Well they're about as good as the Tamron SP 55BB BBAR model, which is about as good as they come. If you're lucky, you can pick one of those up without adaptall mount for £100ish

Ah, there are two, one of which is the 2000mm mirror, http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SMC-Pentax-M-Reflex-13-5-2000mm-Pentax-Canon-Eos-Nikon_W0Q... now THAT's a mirror lens!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SMC-Pentax-Reflex-1000mm-f-11-Mirror-Lens_W0QQitemZ2304480...

Bit pricey if you ask me. It's just a 1000mm mirror lens ffs!

New message from seller: "Aperture is stuck at wide-open and will not goes down again."

I read that as it's stuck, so I think I'm going to pass on this one. Shame, I'd really like a 300mm f2.8

I hadn't notice the ding on the inner ring till you mentioned it - however, isn't the focusing ring in the middle of this lens where the rubber is? I'd be surprised if the focus mechanism actually moved the lens and wasn't entirely internal.

The seller got back to me and said "Blades are there and aperture is at minimum, after the aperture is opened up by moving the lever, the aperture is stuck at wide-open." So, to me that would imply damaged blades. Now that is a bit of a downer.

Edit: New message from seller: "Aperture is stuck at wide-open and will not goes down again."

Yeah, I messaged him about that, waiting to hear back from him. They have no idea bout cameras so it's tough to get them to do what I want them to do.

Wouldn't this lens function as a like any other SMC-M lens? I'd just have to repair the aperture control and I can set it manually on the lens.

Really, 52 views and not a single thought as to what this should be worth? Lets assume that the conversion will work flawlessly - do you think it would be worth 80GBP to have a 300mm f2.8? Hell, other than the tammy that would be the fastest 300mm on a Pentax

My friend gave me his SD800 IS P&S camera as he had dropped it and the lens was jammed. Well, I ripped that bad boy down, rebuilt the gears, and it looked great. As I was putting it back together, I ripped one very small flex cable, GUTTED! It's part of the major flex cable assembly and I just couldn't be asked to rip the entire thing out and replace it.

Now, I can probably solder a few connections on both sides and run a lil wire, but it's going to be tight. Has anyone every tried to repair a flex cable? Any pro tips? They're so effin tiny / delicate that I'm going to have to avoid soldering on the cable itself!

I'm not going to link all the lenses I'm shopping for, because at least one of them has a typo in their title on Ebay, and just don't want more competition that I'll already have ... however, this one I don't think anyone else here is mad enough to try to snipe from me.

So it seems that part of my job is already done for me. I've got friends coming over from 'merica so I can ship it to them to avoid the P&P charges. I will, of course, tell them to declare it for me at the boarder though. At any rate, am I *mad for looking at this? The glass looks spot on. I doubt that even if I wired up the HSM to a pentax mount which had HSM on it that it would work (Sigma would probably have to flash it), so I would be doing this as a fully *MANUAL 300mm f2.8.

The register is larger than Pentax so that makes things a lot easier as well (no shaving / milling required)

Thoughts? What would you pay for a 300mm f2.8 manual lens of reasonable quality?

Edits: Man, me is smrt today with the tyopng