That looks to me like a lens to bellows mount, with a V groove rather than the filter thread.

If so I've seen the BPM version for sale at £20 (updated price).
Mike

Its arrived - no extra packaging beyond the Pentax box & a thin sheet of brown paper - but it seems OK. Pentax have obviously designed their boxes fairly well.

I hope to get the chance to play with it tomorrow...

Mike

Whilst waiting for the replacement cable you could try conductive paint to bridge the broken tracks.
It probably wouldn't make a permanant repair but with luck it will let you use the lens for a few months
Mike

I've seen several DIY fugus treatments listed on the internet (they should be easily found via google).
eg. http://www.mypentax.com/Fungus.html

Given the minimal value of the lens I'd give one of those a go. (nothing lost and usful experience gained if not actually ther lens fixed!

Mike

One I was watching earlier went for just over £200 - The combination of the sellers location (Latvia IIRC) and zero feedback made me cautious on that one, and I was saved from last minute temptation by things getting me away from my desk at work. I've wondered if the lens ever arrived - but I didn't keep a note of the seller & I can't find it listed among the completed auctions, so I'm unlikely to find out.

I've certainly heard plenty of good reports for them - I look forward to seeing how it compares with my fish-eye adapter - I think that only manages 160-170 degrees with a circular image.

E-bay generally has loads of second hand scopes from people who got them to view the stars & then found it too cold/too much hassle/disappointing images etc.

In general avoid those which claim enormous magnifications these are generally unrealistic.
For use as a telephoto lens a spotting scope is probably a better bet than an dedicated astro model.

Pentax make some excellent scopes! But they fail on your cheapest possible criteria (and are out of my price range too)

You'll find the objective diameter has a huge influence on the price, my £50 budget model has a 60mm objective and is barely adequate for my k100d. Even with a camera with better low light performance I wouldn't recommend going below this. 80mm would be much better.

If your patient with e-bay you can get people relatively local (in the UK at least) selling larger scopes where they've marked them as pick up only - you'll often have less competition in these auctions.

If you check the completed auctions you'll get a reasonable idea of what the prices near you (NZ?) are like.

Good hunting

Mike

That was originally my plan too.
I ve been after one for months, and the temptation this time got to much.

I thought I had my LBA under control, I'd collected a budget range of focal lengths, going from 17-4000mm without adapters (a fish eye converter & numerous TCs - totalling x72! extending the range further)

Unfortunatly for the bank balance, I've just won a 10-17 zoom on e-bay, which has come to nearly 3* the cost of any of my previous lenses.

For those of you with experience of LBA, does this mean I'm now going to end up getting a whole new set of lenses of higher quality (* or limiteds)? or is there another way to keep it under control?

Mike

Extension tubes do not affect the focal length of the lens.
Their job is to increase the distance between the lens & film/sensor, which reduces the lens-subject distance at focus & so increases the magnification.

Not clearly explained but perhaps enough to help!
Mike

The type of adapter needed will depend on the scope. For scopes with interchangable eye pieces there are T2 nose pieces made to fit the camera instead of an eyepiece, as well as eyepieces that have T2 threads for the camera and a whole host of other options (with/without the eyepiece fitted)...

Perhaps the cheapest way is to just hold the camera to the eyepiece and photograph the image created by the scope. I've seen some excellent bird images done this way with compact cameras (which don't mount to T2 threads easily)

My £50 Tasco spotting scope actually came with the T mount for a Miranda, so it had all i needed to fit a PK-T2 mount (which I already had)

If you google 'Digiscoping' or perhaps 'astrophotography' you'll get lots of advice on linking cameras & telescopes.

Mike