I went out Friday to shoot a street sign of the middle school play with my Super Program and Vivitar Series One 90-180 macro with Portra 160. The shutter speed read 4 seconds, no matter what aperture I chose. Having seen this problem before, I knew at once what had happened: I had inserted the lens carelessly, mangling the autodiaphragm coupling (or something like that). The weekend before, I had hurriedly inserted the Vivitar so that my daughter could take a close-up of a small frog.
The first time the coupling broke, I had been careless in removing a Pentax M42 adapter ring. But I didn't suspect I had to exercise care when installing a K-mount lens. Sure enough, I can't remove the lens. It wiggles but won't come out. Someone at the store will be able to remove it. I have two Super Programs, and I hope this is the one for which I bought a 4-year warranty. But I feel awful asking the store to fix it a second time when it was almost certainly my fault. I'll tell them the truth; the warranty covers carelessness. Now that I think of it, Pentax lenses seem to go in and out more easily than third-party and Ricoh lenses. I dunno; I think that on other brands the coupling sticks out farther. During Thursday night's shoot of the school play, I was swapping lenses from behind the tripod-mounted cameras (KX and Sears) and having a hard time of inserting the lenses. From now on, I'll stand in front of the body when inserting a lens. By the way, I shot the sign at the mechanical speed of 1/125 second at f/16. Paul Franklin Stregevsky - 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 .
