Lense interchange

Hi I'm new to the site but have been a loyal Pentax user for 16 years. I still use my beloved P30 (metal body, not plastic) and standard lense (1:1.4) and still get fantastic pictures from it. Anyway having resisted SLR digital for many years, I bought a 35mm MZ-L five years ago because I thought the auto focus would be handy but I think I've used it twice. So now I am thinking of going partly digital (I'll still use my P30) - so the questions are:

1) Will the 35mm pentax SLR lenses I have work on a digital pentax SLR body?
2) How much do you think my MZ-L body and lenses are worth?

The equipment I have is as follows:
a) Pentax MZ-L body (branded as ZX-L as purchased in USA)
b) SMC Pentax Lense 28-80mm 1:3.5(22) - 5.6(3 D58mm (matches the ZX-L body in colour)
c) Tamron Lense AF 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 D62mm

Any other tips or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

1) Yes
2a) £40ish
2b) £20ish
2c) £60ish

The camera you have is a MZ-6 (the "L" suffix was never used outside the US market) and is quite a well regarded camera from a not-particularly-sought-after range; hence the value isn't too high. The 28-80 is the kit lens from that era and, again, not very sought after. The Tamron is still quite a popular lens and would work well on digital.

Any Pentax digital body would work nicely with the lenses you already have from your P30, however, the abilities of the camera are limited to the abilities of the lens (ie a manual focus lens on film won't suddenly become AF on digital - you'll still have to do it yourself). All the Pentax 50/1.4 models are stellar performers and will give you great results.

Yes, your lenses will work on digital. As they're both Autofocus you just have to clip them on and off you go. Make sure that the aperture ring (if they have one) is set to "A" and they should work seamlessly.

Your 50mm f1.4 will work but it'll be manual focus. Assuming it's the "A" model then you'll still be able to use all the program modes on a Pentax DSLR, if it's the earlier K or M version then you'll need to use stop-down metering.

P.S. The singular of lenses is "lens". Not "lense". Some people around here get a bit annoyed by that misspelling!

Thanks for the advice and info, I think I'll hang onto the Tamron lens (thanks for the spelling tip!) and sell the MZ-6 body and lens together for what it's worth (any places you can suggest in the London area that would buy that from me?)

Any advice on an entry level pentax DSLR? I've seen reviews for the K-X but it's really out of my price range, the K-M however is closer to it. I've heard both cameras do drain their batteries really quickly - is this the case? and the K-M doesn't show a visible marker on the screen where the focus area is?

I'm used to using a compact digital camera (Optio S5z) so I'm not a complete digital novice but this will be my first DSLR so I'd like it to be simple.

Thanks again!

It must depend on the batteries. I use Energiser Lithium in mine and I get six months or around 600 shots per set of batteries. I do know that I tried some normal Duracell AAs and it ate them pretty rapidly, so it's worth paying the extra for good cells.

There is a visible marker rather like that on the old film AF bodies, with two brackets around the centre spot. I never find it difficult to get mine to focus on the right thing, providing the subject is a decent size.

All the recent Pentaxes have been good. The K-m battery issues are overstated. Good rechargables like eneloops last a long time. The focus point thing is also a trivial issue.

But also consider the K200d or k10d - they arguably have even more to offer and aren't any more complicated to use, especially for someone with film slr experience.

Check out this link, tell them you're a forum member and get free delivery.

I use a K200, nice camera and better suited to somebody with some experience.