Lens 'platforms'.

[Torus34]

Over the years Pentax manufactured some excellent lenses. A good example's the 135mm Super Takumar f3.5. Taking advantage of these requires a body. There's a tendency to match Pentax to Pentax and go for a K1000.

But wait! There are several M 42 mount bodies available at considerably lower cost. A good example's the Chinon. These are robust work horses and will open the door to some great glass.

And yes, I follow my own advice.

 

[fwcetus]

Over the years Pentax manufactured some excellent lenses. A good example's the 135mm Super Takumar f3.5. Taking advantage of these requires a body. There's a tendency to match Pentax to Pentax and go for a K1000. But wait! There are several M 42 mount bodies available at considerably lower cost. A good example's the Chinon. These are robust work horses and will open the door to some great glass.

I am not too familiar with other M42 camera body brands. However, in the first decade or so of the Pentax K mount era (1977 or so and into the 1980s), there were other brands (Chinon included) that used the K mount as well. In fact, there was even some discussion at that time within the SLR industry to standardize on the K mount, but N, C, M, and O were not too interested (for some "unknown" reason). Anyway, it is interesting, methinks, that Ricoh produced several K mount bodies and a stable of K mount lenses, even coming out with its own "program mode" lenses, modifying the K mount to so, much as (but not identical to) how Pentax modified the K mount to do so with the Ka mount. So, the "new" Pentax brand, now belonging to the Ricoh Imaging, has come full circle...

More to the point of your thread, however, for myself, I'd much prefer using jen-you-wine Pentax K mount bodies with my Pentax (and other 3rd-party) K mount lenses.

 

[Derrel]

The 135mm f/3.5 Asahi Super-Takumar lens has a nice background defocus nature. Here are a couple decently-sized but not overly large JPG screen reductions from the Canon 5D classic body, shot back in 2007.

MG 5367 5D 135Tak at f5.6.jpg photo - Derrel photos at pbase.com

MG 5372 5D 135Tak at f5.6.jpg photo - Derrel photos at pbase.com