Moved to General Chat.

That would do it.

OK, given that you may need weather sealing and given a budget that doesn't run to the K-5 or K-7, then my suggestion would be to look for a good second hand K20D, or faiuling that a good second hand K10D.

Then add the best lenses that can be afforded, Pentax if possible, and forget about thew tests and reviews and just enjoy doing some great photography.

I agree there is a fair bit of rain in Wales...

I could quite happily use the K-r instead of the K-5, or even the K20D, and we have kept one K20D as back-up.

The only reasons for us going for the K-5 were weather sealing and the higher pixel count. If the K-r had been weather sealed I would have chosen that as I rather like the one control wheel designs.

No sign of this on any I've used - where does this come from?

If you cut bits off lenses it will certainly affect their value. I understand what you want to achieve and M42 lenses are easier to use on DSLRs than K or M lenses. However, don't destroy these lenses as someone may want them to use on the cameras they are intended for.

A series lenses and later will be fully functional and i personally stick with these.

If you search the forum you will find some discussions on altering focusing screens, but again why not use the proper screens? Not only dimensions but also thickness can vary and the act of cutting can be fraught with problems.

Have a browse, use the search function, and you'll find plenty of help though.

Welcome to the forum!

Howard, I will break it to her gently....

Yes, it's possible.

When Rollei had TLR cameras and Leica their full rangefinder system there were all sorts of weird and wonderful add-ons and gadgets but none of them really were all that elegant. Nor could they disguise the shortcomings of those systems.

They were swept away by the SLR design.

Having to buy a pentaprism add-on is just going back 60 years into that world which was waiting for the SLR. But we have the DSLR now, so we don't need these sort of adapters any more.

Post deleted, please note the following:

Caution with banknotes seems appropriate.

I think one or two people have a rather nice Pentax mirror lens. Other good designs are a 600mm and a 350mm, both of which may appear under a variety of names.

The problem lies with 500mm f8 mirror lenses of which there are a couple of reliable ones but many very poor ones at low prices.

I don't really see a small mirror lens from Pentax being likely, but sometime or other I'm always expecting something that will take things up to 400mm. There seems to be almost universal desire for maybe an 80-400mm or 100-400mm zoom. Pentax must have noticed this.

On the other hand, maybe they are privy to actual sales of other manufacturers and it really isn't as buoyant as we think.