Manual arpeture setting on Gx10 with manual lens

Hi,

just bought an old 50mm f1.8 PK mount (not PKA) lens from ebay to use on my Gx10.

However, if I select use arpeture ring and turn on the camera, after setting the focal length I don't appear to be able to set the f number to anything, let alone 1.8 - in any mode !!!

Any suggestions would be welcomed ?

Cheers

Mark

You have to set the aperture by turning the aperture ring on the lens. It can't be set any other way as the lens has no way of communicating with the camera.

The camera cannot detect the aperture you've set the lens to; nor can it set the lens' aperture for any pre-A lenses.

You'll have to set the camera to manual, and the lens to whatever aperture you want, and then press the green button. It will stop the lens down to your selected aperture, and then set the shutter speed based on metering it does while the lens is stopped down.

If the GX-10 is the same as the K10D in this regard, there will be exposure errors with this approach. Search on "stop down metering" for many discussions here on this topic.

Failing that, you can meter wide open, and calculate the exposure yourself at your selected aperture.

Be aware that in Av mode, it appears to work, but in fact the lens remains wide open for both metering and the exposure, regardless what you set the aperture to.

There are notes in the K10D manual about this (although not the exposure errors); the GX10 manual is probably much the same.

Thanks, will check out the "stop down metering" and have more of a play around some more.

Cheers