the 18-55 is full frame from about 24mm onwards and works very nicely on my Z50P and my friend's P30T (though obviously only in P mode on the latter since the lens lacks an aperture ring).

At the wide end there is massive vignetting but this can be quite good fun. My friend has a thoroughly unflattering but good fun portrait of me taken at minimum focus distance and 18mm.

ahha! so thats why my shots are always out of focus, it's not my fault at all!

this is indeed the case

for astro shots, I now disable the onboard noise reduction, take my own dark frame (a shot on the same settings as the others but with the lens cap on) and subtract it inside in the warm. UFRAW allows me to specify a dark frame at the RAW conversion stage and this works very well indeed.

Daniel, that is the meanest looking ladybird I have ever seen!! good capture!

well you are unlikely to find them maligned here, the worst I've heard is the legitimate "50mm doesn't suit my style" kind of comment.

I've had exclaimations along the lines of "good heavens that shot is sharp, what lens did you use?" relating to shots taken with the humble M series 50 F2.0. The A series 50 F1.7 is my overall favourite lens.

I got a 70-210 with something else from ebay and compared it to my 50-200, and found the following:

70-210 has slightly faster AF and hunts less, it is also fractionally sharper

50-200 has higher contrast and brighter colour, and is much smaller aand lighter. It also has nicer MF feel and quick shift focusing.

I kept the 50-200 since I only carry it when I'm travelling light and the 70-210 is nearly as big and heavy as my 80-320.


In contrast, my Dad kept the 70-210 and sold his 50-200 since he prefers the image quality and focusing speed.

no they don't, but neither do M series lenses in AV mode. The M42 lenses have the advantage that you can force them to stop down to shooting aperture. The camera meters for the light entering the lens (which is now stopped down) and AV mode works.

With an M series or earlier K mount lens, the camera simply doesn't fire the stop down actuator so it's always wide open in AV mode no matter what the aperture ring is set to.


I've had some pretty reasonable results with my M200 F4 and a Tokina 7 element 2x converter. Since the lens is only an M, you don't need auto or AF pass throughs on the converter and should be able to pick one up quite reasonably. My M 200 F4 + 2x converter is better than my FA 80-320 provided there's enough light.

as a point of interest, most m42 are actually easier to use on the DSLRs than M series. This is because you get the little "A/M" switch which allows you to manually stop down the lens to shooting aperture.

Therefore, you can use AV mode at all apertures instead of just wide open as with your M series 200 F4.

FYI the AF assist lamp on my AF240FT works wonders with my K10D. Since these flashes can't do P-TTL they often go rather cheaply on a certain auction site.

Interestingly, according to Bojidar and Adaptall-2.com, the Tamron SP90mm is 10mm smaller in diameter and 23mm shorter in length than the Pentax 100mm A series. It's 50g lighter too.