Pentax K1000 35mm SLR Review

With the Pentax K1000, its simplicity is its strength. A completely mechanical camera which needs no batteries to operate – aside from a single battery to power the light meter. Once your film is loaded and your ISO is set – all that’s left to worry about is focusing, shutter speed and aperture. This is as good a 35mm camera to learn photography on as any. And for decades now that’s what it’s been known as - a camera for students.

For stretches I’ve alternately carried this camera across the world and then left it forgotten for months, if not years, at a time after acquiring some “new” film camera to work with. But I always seem to return to the K1000. While the only lens I have for it is the Pentax 50MM F/2 SMC M K Mount manual focus lens - there’s a multitude of dirt-cheap K Mount manual lenses available out there.

A few times I’ve forgotten to depress the film rewind release button on the bottom of the camera before rewinding the film – which will instantly lead to the sprockets immediately the film perforations. Which in turn can make scanning the film at home a tedious nightmare. It’s indeed a painful moment once you realize what you’ve done – usually after a turn or two of the film rewind knob.

The only “turning on the camera” is removing the lens cap which activates the light meter. It takes an LR44 battery – but in all the years of owning this camera I don’t remember ever having to replace it. So either I have a terrible memory or as long as you leave the lens cap on while it’s not in use – the battery shouldn’t need to be replaced very often.

Unlike its predecessor the Pentax Spotmatic – the Pentax K1000 has no self-timer. So, if you need to be in the photo, you’ll have to find another person to release the shutter. Speaking of the shutter, you have from 1/1000 of a second to 1 second to work with. If you decide on a long exposure over 1 second, you’ll need to acquire a cable release.

Over a 20-year production period 3 million of these cameras were sold. Scarcity is not an issue with these. In ten thousand years our distant descendants will be pulling these cameras out of ancient landfills and a lot of them will probably work just fine.