Monday, May 17, 2010

Pentax K1000

The annual Albuquerque Art Museum car show provided me an opportunity to try out my latest thrift store find, a Pentax K1000.



The star of the show was this graceful 1934 Studebaker; they are rather rare, and I don't recall seeing one before.








My K1000 was built prior to 1978 when manufacturing was moved from Japan to China, so it is all metal. The film advance is not quite as smooth as my older Spotmatics, but it is otherwise quite nice. There is no on-off switch for the meter, so one must always have a lens cap handy to avoid burning up the battery. The K1000 can be used in auto-exposure or full manual modes. A good over-view of the camera can be found on the Wikipedia page.

I also shot some color with my new cell phone camera at the car show. The pictures are on my other blog.

4 comments:

Norman Montifar said...

Another great find at the thrift store, Mike. Those are lovely shots of classic car.
My dad's first car was a Studebaker. When we were kids my brother and I always imagine that we were about to blast off in a rocket ship every time we rode that car.

Julio F said...

Lots of class in that classics. An uncle had a car almost exactly like the last one - is it a Nash? I remember it had a very soft ride.

The K-1000 is a great workhorse; it was the only camera I used for 23 years, and still a very cherished one. The 50/2 lens is not bad at all. Hope you enjoy it!

Mike said...

That last car is a Nash; there were quite a few at the show.

The Pentax, when I found it in the thrift store was wrapped up in plastic and securely taped. No way to tell at the time what condition it was in, but it works perfectly and looks almost new. If I can't find some deserving student to give it to, I may sell it as it seems like it really ought to be put to use. I know I could get a converter to use my old Takumars with it, but that doesn't seem very practical since you lose the auto-stopdown.

Jerry Sutherlin said...

Hello from Cloudcroft, Mike I set a day each year a side to take vintage camera an make sure I make every part move, I will send a few images shortly. Miriam and I have been running to White Sands every time a storm moves in, check the web site for new posting soon. Your cars are great, film B&W can't be beat. Jerry and Miriam