Pentax 2

Twenty years ago, I owned a Pentax MX and ME, and that ended that journey when I sold the last of the Pentax system. In that time, I have come across Nikons, Minoltas, Olympus, Praktica, and others. It was time to stumble back across the Pentax way. On the shelf of a local pawn shop, I spotted a Pentax 50mm f/1.4 SMC M lens looking at me. I've owned several 50mm f/1.4's but this is the first Pentax that I've come across. And it's neat.

A quick discussion: Pentax had a normal body and lens system, you know large, heavy reliable, and of course it had the 42mm screw lens mount. This was called the universal mount and a lot of lenses were made with that mount. A lot of individual manufactures switched to their own mount. this allowed them to make their own systems. Pentax held on to this mount a lot longer that they should have and almost went bankrupt. But they finally developed the 'K' mount and did something different, they allowed others to use the mount for little or no royalties. Then the engineering came up with miniature ME and MX and a set of lenses to go with them. These lenses were labeled SMC; Spectra Multi-Coating. The letter M or A refers to the mount, the M was the first type and can be used in manual or aperture priority. The A refers to an additional ability of Priority or shutter priority. Both use the same lens formula and are very good.

In the pawn shop, the lens had a very nice MX attached to it.

So I bought it. Layaway. OK?