The Pentax 85mm lenses all go for quite a bit of money, although not generally in the thousands!

K.

Ahhhh, the Romanesque delights of Durham Cathedral...

Just been checking ebay. Several FA* lenses available internationally, mainly c. £900. Two A* examples at over £1000 each...

Neither the FA* or the A* come up for sale very often. The FA* often looks a bit tatty because the silver finish marks easily. Good luck with your search.

K.

It is a great lens! Enjoy...

I don't know what the K-x is like for metering with older manual lenses but with my K10D/K20D the standard "green button" method is often way off. Provided your image preview is set to show the histogram, it isn't really a problem. More often than not I'll not even bother with the green button but will shoot a picture of the grass (or anything else mid-toned) and adjust the exposure until I get a good looking histogram. From there on it is just a matter of increasing or decreasing the exposure a little bit as I go along.

As always, the histogram is your friend. No wonder someone said it was the greatest help to photographers since the invention of the light meter...

K.

On a K20D but much the same: either centre or select by me. Most of the time I am focusing manually though (because I use manual focus lenses quite a bit).

K

I think you have it cracked...

K.

They'll probably just continue the confusion and have an M-x. I noticed in the PPG that the KX and K-x were getting confused in peoples' tagging of photos.

Mind you, we might get a KR5-D...

K.

I've often shut the lens down all the way for maximum DoF. The biggest problem has always been lack of light and long shutter speeds rather than diffraction. The likelihood of a wild flower moving slightly during a multi-second exposure is rather high...

K.