The Qkonica 25mm
Note the letter Q is silent. If you’ve stumbled across this information erroneously in an effort to find something meaningful on the Internet my apologies. So what is this oddity? I’m pleased you asked, no one else ever does. I’ve taken the lens from an APS film Konica Revio CL which has a 25mm focal length and a speed of 1:6.7 and adapted it to the Pentax Q mount. In order to do this I’ve duplicated the distance from the back of the lens to the film only now it’s to the sensor. During the disassembly I preserved the helical focus mechanism. I now turn it by hand using a small stud threaded into the decorative front of the lens. The lens itself is no great performer it’s 3 elements in three groups and doesn’t appear to have any coatings. I’ve found that despite my best efforts at focus most of my mid to far distance shots are on the soft side. This could partially be attributed to defraction caused by the 6.7 f-stop. Where this lens does perform well is at close distances and as a macro lens. The 25mm focal length on the Q yields a “35mm full frame” equivalent of 138mm, that coupled with the fact that the over-ridden focus allows you to get within inches of the subject, you have a large degree of magnification.
Back to the Q being silent, not only is the Letter Q silent in the name of this lens the camera itself is completely silent as it now uses its electronic shutter. A note on focus. In order to focus reasonably well I’ve turned on focus peaking which was added to the Q with firmware upgrade 1.10, additionally I’ve set 4 times magnification on when manually focusing. The magnification is enacted by pressing OK on the rear control dial. To provide an idea of how small an object you can photograph with this lens here is a lilliputian mushroom in front of a pad lock key.
For me I see using the Pentax Q as an opportunity to expand the boundaries of what I’m able to photograph, this is the reason I recently purchased the Pentax fisheye lens and am building lenses that do something I can’t do with any of my other gear. Next on my build list are a wide-angle and a telephoto.