Mornin All

[Shamy]

I'm gonna come out of the stone age (35mm) and buy a digital system. My old system is Pentax. Can I use any of my lenses and just buy a body, or must I start from scratch.

[SmartWombat]

Yes, you can just get a Pentax digital body.
But there are limitations to what you can do with the old lenses, they may not autofocus for example, depending on how old they are ...

[Ron Kruger]

One of the things that sold me on Pentax was their claim that you can use any Pentax lens with them. While this is true, the limitations go beyond you having to manually focus with lenses that are not AF. With my K20D, when I put a modern lens on it, it automatically reads the focal length, and this changes constantly with a variable lens. I tried an older Pentax lens with it, and it asked me to enter the focal length. That's not a big deal with a fixed focal length, but with a variable, which focal length would one choose?
I also figured when I bought this camera, I could get some good deals on used Pentax lenses, but, I guess because their lenses don't go "out of style," so to speak, with camera body upgrades, no one sells their old lenses, unless there's something wrong with them.

[Shamy]

The system is pretty old (early 70's), will they still work?

[Shamy]

Huh?...Anyone out there that can help?

[opus]

I wonder if you can take a couple of your lenses into a camera store and try them out. I used a Pentax system in the early 80s, but abandoned it for Canon in 2000, after learning that my Pentax body was broken.