Question on SMC-FA 35mm f/2 lens and hood ...

[Joe Wilensky]

I just received an SMC-FA 35mm f/2 from B&H, new in the box. It's a 
beautiful lens, and the manual focus feel and the width of the 
focusing ring is a bit better than my FA 50/1.4 and 28/2.8, as others 
have commented. My question is about mounting the tulip hood -- 
unless I'm missing something completely, it seems the hood mounting 
bayonet grooves on my lens aren't lined up correctly.

The white line on my lens that is used for lining up with the white 
line on the hood for mounting purposes (line them up, then rotate the 
hood until it clicks into place) is located at between 2 and 3 
o'clock on the lens barrel with the front of the lens facing me. But 
this causes the hood to mount quite a bit rotated from its proper 
orientation, which is supposed to have the "Pentax" at the top and 
the little door for rotating a polarizer at the bottom. It seems 
roughly 45 degrees off from where it should be, if not a bit more. 
This makes the whole point of a dedicated tulip hood useless, since 
vignetting would likely occur.

This seems to be the only physical way the hood will mount on this 
lens, and the bayonet mount for the filter on the end of the lens is 
not rotateable.

Is this a manufacturing defect? Could the lens actually have been 
assembled with this error? Everything else lines up (the lens mount 
itself, the f/stop and focusing scale, etc.). Or am I missing 
something?

Joe