As mentioned, you need to measure the voltage. I've two 'identical' looking Vivitar 283s, one puts 12v across the hotshoe contacts, the other 273v (two seven three). Whilst I was happy to put the 12v one on a film camera, I'd think twice about using it on a DSLR (I don't know what the trigger voltage of current Pentax guns is?).

I can't help with shift lenses, although some of the 35mm ones have (had?) very limited ranges of shift movement anyway (especially across the long side of the frame).

As I understand it, the reason why you get conveging verticals is because the focal plane is not parallel to the wall of the building (i.e. usually tilted up). If you keep it parallel, the verticals should be straight, but this means using a wider lens than you otherwise would and leaves a lof of foreground at the bottom of the frame.

As an aside, 6*6 medium format cameras are useful for this as you can then crop the bottom off the frame and still print to the 6*4.5 format.

I think that if you have an AF body, you might as well get the AF lens. The AF with the 50/1.7 F is much faster than my 28-80 FA zoom and this is really useful in some situations (low light etc.). For a manual focus body, the 'feel' of the manual focus damping improves handling and generally feels better built (and of course matches an M, A or P series body better).

Hi All,

I've just joined, a bit about myself: I'm a long standing Pentax shooter with a considerable collection of film cameras/lenses/stuff (K, M, A, P & Z series) and have just bought a K-5 (my first DSLR - my only other digital 'SLR' was an EI-2000 a long time ago).

Pleased to see Pentax still making incredibly user friendly cameras (I'd got 'photo' side of the K-5 sorted in 5 minutes in the shop) and being able to use my old lenses (and Zoom90-WR remote control) on it is an excellent demonstration of backwards compatability.

Great to get back behind a Pentax viewfinder...

John.