Pentax Class of 1975

 

Pentax introduced the K-mount fifty-one years ago, and these three SLRs were the first K-mount bodies. The Pentax KM - a fully manual SLR with the ability to operate without a battery for the meter. It is basically a Pentax Spotmatic F, and far better than the K1000 that replaced it later. The Pentax KX uses a match-needle in the viewfinder to choose the appropriate shutter speed, and is also fully manual. There is a small window above the lens to show the aperture in the viewfinder. The K2 is quite different from the other two. It's an Aperture-Priority camera with manual exposure, but requires a battery to function  properly. For some reason, the designers at Pentax placed the ISO selection in a ring at the base of the lens mount. The camera also has a metal-bladed vertical focal plane shutter - the first Pentax camera to feature this.  

I purchased the KX at Monument Camera in Tucson in October 2025.  The K2 was an eBay purchase, back in March of this year.  I have had to lubricate the ISO ring several times, as it seizes up.  The KM, also an eBay find, was purchased in late August.  I'm still testing the KM, and it appears to work perfectly. I think it will become my favorite of the three cameras, with the KX coming in second.  The K2, aside from its flakey ISO ring, works well, too, and the exposures have been spot-on.  

These three cameras represent a milestone for Pentax, as it moved away from the M42 screw-mount.  The K-mount was able to accept the M42 lenses with an adapter, allowing users access to their old Takumars.  The K-mount lenses are pretty much identical to the SMC Takumars that they replaced.  The K-mount also allowed Pentax to add more electronic features as new technologies evolved and were incorporated into the bodies. 

Later SLRs from Pentax incorporated more electronic controls and smaller bodies as seen n the M-series, such as the ME.  However, I think that if a manual K-mount body is something you want, the KM, not the K1000, should be on your list. It has all the features that you may need.

I'm still working on my M42-Spotmatic book, but I have put it aside for a while. The text is done, and it's just a matter of layout and design. Of course, the question is will it be an e-book or a printed volume?  

More Svema 100 love

Over the past decade, I’ve shot a fair number of rolls of the Film Photography Project’s Svema 100 film. Manufactured in Ukraine, and still in stock from the FPP and its distributors, Svema 100 is a fine-grained, medium contrast film that is worth checking out if you haven’t shot with it. It’s on a tough polyester film base that lies extremely flat in my Epson V700 scanner, and I appreciate that a lot.  

I’ve shot several rolls more recently, and would like to share some of the images with you.  This first set was shot on my Pentax Spotmatic II, mostly along the Blue Ridge Parkway and Mt. Mitchell State Park.  If you didn’t know, Mt. Mitchell is the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi, at 6,684 feet above sea level.  You can also drive within short walk to the summit. On a sunny day, you can see a lot. However, you are more likely to find the mountain top to be either in the clouds or surrounded by lower-lying ground fog.  Mt. Mitchell State Park is around an hour’s drive from my house, and is also as far N as I can currently drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

I used an SMC Takumar 55mm f/1.8 lens – one of the sharpest lenses you will find, and often used an orange filter with the roll of Svema 100.

I never tire of views like this.

Great view from the Porta-Johns at Craggy Pinnacle parking lot

At an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Turk's Cap Lilly

Mt. Mitchell picnic shelter detail

 It's a severe place there at times.

I really like how these came out.  I developed the film in FPP D-96 for 8 minutes at 20°C. If there is one complaint that I have, is that I find a 24 exposures go really fast for me, and would love to have a choice of 36 exposure rolls.  

At Ball Photo in Asheville. Yes, those are copies of Monochrome Mania for sale there.

Asheville Airport

Redbud leaves - wide open

coneflowers coming on.

The second set was shot on my Pentax K2 as pictured at the top.  Same developer.  Quite different circumstances, and a range of subjects. Svema 100 had no problem in subdued lighting, bright sunny days, and everything in between.  

If you are looking for a different 35mm emulsion to try, I highly recommend Svema 100. This is a film that would be fantastic in 4x5 and 120 -- if they ever make it.

TESTING…TESTING

I recently acquired a pretty nice example of a Pentax K2, a member of the first generation of Pentax’s K-mount SLRs. I paid about $80 including shipping for it, and it’s the black paint version, which looks really nice.  The price was below what most of these go for online, and I was assured by the seller that the meter worked.  Well, after it arrived I found that it was good electronically, but the ASA ring was not turning. After doing a little research, I put a few drops of light oil around the base of the lens mount/ASA ring, and it then moved like it was supposed to.  The K2 is an aperture-priority and manual exposure camera, so I still needed to test it with film before I used it seriously.  

