I don't normally purchase newer Pentax lenses, but this was
an exception. My Dad is a Pentax user
and he had been looking for a Pentax 21mm f3.2 pancake wide angle. It turns out one of my camera friends had one
he was looking to sell, so I traded my large format Ansco 5x7 body plus some
cash for the lens.
Its really amazing how small this lens is, and is totally
dwarfed by my Sigma 20mm f1.8, and smaller even than my Nikon 20mm f4.. It's about the same size as a Nikon 45mm f2.8
Ai-P pancake.
I will send it to Australia shortly, but I decided I wanted
to try it out. I had a look on
craigslist and found a mid 1980s Pentax SFX - an early AF film body. After some brief negotiation, I ended up
getting the body, a flash and a 2x teleconverter for the cost of the lithium
battery ($5), so no great expenditure.
However it did take me an hour and a half to get it as I got stuck in
traffic.
I shot a roll of film, and the camera and lens seem to work
just fine, but there is no way to manually adjust the aperture as there is no aperture
ring on this lens. I also tried out a
manual Ricoh 50mm f2 lens on the camera, which also worked well. The two lenses bring up different menus on
the screen which you can select from.
Essentially the manual lens only works in Aperture Priority (A) and full
Manual (M), while with the AF you can select program with several different sub
modes such as sports and landscape.
All in all, a couple good finds and I look forward to
getting the film back.
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| Nikon FE-2 - Nikon 24mm f2 |
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