I just received my Fotodiox Pentax K/PK to Canon EOS Adapter yesterday. I successfully mounted the adapter to a Pentax K SMC 50/1.4 lens. The fit is nice and tight and the lens works great with my my Canon 5D series cameras.
But: with the lens and adapter combination the lens is now rotated quite a bit to the left. Looking down on the camera the aperture scale on the lens is now about 9 o'clock instead of the normal 12 o'clock? I matched the red dot on the adapter to the red dot on the lens and the adapter twisted on just fine. I see no other position where the adapter will twist onto the lens? Having the lens positioned like this is a bit of pain. I am wondering if this is normal or if there was a manufacture error with my sample?
My PK to EOS adapters are relatively old, and they don't have the angular offset. I perform an aperture leverectomy on my K lenses to remove the lever and shield so they'll fit on my 5D and 1DII bodies. I guess the angular offset is pretty standard now, but I prefer the aperture and focus index marks to be in the right place when the lens is mounted - at 12 o'clock.
I did the snip BEFORE mounting the lens. Oh well. It works well. The SMC 50/1.4 looks great though. Not the M42 screwmount version, but rather the KM mount.
The pentax adapters I have are offset also, about 45 degrees or more to the left I think. Indeed it's to clear the lever/shield, but I also snip those too, right from the get-go. I wish they were indexed to be straight-up also, but beggars can't be choosers I suppose. ;-)
I will do some tests over the weekend. But my initial pixel peeping with the 5D LCD indicates that the K mount SMC 50/1.4 is really, really good. I got the lens (in perfect condition) with ME camera for $35.
That's a steal of a price, you could easily just resell the body for that and keep the lens for free. I've thought of getting one of those someday but have too many 50s as it is. My sole pentax is an -A 50/1.2 which I like a lot, but really, wide open it's a bit much on the coma sometimes, so I usually end up stopping down a touch anyway...
I've just bought a focus-confirm PK-EOS adapter on eBay. It works fine with my 20D (with a Pentax 50/1.4) but with my 1D (mk1) the whole image is underexposed and the bottom 40% fades to black. It's a 'rotated' adaptor, so the activation levers are well out of the way of the mirror, and there are no audible indication of an issue with the mirror.
I suspect the mirror isn't getting all of the way up. This would cause severe vignetting/image cut off at the top of the sensor, which is the bottom of the image. If this is the case, then maybe you can still see something through the finder while taking the shot. If the finder doesn't go black, then the mirror hasn't gone all of the way up.
Thanks! Your diagnosis was exactly right. I've now done a lever-ectomy and all is well. The lesson is that the rotational offsetting of the adapter may avoid the necessity of a leverectomy with 1.6 crop bodies, but that even a 1.3 crop like the 1D requires a leverectomy, even with an offset adapter. In fact, the leverectomy has to be total; it needs to be virtually flush with the mount to avoid issues.
