Sunday, April 01, 2007

The Camera That Launched Careers (or not).


The Camera that launched a thousand careers
Originally uploaded by mfophotos.

Yes, the sought-after Pentax K1000 is the camera that has most often been sold and recommended as the "Student Camera." Pentax must have sold millions of them by the time they retired it from production in 1997. Reliable, simple to operate, and with lots of lenses available, these cameras are still highly prized by anyone wanting a basic, no-frills SLR for photography class. The SMC Takumar lenses are very good... and the 50 mm "normal" lenses are sharp.
Karen Nakamura has a nice write-up of the K1000, and I highly recommend her wonderful website. Matt Denton also has a nice page on the K1000.

You can download a free manual from Pentax, too. Sure, it's a simple camera, but remember -- students have to learn sometime.

So, while I have this camera for a short while (It'll be sold for the Michigan Photographic Historical Society), I'll run a roll of b&w film through it and test it out. I hope it eventually ends up in the hands of an appreciative photography student. Then he or she can shoot film and see the wonder of this medium.

Other things:

An interesting article appeared in the NY Times about the chemistry of non-digital photography - really interesting, with obvious sleuthing aspects.

The Cheap Shots Exhibit was reviewed in today's Ann Arbor News by John Cantu. Nice review of our show!

3 comments:

Sigivald said...

I sure like my MX!

About the same thing, with an LED meter rather than a match-needle, and a depth-of-field lever and self-timer.

Not much more expensive on eBay, either, since there isn't the weird cachet about them that the K1000 has, at least the times I've looked at them.

Leesa said...

You know, somewhere I have an old camera. Not the same one, but I ran lots of rolls of film through it as a young girl. I took outdoor pics because I could not afford the flash (bulbs that looked like off-blue Christmas lights).

Jordan said...

Growing up, a friend of mine had a K1000, and I envied him. I had my father's hand-me-down Pentax ME, which had too much electronics and hence was prone to various ailments.

I now use a Nikon FG quite often, which sounds somewhat like the MX.