I loaded a 24 exposure roll of the FPP’s She-Wolf 100 black and white film (it’s Fomapan 100) and spent a few days shooting with the camera.  After I developed the film, I scanned it with my Epson V700, and I’m very pleased with the results. The metering is very accurate, and I know that I can trust the camera to expose properly.  Here are a few unedited images from the roll so that you can see.

This brings me back to the title.  A used film camera today is likely to be at least 20 years old, and more often than not, over 40 years.  The K2 came out in 1975, which makes it 51 years old.  Now, for me, 1975 was the year I graduated high school and started college.  It’s not ancient history to me, because I lived it. However, to a lot of young adopters of film cameras, it IS ancient history.  All too often I see people on Reddit asking if a certain camera is okay to use, or “what is the best camera?” or “is this any good?”  Some cameras have aged better than others, and so much depends upon the brand, the way it was used and stored, and whether the new owner knows what they are doing.  Old cameras that have been well-kept and stored properly are great. Old cameras that have sat in damp basements, storage units, or dusty hot attics may have a whole slew of problems, or they may not. You won't know for sure until you have the camera in your hands.  

To test a camera:

Find out if it requires a battery to operate the shutter.  Cameras like the Canon AE-1, Pentax ME, Nikon FE, Minolta X series, all require a battery to operate the shutter and the light meter.  If a camera’s shutter is independent of the light meter, all the better.  However, that’s not so much an endorsement of those camera as it is a basic step that you should know before using any camera.  

The Spotmatic only needs a battery for the TTL meter. 

Don’t have a manual?  Go to www.butkus.org and you should be able to download a manual.  Want to know more about the camera? Go to camera-wiki.org

The Minolta X7A requires a battery to operate at all.

If the shutter works without a battery, then dry-fire the shutter at the various speeds and listen to the sound at each speed.  If the shutter is working properly, you’ll discern the different shutter speeds as you change them.  If you can open the back of the camera and look through it, you’ll see the shutter curtain (if it’s an SLR) open and close for each setting, which ought to be obviously different at low and high speeds.

Find the proper battery to test your camera, and see if the light meter works. Depending on the camera, you’ll see a +/- display, differently colored LEDs, or a small pointer at different shutter speeds.  This is why it is important to have the manual, so you will know if things are working properly.  If the meter is not working, check the battery contacts in the camera and clean them with a pencil eraser.  If you see corrosion, then, you'll need to clean that off.  Make sure that you have inserted the battery with the + side facing the proper direction.

I keep an old roll of film that’s been exposed many, many times as a test roll to see if the film transport works properly as well as the rewind.

Does the self-timer work (if it has one)?  I know people get caught up in the “Pentax K1000” for a basic camera, but the K1000 does not even have a self-timer!  There are better all-manual SLRs out there at a lower price, such as the Vivitar V2000 or V3800, both of which use K-mount lenses.

Are the lenses clear? Is there dirt in the viewfinder? Older SLRs are prone to having a bunch of dust on the ground glass of the focus screen from the decomposing foam of the mirror bumper.  Lenses may have a haze inside, dust, or fungus. You may need to remove the lens and hold it up to the light to see that.

Once you are sure that the camera works, shoot a 24 exposure roll of film with it, and it can be on as mundane subjects as you want. This is to test the camera.  Once you are satisfied that it works properly, you can take it on that trip that you planned to use it on.  Never bring an untested camera on a trip!  

Sometimes you only spot that something’s wrong until after you shoot a roll of film, so thtat’s why the test roll is important. If you are buying from a dealer, they should have tested the camera before they sold it.  If you bought it from someone on eBay, then you have to assume that no testing has been done unless it was explicitly stated in the description of the item.  Since way too many sellers now use eBay’s AI option to list, every camera is a tool to produce wonderful contemporary images that will delight you.  Buyer beware.

All-electronic point and shoots are always a gamble.

A well-maintained camera that is not fully electronic should last a long time.  Even now, the first DSLRs are over 20 years old, and by some standards they are e-waste.  Some people covet them because of the CCD imaging system.  The same rules apply to them - if they were well-cared for they should still work fine, but then you have the to find the batteries and in some cases, small enough capacity CF or SD cards that will work with them.  Unless your plan is to make prints larger than 8x12 inches, a 6 MP DSLR is certainly a capable camera.  In the case of any digital camera - you can only test them with a battery and a storage card, and again, buyer beware.