Pentax K lens to M42 body

[norm123]

Hi
I'm not familar with the brand. A friend of mine want to put a K lens (18 mm) on a Spotmatic body. Is there an adaptor for it?

Regards

Normand

 

[E. von Hoegh]

You will lose infinity focus.

 

[jim10219]

I wouldn't be surprised if there was. There seems to be an adapter for most everything. The problem is, the K mount is bigger than the M42, so that means you'd have to mount the lens further away from the body than it was designed to handle. This means you'd either lose infinity focus, or you'd need an adapter with some built in optics to correct this. Since the lens wasn't originally designed for the optics in the light path, they'll likely degrade the quality somewhat. Also, with the addition of the optics, it's gonna jump the price up quite a bit. So it would be cheaper to just get a Pentax body with a K mount. I recommend the Super Program or Super-A for a nice body on a budget that still has loads of features. The old K1000 is also a good choice, and is pretty much just like the Spotmatic, except it lacks depth of field preview. Then there are ME, MX, LX and so on that are solid bodies, but a bit more pricey. I'd avoid any of the bodies with the Z in the name, like the ZX-?, PZ-?, or any of the other, later, autofocus, plastic body cameras. I've had a few of them jam up due to a bad mirror motor, and once they do, they're not worth repairing.

Now, going the other direction, putting an M42 lens on a Pentax K body is easy, and they make cheap adapters for that that don't require additional optics in the light path.

 

[Ian Grant]

No-one makes or made an adapter to do this. There's no point as K mount Pentax caleras are chaep.

I do us my 19mm lens on my K mount and M42 screw mount Pentax cameras, it's a Tamron Adapall-II lens so I just change the mount.

Ian

 

[norm123]

Thank you all

 

[flavio81]

Hi
I'm not familar with the brand. A friend of mine want to put a K lens (18 mm) on a Spotmatic body. Is there an adaptor for it?

Regards

Normand

You can't do this. The other way around, yes.

A solution is to do a custom job of replacing the 18mm lens mount with a screw mount.(K mount and M42 mount have the same flange-to-film distance so infinity focus will be preserved.)

The easy solution is to use a K-mount camera instead of a Spotmatic.

 

[GRHazelton]

Agree with prior posts! Get a K mount body. If you can find one the KX would be an excellent choice, it has an excellent viewfinder, shutter speed and aperture shown in viewfinder, depth of field preview, mirror lock-up, excellent handling. I scored one with a 50 mm f 1.4 for just over $100, this when K 1000 with an f 2 were going for more money, probably because photo class instructors know of the K 1000, and that camera had a remarkably long production life. The KX is what the K 1000 should have been. See this link: https://www.pentaxforums.com/camerareviews/pentax-manual-focus-film-slrs-c12.html It covers manual focus K mount Pentax cameras.