I don't know if the Vivitar/Cosina 19-35mm was made in an M42 version - probably, because it's available in every other mount of the time. Not sure if it'd be classed as decent though - I've only used it on film, stopped down, and for that it's fine. If it's for use on digital I'm not sure it really would be.

Have you been following the thread on this adapter over on the US forum?

This isn't strictly Pentax other than it will allow use of my Takumars on another camera body. I've recently acquired an Exa 1C camera but it came with the eye-level viewfinder rather than the waist-level finder I wanted. Does anyone have a waist-level finder for this camera?

I'm pretty sure they're universal for all these Exas (1A, 1B, 1C).

Many thanks

There's no way that's the genuine article.

I bought third party batteries for my K-3 and they started out holding around 75% of the charge of a genuine battery but after a year or so one of the two held virtually no charge at all and the other maybe 50% of the genuine one.

Genuine batteries for all manufacturers are a ridiculous price but faced with alternatives as bad as they are I hand over the cash and live worry-free.

If I may ask a question - have you ever used the Tele-Takumar 300mm f/6.3 and if so, how does it compare?

Wow, absolutely stunning!

I'm interested but I'm trying to find out if a K-50 will accept the Katzeye focusing screen I have in my K200D. For now I can't find that info anywhere.

The only mount I know of that has buttons like this on the lens is the Olympus OM, but they're not usually round. These ones could be round because it's a third party item.

This site seems pretty extensive and the only other possibility I see there is the Voigtlander Vitessa T and I'd think that's too old for a 35-200mm zoom.

To be honest though, a third party legacy super-zoom is likely to be of such poor optical quality that it's not worth the bother of trying too hard...

Hi all,

As someone who no longer uses Pentax as his main camera system but still loves the brand, I didn't expect to be buying any more DSLRs but when a K-x with Sigma MF 24/2.8 popped up on my radar for €40 plus delivery, I couldn't resist.

I remember when the K-x came out it was revered as the high-ISO king of APS-C though the lack of a legit AF fine-tuning method was a damper, as were the continued use of AA batteries and the lack of AF indication in the viewfinder. Back in the day, the brother of a friend had this on his christmas wish list posted on his parents' fridge with a note saying it has to be a fantastic camera.

The camera arrived in good physical shape except for considerable scratching on the rear element of the viewfinder - maybe someone cleaned it with steel wool or something. Firmware was the original and there was a clear back-focus problem so I updated the firmware and used debug mode to fine-tune the AF, which now seems fine. It had 17,500 on the shutter - I don't know how they got that far without fixing the back-focus. Maybe they always used the kit lens at f/8 and it wasn't too noticeable.

I've had a little time to play with it now and get a few first impressions:

- It's nice and small and feels solid in the hand - much better than equivalent models from CaNikon.

- Rechargeable AAs seem to have the battery indicator in reverse - when I first turn it on the camera indicates they're almost empty, a little later it says they're half full and later still it's all green!

- The viewfinder is tiny and tunnel-like, I can't imagine being at all successful with manual focus on it, and the scratches don't help.

- The screen is really horrible: low resolution and low dynamic range. Usually I develop from RAW in-camera and go from there but for the K-x I've been using Darktable on the PC so that I don't have to work with that screen.

- Maybe it's just my one, or maybe the exposure sensor is dirty or something, but the camera under-exposes by about 1.5 stops. Not a huge problem.

- From what I've seen so far it doesn't seem to have the same problems as the K200D with regards to sharpness from the in-camera jpegs. On the K200D the jpegs were really soft when compared to the same RAW files processed with default settings in the Pentax software on a PC. So I'm glad to see that was fixed.

So would I recommend a K-x in 2023? I would if you can get one for €40

Other than that, though the images may be fine, it gives a user experience which is very out-of-date and leaves much to be desired, so you'd need to be willing to work with that. If you are though, it's nice to have a compact yet solid little DSLR body to play with. I'm tempted to sell it on but I like the idea of having such a cheap yet capable DSLR to hand in the event I want something "expendable" over my more expensive gear.

Here are a few sample images with the DA 35mm Limited:


IMGP9607 by Jonathan MacDonald, on Flickr


IMGP9624 by Jonathan MacDonald, on Flickr


IMGP9623 by Jonathan MacDonald, on Flickr

And from the DA 15mm Limited:


IMGP9648_01 by Jonathan MacDonald, on Flickr


IMGP9651 by Jonathan MacDonald, on Flickr

Many other forums have a "report this post to moderators" button, which would be handy. I for one would like to be able to help out the mods by reporting the spam.