I am sure that Nikon paid handsomely on both counts.

PeteL wrote
I agree, surely a better match would be the DA 17-70?

Steve

Total cloud cover at the moment, hopefully it will have cleared by 10:30pm

Well I will be out again , but I am not sure that I can convince the rest of the family to join me.

Steve

Lovely night over our way I managed to convince the family to join me sky gazing from 10 - 11, we spent an hour sky gazing last night and observed 7 perseids. They were only visible for a couple of seconds so you really need to be alert. I had the camera set up on a tripod, remote shutter and pointing in the general direction on a 30 second manual exposure but did not manage to capture anything. Supposedly better tonight, but the weather is not so good.

Steve

Jon, Geoff, in a pm Ian informed me that he knows the chairman of the Coalville camera club, so I would expect a reasonably warm welcome if we were to join as a group. I believe that he is away this week , but I am sure he will pick up the thread when he returns.

Steve

If you contact Pentax USA, they will usually transfer a US warranty over to an International warranty that should then be honoured by Pentax worldwide. I had no trouble getting this done with some lenses that I purchased from B&H

Steve

Pixmania are selling lots of K7 and K20 bundles on eBay at the moment, prices look quite good.

http://tinyurl.com/kwyylz


Steve

George perhaps I used the wrong term in 'fooled'. When I tried this I did replace the base with one taken from a damaged 'A' series lens. Aperture information was shown in the viewfinder, however as I stated the exposure problems remained.

This is my understanding and I may be wrong here

Using a 50mm F1.4 'A' series lens as our example, lets say for our purposes to go from F1.4 to F22 requires the aperture arm to move 16 mm. From the 'A' series onwards Pentax lenses have linear aperture control, therefore if F5.6 is selected the aperture arm will need to move 8mm from its fully open position. For F11 it would be 12mm ect.

Now K or M series lenses were designed with non linear distances between F stops. The amount does seem to vary by lens, so in the above example we might find pretty close correlation at F5.6, but a widening gap from F11 upwards. The result is that as we move from F1.4 to F22 we go from over to underexposure.

Now when we fit the lens to the DSLR, the camera would recognise the modified lens as a 50mm F1.4 'A' series and when asked for F11 would move the aperture arm 12 mm, which in this case would be too much and would result in under exposure.

I hope this helps - regards Steve

George, I did that with a M series 28mm lens. It is easy enough to fool the camera into thinking you have a 'A' series lens fitted and it does bring some extra functionality, such as adjustment of aperture from the camera, but you still have the exposure issues.

I read an article on this, but cannot put my hands on it, but if I remember correctly aperture control in earlier lenses is non linear and this is the main reason for the exposure problems.

Link to a thread on Pentax Forums http://tinyurl.com/kv6w4g

I think there is merit in the original idea, just wish I had access to someone in Pentax marketing. It would be relatively easy to set up and provide some real differentiation for Pentax.

Steve

I think the key is to retain the OEM link and warranty. There must be mountains of salvageable material out there that could be given a new lease of life.

Another benefit is a possible 'Green' angle. Why buying a Pentax is good for the environment

A nice up selling opportunity as well, you tried the kit lens, you tried the manual prime now be prepared to be blown away by the new DA Limiteds.

Regards - Steve