> I own over a dozen PENTAX K&M lenses, all superb. > I own 1 (ONE) "A" type or later lens . . .
This represents maybe ONE new lens in the last twenty years? Unless you've bought a whole lot of other stuff, I don't think that's the sort of customer that keeps a company in business. Not that I've been any better - since the Super Program pretty much the only stuff I've bought new has been a couple of bodies, a flash, and two power zoom lenses; one first rate (the 28-105), and one I no longer own (the original 100-300). I've spent far more than that, over the same period, in picking up used equipment. Nice for me, but it doesn't support Pentax. But, there again, I'm not complaining Pentax isn't supporting me. Pentax had already dropped support for the early K-mount lenses some time before the *ist-D was released; send one of those early lenses back to Pentax for repair and it's almost certain to come back marked 'service is no longer provided for this item'. All that being said, though, I feel that the *ist-D could have done a little more in the name of compatibilty. Not by adding the mechanical aperture sensor, perhaps - we'll disagree about whether it's reasonable to require that. But adding stop-down metering in manual mode would be possible without extra hardware. Perhaps, if we're really lucky, we'll see that in a firmware fix.
