old lenses on a pentax istD

[woodbob123]

first post so gentle does any body know how to override the auto settings on my pentax istD use the camera for astro work with a home made nose works ok but when i fit my old non auto lenses on cant get it to work. Only thing i can think of is to mask off the electrical connections on camera body or look for a plastic tele convertor. any ideas

[johnf3f]

Originally Posted by woodbob123

first post so gentle does any body know how to override the auto settings on my pentax istD use the camera for astro work with a home made nose works ok but when i fit my old non auto lenses on cant get it to work. Only thing i can think of is to mask off the electrical connections on camera body or look for a plastic tele convertor. any ideas

I have tried this myself whilst taking pictures of a forest fire at night using another persons camera of a system I had never used before! Oh yes I was a complete newbie at the time that didn't help! Basically I am a Canon user but the Pentax camera lenses and camera certainly functioned, it's just that I didn't!
This was a few years ago but if memory serves the camera was set to Manual mode and the manual fucus lens appeared to function OK, but I never saw the results on a computer.
Ther are a few Pentax photography forums on the net that may be able to help if no-one here can. If not do you live near a REAL camera shop? They could probably help in minutes.
It is one of the advantages of the Pentax system that there are many older (and good) lenses out there at reasonable prices that can be used with pentax's modern cameras.
Good luck!