Great looking on your MX, you have them both, makes me envious!
Perfect fit to the little MX. Anyone has black ones to show?

Whats's about some pics of chrome or black lenses on Film-SLRs, guys?

It's hard to decide...

Thanks.
I have experience with Voigtländer/Cosina RF lenses in black and chrome (which is probably brushed aluminium as well) and the chromes keeping much much better than the painted black.
Probably the Pentax lenses are similar in surface.
One get's used to the chrome lenses on black bodies. Noone will say that a chrome lens on a black prewar Leica isn't a classic look, when chromed brass lenses were preferred in quality over black nickel lenses.
I addition, just my LX is complete black. The MX, KX were chrome too. I think the KX deserves a good "normal" lens...

Which surface keeps better, i.e. with the 43/1.9 lens? Is the chrome really chrome, or it is paint?
The black looks painted.

cheers, Frank

If you're doing portaiture, or even nudes, for paying customers, do they want "sharp" or "atmospherical" pictures?

I mean, soft is different from unsharp. For soft portraits I can either use a 1.4/85 or a not so modern 2.8/85 and use it wide open, but then there is point sharpness in the eyes and not much depth of field.

Or I can use a Sonnar type 1.5/50 (also wide open) on a RF camera, but then there is not much DOF either, and no control in the finder at all.

I thought the 2.2/85 of Pentax would be helpfull in this respect. It combines larger DOF (at f/4 or f/5.6) with some pleasant softness.

But I noticed they are quite rarely occuring at the market. With just 2 elements, I suspect it wasn't particular expensive when new?

You can call me crazy, I have the SMC-K 1.8/85 (which is "too sharp" for my kind of portraiture), an old (1960) Auto-Takumat 1.8/85 (better!) and even a super-rare 1.9/83 in M42 (which was Pentax first "highspeed glass", but I'm even looking for that "special"...

So, if you have one to sell, gimme a shout (taunusreiter @ yahoo.de)

regards, Frank

Anyone who know this lens first-hand or has one to sell?

Seems to be an interesting lens.

regards, Frank

It's a great lens, I like it. Stopped down to f/8 performance is as great as the 3.5/35, known as one of the best wide-angle lenses Pentax ever made.

See here: http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras/Pentax_main.html

cheers Frank

Are you sure sensor size counts most? Some of the newer 8MP-Digicams really challange DSLRs, much less noise than the prior generation although their small sensor. Their weak part now seems to be their lenses (far too long slow zooms which cannot be corrected so good as DSLR lenses).
Some time ago I started to doubt about the "big size chip" theory (waited too long for the full format sensor). Maybe the future is in short focal length lenses (for small chips): easier to design, less weight for same complexity, or level of optical correction (and heaper)? If they will come down from their 12x zoom hype - "eierlegende Wollmichsau" - down to reasonable, maybe 2-3x zooms of high speed (f/2) or even fix focal lengths? Just a thought!

cheers, Frank

Hi Group,
I just read that Pentax Digital SLR's sensor has only 6 megapixels. The standard seems to be 8MP, some Pro-DSLRs have 11 MP. Some picture agencies don't accept pictures under 8 MP.
I don't have DSLR yet but a lot of Pentax film SLRs and lenses so my choice would probably Pentax. My compact Digicam already has 5 MP, is an old model and has just a zoom lens but it fills that chip at full details! (Casio with a f/2-3 7-21mm Canon lens)
To my understanding the compact digicams don't use 8 MP resolution fully but DSLRs with their much better lenses should do so! Or I got something wrong?
An excellent 35mm film negative covers about an equivalent to 13-16. So my feeling is even my worst Takumar lenses will be able to show more details, colors and contrast than the current DSLR chip is able to fix!
So question: why no Pentax DSLR with at least 8 MP ? Diskspace is cheap these days... sorry if this was discussed already.

cheers, Frank
http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras

No the foam everywhere looks good at the moment, and light-proof.
With the dark screen, I think I need to live with, since there is no replacement available with fresnell-rings. Weird if I change between the MX and screwmount S2 or something... older cameras with much brighter screens! I guess the AP or S2 with a 2.4/58mm Takumar is better or on level with the MX equipped with an 1.7/50! And if turning the 2.8/28 on it. it goes daaark.

At production numbers: I found the Spotmatic and early Pentax numbers in the great book Gerjan von Oosten wrote about screwmounts. Great recherche work. No books written about the later stuff?

cheers, Frank