I concur. :-) G
On Oct 21, 2006, at 12:38 PM, John Francis wrote: > On Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 12:19:51PM -0400, Cory Papenfuss wrote: >> >> Just to be a nice thorn in everyone's anti-aperture-coupler's >> side, consider that proposal. How would everyone feel if these nice, >> newish, fancy auto-focus (F, FA, DA, etc) lenses that you all own >> suddenly >> became stop-down metering only. Pentax could state that they're >> new mount >> is compatible with all K-mount lenses ever made... just like they do >> now (some restrictions apply). > > It depends on when they did it. Next year? I'd be annoyed. In 2030, > when every lens they'd sold for more than the last twenty years would > work without *any* restrictions? I'd manage to live with it (always > assuming I manage to live that long, of course ...). > > In fact I expect *exactly* this scenario to play out. I think we'll > see smart lenses with in-lens control of the aperture (be it > mechanical, > or some photo-electronic wizardry), and the only communication between > the lens and the camera body being over the digital signal pin (and > the power contacts, of course). Eventually Pentax will release a > camera that will rely on that for aperture control (and the in-lens > focus motors that we will be seeing really soon on the DA* lenses). > > I also expect that, some time before then, we'll see a camera body > that will drop full support of the "A" lenses, and only work with > F-or-later lenses. I expect there will be some sort of fall-back > mode to allow use of lenses without the digital signal path, much > as we have the green button (and manual entry of focal length for > SR) today, but I don't necessarily expect those lenses to work in > all exposure modes. This camera (and successors) will drop all > the extra mechanical contacts introduced with the KA mount. This > will make manufacturing cheaper, remove a potential failure mode, > and simplify the programming. > > My guess is that we'll see this evolution in the next five years; > the KAF mount is already twenty years old. Initially it would > only be for the cheaper models - Pentax were still selling A* > lenses until quite recently, albeit not to the mass market - > but eventually I'd look for it on all but the top-of-the-line -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
