Many moons ago they used to make conversion mounts to put a Canon lens on say a Pentax, or a Nikon on a Canon and so on. Good luck finding one though because they probably haven't been produced in the last 20 years. Not sure of their functionality either. May turn your AF lens into a manual focus lens that supplies no exposure data to the body so full manual mode there too. Not worth it, just buy any bayonet mount AF Pentax and be done with it.
Well, it depends on the camera. The big issue is the distance between the back of the lens and the guts of the camera (and the size of the opening.) Olympus 4/3rds can take nearly any other lens with an adapter. Canons can take quite a few. Minolta and Nikon, not so much. Pentax, there's Pentax M42 screw-mount lenses of course (which can be adapted to nearly any camera, though on many they can't focus to infinity - not an issue with the Pentax and of course, you gain image stabilization and focus confirmation, too) and there are some medium-format adapters, too (Pentax, Pentacon, etc.) I've heard that you can use early Nikon lenses on a Pentax without an adapter, they just don't lock in tightly, but I haven't tried it (yet).
I would stop taking camera advice from this person
Agreed.
Yeah... SMC stands for "super multi coated" and refers to Pentax's proprietary lens coatings. I was under the impression that all modern Pentax lenses had it, though I could be wrong? P-DA specifies that it is a "made for digital" lens and will not work on Pentax film cameras, while P-FA lenses will work on film or digital. P-DA* are the high-end Pentax digital lenses.
Groucho feel free to correct any of this if it is wrong
Yep, SMC has been used for a very long time and works fantastically (it's pretty difficult to get flare on an SMC lens, I've shot straight into the sun several times without noticeable flare and only found one spot where I seemed to get consistent flare, and then it was just a small dot). I think that if you want a Pentax lens without SMC, you have to go back to screw-mount lenses (before SMC there was just "Super" as in "Super Takumar", before that there was no mention of it) or maybe an extremely early K-mount (not sure off the top of my head.)
DA does mean "Designed for digital" but they'll still work on a film camera. There
may be vignetting depending on the lens, and there's no aperture ring so older all-manual film cameras will be stuck with the lens wide open, but other than that, they should be fine. DA* (actually a star, not asterisk) are high-end ones with weathersealing and ultrasonic focusing. DA Limited are, I think, all pancake (tiny) lenses. Before DA, there was, surprise surprise, FA for film cameras - with similar extensions. FA* were high-end (I think zooms only, no weathersealing or ultrasonic focusing, I
think), FA Limiteds were
very high end (especially the mighty 31mm F1.8
), and I think there have been a couple other variations. Some FA lenses (mainly highly respected primes like the 31mm F1.8, 50mm F1.4, etc) are still sold today but they're being phased out as time goes by. They do work just fine on a DSLR, you just leave the aperture ring on "A".
That's a lot of detail that the OP probably doesn't care about though.
mouselovenfamily, what kind of lens was that 75-200mm? I don't
think Pentax has ever made such a lens. Their usual zoom has been the 50-200mm which matches the kit lens nicely. They also recently have come out with the 55-300mm that's supposed to be very nice (but a bit more expensive) and there's also the 18-250mm that's very nice, especially if you don't like changing lenses, but it's more expensive still. None of these lenses are particularly great in low light, though. If you want a lens that has a lot of zoom and good low-light ability, you're looking at more money and a bigger, heavier lens.
