1) There is one thing I don't understand. If the aperture always stays wide open in AV mode when the lens is not set to 'A', why does the metering matter anyway Who is going to use it this way?
Well, just rename the AV mode (when the lens is not set to 'A') to "open apertrue mode", then teh metering makes sense.
2) If the metering works in AV mode, why not manual mode? Did Pentax purposely design it this way to force 'pre-A' lenses out of the picture? Or is there any design limitation which I cannot see?
In manual mode the lens really stops down during the exposure, only the body does not know how much it would stop down. Due to the lacking information about the selected aperture, the body is not able to meter while the aperture is still open. Metering would only be possible if the meter would work with DOF preview activated. This, unfortunately, the Pentax ingeneers did not implement.
3) I don't expect you checked this (who would?), but I asked anyway. Does the lenses stay 100% wide open when it was set wide open on the camera? I know my Z-1p doesn't. Just curious.
Sorry, no, I did not check this.. However, I checked this on my Z1-P, and I can tell you that mine does not behave like this.
Arnold
