> > Alin Flaider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > It was a deliberate, cynical move to force owners of old lenses to > > buy new ones. > > I don't buy this at all. The target demographic for the DSLR does not > consist of a significant number of people who own old lenses. They > certainly comprise a significant portion of this mailing list but not > the public at large. Not even close.
Quite right. It's funny how all the tirades seem to be aimed at the newer bodies, and not at the new FAJ lenses. These have even worse compatability problems with old bodies, but I don't hear them being described as a plot to force people to buy new bodies (even though this is a more defensible claim). Bodies made in the last twenty years have the ability to directly set the aperture of lenses made in that time, rather than relying on a manually-set limit on the lens itself (which is pretty much what the aperture ring is). But only now are we beginning to see bodies that depend on this ability. And, rather more significantly, we're beginning to see lenses that don't even have that preset ring. That's where the cost savings will be found, not on the high-end digital body. Perhaps it's because there isn't a really tempting new FA-J lens on the market, so nobody is bothered about the lack of compatibilty with older bodies. This is *far* worse than the old lens compatibility problem. If I put an FA-J lens on my MX I expect to have some issues. But what about my Super Program? I've lost Aperture Priority & Manual modes; all I've got is shutter priority and full program. The same is true for any camera that requires a lens aperture ring to specify the aperture; That would be almost every body Pentax have made. Certainly the only camera in my collection that could use such a lens without loss of functionality is my PZ-1p (and, of course, the *ist-D when it arrives). That excludes my MZ-S, a recent (and expensive) body. So which bodies *can* use the FA-J lenses?
