I have a Takumar 'A' f2.8, 28mm that I would be willing to trade

Astonishing colours. Lovely.

Fortunately, I don't bite my fingernails and therefore have the perfect adapter spring release tool on the end of my right thumb. Forefinger against the inside of the mount, thumbnail releases spring and grips the metal ring which can be gently rotated out. I have found no problem with infinity on an MZ50, ME, *ist or K5 using a whole variety of Takumars, Industar, Jupiter and Helios lenses. Do try a Pentacon f3.5/30mm - very cheap and very good indeed.

I'm entirely uncertain about having an adapter on each lens because either the spring will have to be forced every time you remove it or you will have to remove the spring (giving a plain bayonet on the end of the lens). In this latter case, there is now no locking mechanism and you could easily twist the lens off the camera when focussing and drop the blessed thing!

We get so used to colour that the potential of B&W is easily forgotten. These are lovely, especially the second one.

Super idea. I puzzled with the bottom part for a while as the half and half horizon is slightly taken over by the detailed bottom half. A bit cropped off might help?

It sounds like the adapter you have is one with a big, thick flange that sticks out from the mirror box after inserting it
(like the top one of those shown here).

You need one like the lower pair (showing front and back). They are available now and then on Ebay. The genuine Pentax ones fit to perfection, Hama brand are quite good too whereas others can be either a good fit, sloppy or a bit on the tight side - you pays your money and you takes your chance. The point about them is that they fit snugly INSIDE the K mount and so do not alter the distance to the sensor

Flippin ' 'eck Dan - I gave up mortgages years ago - and this won't happen again in my lifetime so I'll stick with budget solutions What you say is absolutely correct nevertheless.

Whoopee - those last few really ring the bell don't they?

My problems were most certainly not caused by camera motion blur. The tripod was firm and release was via a remote. The first few were exposed for the bright area and were around 1/30th - 1/20th at f11, ISO100 but this changed completely when I started exposing for the dim area (and the bright bit therefore blew out totally) giving exposures up to 13 seconds (which results in victory for atmospheric turbulence). No doubt I ought to have upped the ISO considerably but you don't think straight at 3am.
Jolly well done to all who persevered with it.

Revisit - looks like Mr B (Philip) got it partly right. It wasn't camera motion blur, it seems to have been atmospheric motion blur due to the necessarily long exposures - and the solution is given above: up the ISO and reduce the exposure time

As others have commented, the light fell off sharply as the eclipse progressed and, for some reason, although the lens coped with the well lit, bright portion, the red colour really threw it all out. It simply would not resolve. Also, towards the end, the atmosphere could actually be observed (on the LCD screen) churning about. My strategy was to take half the eclipse exposed for the bright white part and the last half exposed for the red part. The qualitative difference is very apparent. ....

Before it all kicked off, this was taken around 8pm



The action began much later, after 2am












And then I changed tack ...















If anyone has ideas about why the quality changed so dramatically ........ ?
K5 with an A series 70-210 at 210mm but on full manual control. Shot RAW and processed with FastStone Image Viewer

First and last one for me but only from a compositional point of view. They are all very good.