Look on the bright side.

This is an excellent lens for training you to estimate correct exposure.

M lenses work happily in AE mode so long as they are wide open.

G

Is it any good????????????????

There's a Bateman cartoon somewhere about the man who asked if the 105 was any good.

It's a legend, Sir, a legend.

G

They are apparently designed for 100,000, not guaranteed for 100,000.

However, if they are designed not to fail before 100,000, they may well be good for 200,000.

G

Yes, it's a pin, not a nail!

Glad you've identified it.

G

Yes, Alan, I think this is the problem. They were shot on a dull day, and there's not much you can do to rescue a picture shot in poor light.

Nipper, I'd recommend going back on a sunny evening, if you can wait for one.

G

As a general observation, the Takumars were made when Pentax was the leading Japanese camera and lens manufacturer, and were optically and mechanically superb.

When Pentax moved to the K bayonet mount, the first lenses were re-mounted Takumars. These are what we now call the K series.

Within a year or two, Pentax (with its market share falling) brought out its M series. Whilst some of the lenses continued to be re-mounted Taks, others were redesigned, and lower cost and smaller size seem sometimes to have taken precedence over optical quality as design goals.

G

Yes, but I have just remembered that I am viewing on my laptop, which is not exactly wonderful itself.

G

Ricoh lenses with a P setting generally have a little spring-loaded pin that mates with a hole in the Ricoh version of the Pentax K mount. This pin can get stuck in the hole where the AF actuator is on a genuine Pentax AF K mount.

If yours doesn't have a pin, then either a previous owner has already removed it, or yours is an earlier version of the lens which doesn't offer aperture automation.

Either way, it's good that you don't have the pin. It's of no use unless you have a Ricoh SLR.

G

May I suggest you read what JR said?

"Tim was only asked to move the link, not to avoid posting it."

That is not censorship or limiting freedom of speech. Please address your remarks to what actually happened, not to some far-fetched figment of a febrile imagination.

G

I have this lens. The little pin needs to be removed so that it will not interfere with the Pentax focus screw, but this is a job that takes seconds.

G