What other cameras accept Ricoh lenses? We have a great 600mm f8 lens for our 35mm SLR and would like to find a digital camera that will accept this and other Ricoh lenses. Thanks in advance for any help you can supply. Ken

Ricoh used the Pentax K-mount.

Pentax are one of only two manufacturers whose current SLR's will accept the older lenses but there will be significant compromises:-

Not all K mounts will work; there's no definitive list so it's "**** it and see".

Most KA mounts should work (KA are the autofocus versions).

All lenses designed for 35mm film SLR's will behave as if they have an approximately 1.5x teleconverter fitted: a 50mm standard lens becomes a 75mm portrait lens, a 28mm wide angle becomes a 42mm and almost indistinguishable from the 50mm standard lens. A typical 80-200mm zoom becomes a 120-300mm zoom and your 600mm becomes a rather less useful 900mm although the effective aperture remains the same.

There will be little if any communication between the lens and the body: K mounts use a mechanical coupling to transmit aperture settings to the body, and the body stops the lens down during exposure with another mechanical coupling. This will no longer work. Some KA lenses will exchange information and automatically stop down. If your current 600mm is a catadioptric (mirror) lens then this is not an issue as it will only have a fixed f8 aperture.

Your current lenses will be to a far inferior optical specification compared to modern lenses. Genuine Ricoh/Rikenon lenses were generally no match for regular Pentax models of the time, and they in turn are generally nowhere near as good as modern lenses. This is because the old models not only use inferior materials technology, but also because modern optics are computer designed and modelled and are optimised for the particular requirements of a digital imager. However, you will generally find that the actual build quality of your old lenses will be superior to modern offerings and they'll be more robust. Also, unless you regularly make large prints or selective enlargements AND regularly use a tripod you may not see the difference in optical quality in real life amateur use. You definitely won't see the difference if you only ever display the photos on a monitor.

Personally, I cannot recommend Pentax dSLR's over any other brand on the basis of legacy use alone, and if the 600mm is the one good lens then I'd seriously consider selling it as there is a demand for good 35mm lenses. I'd give the same advice whichever brand of 35mm you previously used, unless you had a lot of high-end Canon AF/Nikon lenses and were going to buy an expensive full-frame digital SLR. Look at all of the competing offerings and choose what currently suits your photographic needs.

Hope this has helped to clarify things for you, all I ask in return is that you take a brief moment to rate my answer.