On Saturday, December 7, 2002, at 07:38 AM, Marcel Laufer wrote:
I'm new to the group. I try to have one 'bells and whistles' 35mm slr which I derive some (but limited) pleasure from. Then I have my medium format 645 pentax, and a variety of 'classic' 35's. I have been thinking of selling my minolata and it's four lenses and buying a pentax. I'm attracted to the idea of picking up an LX on ebay. However, I notice that when using my contax with manual focus Zeiss lenses my results are often uneven with a significant number of shots not 'tack sharp' in the focus department. So then I thought with the pentax line you can buy old manual focus lenses 'on the cheap' on ebay and use them with a modern body and have the focus assist light confirm focus. Is this not reasonable? I like the finish on the MZ-s but have read such vitriol about it on this site. The zx-5n seem a little too plastic. In Europe they offer a zx-3 which is supposed to be all metal.Hi Marcello,
Comments please.
Marcello
PS. I know the 'limited' lenses are superb in resolution. Are they 'sweet' too? Is the bokeh good (a la old takumars and smcp's)?
M
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I believe the MZ-3 has the same body as the MZ-5n/ZX-5n. I haven't heard much negative about the finish of the MZ-S and the one I handled in a store looked fine to me. If other people don't like the finish, they probably shouldn't buy one. :-) You will get the focus light confirmation with the autofocus bodies you've mentioned, but not the LX of course. I have the 77/1.8 ltd. and it's sweet. For what it's worth, the bokeh on many of Pentax's current lenses is quite nice (FA lenses I have and can vouch for are the *24/2, 35/2, 77/1.8, & 100/2.8). I also use old Pentax manual focus lenses like the A 50/1.7 and the M 135/3.5 and they work just fine. I even use a screwmount Russian lens, the Jupiter-9 without any problems. Backwards compatibility is a wonderful thing.
Dan Scott
