I have to disagree with JCO here, at least with the broad generalization of his statement, and the way he presented his opinion.
First, I "grew up" with a Spottie and a bunch of slow lenses - 35/3.5, 28/3.5; 135/3.5, 20/4.5. I'll agree somewhat that they are a little more difficult to focus in a Spottie or similar camera compared to the 50/1.4, but all-in-all, they were not difficult to focus, they just required a little skill and experience wrt eye placement. Further, I don't think it's the extended DOF that made them more difficult to focus, but rather, the darker viewfinder. That said, I have thousands of perfectly focused negatives using those lenses, which, because of their greater DOF at wide apertures, are, arguably, easier to focus than bigger, faster, heavier lenses with much shallower DOF. Larger, heavier lenses are often more difficult to handle, and shallower DOF means that one must be more critical, or careful, when focusing. Addressing JCO's contention that 35mm/3.5 and wide angle lenses are more difficult to focus "in any camera". well, that's just plain flat out wrong. Apart from wide angle lenses being more forgiving of small focusing errors, regardless of the camera to which they are attached, there are numerous cameras, Pentax and other brands, in which the choice of a proper focusing screen greatly improves the ability to achieve critical focus with a wide variety of lenses. So, to say that it's not easy to focus these lenses in *any* camera is somewhat misleading. "J. C. O'Connell" wrote: > > stick with PENTAX. There is a guy on ebay > who installs new split image screens in > spotmatics for 59.99. Dont forget the > F3.5 wide angles are slow and have too > much depth of field to be "easy" to focus in > any camera. -- Shel Belinkoff mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~belinkoff/ http://home.earthlink.net/~belinkoff/darkroom-rentals/index.html - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
