Ernest

Ernest, originally uploaded by Turtelle.

I dusted off my old 50mm 'normal' lens, circa 1983. Pentax says that the new digital SLRs are back-compatible with their old manual lenses from the film era and even with the screw-mount ones, provided an adapter is used. Of course, just mounting an old lens on a new camera won't make it autofocus or communicate things like f-stop to the camera's computer, but with a couple of adjsutments outlined in the Pentax manual and the Magic Lantern guide, the lens worked just fine, though compared to my zoom lenses, it is tiny. Focusing is completely manual and only the center focus point is available with this lens. Focusing is slower than it is when using the manual setting with the newer lenses for some reason. Since there is no split screen, I have to rely on the focus alert and it sometimes allows the focus to over-and under-shoot the mark a couple of times before accepting it. Still, this lens lends itself to candid and hand-held shooting a lot more than do the larger zooms, including the one that covers 50mm. Having f2 available is great for available light photography, and Pentax's shake reduction is in the camera where it belongs, so it applies even to this lens, enabling sharp hand-held photography at 1/30 second.
This is Ernest, who I raised from the time she was 11 days old. Yes, she. I can't sex kittens to save myself, and by the time I figured it out, I'd already named her. It doesn't even seem strange to me.