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Friday, November 27, 2009

The Only Pentax AF TC Ever Made - SMC F 1.7X AF

First, look at the background information about the "lens" here:-

http://kmp.bdimitrov.de/teleconverters/F1.7X.html

Well, it is not a real AF Tele-Convertor, but just an AF Adaptor, which was designed to adapt MF lens on it and then do the AF within the "TC".

Recently, I have come across an interesting post at the DPR in which a Pentaxian reports that he has acquired a F 1.7X AF TC that was made in Vietnam in 2008, with photos posted:-

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=33797252

One of the photos linked:

Well, the most interesting thing of this report is that it shows that the supposed 1997 discontinued (according to the information as documented at the Bojidar's K-mount Page) F TC is actually still in production and the production has even been moved to Vietnam! Possibly at the Pentax's lens plant there, which was originally set up to produce new (digital) lenses of Pentax back to 2003.

But what I really don't understand is that why Pentax still needs to waste her already rather limited resources to produce an old style and outdated designed lens back to 1987? In fact, they have never introduced a real AF Tele-Convertor or Extender (but not an AF *Adaptor*), whilst Kenko did that already back to around 1995 (IIRC), for the K-mount. (Well, I have two of these by Kenko.)

And, the last time I could find the AF TC in Tokyo was back to 2005. In 2006, when I re-visited Tokyo again, I could not see it carried by any shop anymore. The following photo was taken in Easter 2005, at a large Tokyo camera chain shop (EXIF contained):-