I've been using the L1 since May 2007. It has become my favorite DSLR body, regardless of what lens I put on it. It's not perfect, the K10D outperforms it in several ways, but there's something truly different and delightful about it. I didn't know at all whether it was worth it when I bought it ... four months later, i bought a second one.
The Panasonic/Leica Vario-Elmarit-D 14-50/2.8-3.5 ASPH OIS is on par with the Pentax Limited primes in terms of imaging quality IMO. It is a shockingly excellent lens ... and a zoom at that. I would definitely buy the Leica lens. And the Olympus pro-class lenses, even their standard lenses, are also terrific. The Olympus ZD 25 is proving to be a particular delight: http://homepage.mac.com/godders/panasonicL1_olympus25/ As is the Leica Summilux-D 25/1.4 ASPH. I also have the Oly 11-22, 35 Macro and 50-200. The body also works well with adapted lenses. Any manual focus lens with an aperture ring works well, given a good mount adapter. I use mount adapters sourced from fotodiox.com (about $35 apiece). They mount the Pentax K lenses properly, rotated 20 degrees from "normal", which is actually important to prevent mechanical interference between the iris actuating mechanism and the 4/3 mount electrical contacts. Adapted lenses work just like fitting an M42 screw mount lens on a Pentax DSLR: manual iris, manual focus, Av mode and metered manual. Metering is accurate in normal light conditions, but you lose some of the low light metering. I've used the Pentax Pentax K17/4FE (courtesy Cotty), Nikkor 20/3.5AI, Pentax M50/1.4, Nikkor 105/2.5 AI, and Nikkor 180/2.8 AI. As you might be able to tell, I'm an enthusiast of this camera. It's not without its flaws, but the photos it has made for me have been very satisfactory indeed. best, Godfrey On Jun 2, 2008, at 8:46 PM, Mike Hamilton wrote: > Hey all, > I've been interested in the Panasonic L1 since it was released, and > I'm now considering purchasing one for $400 (without the legendary > Leica kit lens). What are the limitations of using K-mount lenses on > this body? As far as I'm aware, they need an aperture ring (so my > FA20-35 would work, but the DA21 would not). How is metering via > adapter? If I could get the Leica 14-50 2.8-3.5 with it for $800, I > might go for that... > > Any significant issues that you've come across? I'm planning to use > this body to complement my K10D. Perhaps I'd eventually get the > Olympus 25/2.8. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
