+1

Lubricant may attract dust and cause more long term problems. Contact cleaner used sparingly may help but I suggest removing the battery first. If it's possible to dismantle the switch to effect a cleaning job that would be more thorough.

Good luck.

Just gone on their website if anyone is interested:-

Pentax 50mm F1.4 SMC M £79.00 https://www.ffordes.com/p/SOR-42-054399/pentax-manual/50mm-f14-smc-m

Pentax 20mm F4 SMC M £179.00 https://www.ffordes.com/p/SOR-42-054405/pentax-manual/20mm-f4-smc-m

Ffordes are generally very good to deal with but I feel their postage charges let them down.

The Lancaster had a busy weekend and put in appearances on both the Saturday and Sunday at RIAT, Fairford on what was a cracking weekend.

Here it is just touching down, you can just see the puff of blue smoke where the rubber struck the tarmac.


Jpeg straight from the camera, warts and all, cropped but no processing.

Beautiful Comma but they're all well captured. Metaphorically speaking of course.

Mali Davies put out his latest vlog on youtube yesterday which was all about wave and sky watching. Both interesting, informative and inspirational.

Link for anyone interested... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ult63A4HcbA

I rarely part with any lenses so as my lens collection expands I acquire yet another lens safe to store them in. They're expensive too but... hey-ho. At least they keep the six letter 'F' word at bay.

Crisp images indeed.

Wise decision. I'm pleased for you.

Wouldn't part with mine either.

A beautiful piece of engineering worth keeping even if only for the simple pleasure of ownership and they are becoming extremely difficult to find in Pentax mount as owners don't care to part with them.

Enjoy the rest of the week folks.

Thank you very much Urbanmeister. There is certainly a measure of satisfaction to be had in acquiring and repairing vintage lenses and giving them a new lease of life as well as using them. In years to come, a great many manual vintage lenses will still be servicable and working as intended whilst many of their modern counterparts will only be fit for paperweights when their high end unsourceable electronic components fail as they surely will.

For anyone interested in seeing one of these old Sonnars being put through its paces, there's a lovely old gent based around Otley in Yorkshire who has a passion for vintage 35mm medium format and large format cameras and monochrome photography. He develops and prints his own work and is clearly a mine of information and skill in this regard who is well worth checking out by anyone with similar or budding interests.

His name is Martin Henson and there's a link here to a Youtube video he made which was dedicated to the use of a 180mm f2.8 Sonnar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IObbzqOZDJI

See also his other links.

Enjoy!