again, thus saving using the aperture ring all the time. This works well if, for example, you want to set f/8 and aperture priority. One click to open up for focusing, click the lever back again to close down to shoot the picture.

I am selling a K5 with a genuine Pentax grip.

View it here

I have also used a Sigma 500mm Mirror lens on a K Ring thread adaptor. It works great.

The K5 is still a good camera and many swear by the image quality from that 16MP sensor. The only thing I'd mention is that I believe the K-5 does not have focus peaking, whereby the areas with highest contrast (and therefore most in focus) are highlighted in a specific colour in live-view. For that you'd need to spend a bit more for a K-3, but if you only plan to use the optical viewfinder then it won't matter.

For full-frame on a limited budget you could look for a used Canon 6D or Sony A7, they're the cheapest FF options and both would work with M42 lenses.

If the budget allows you could consider the Pentax K-1. The Pentax Adapter K works as with the K-5, but the K-1 is Full Frame to match the m42 lenses

Thank You for the great comments, Very helpful.