Pentax K1000, and how I fell in love with 35mm film format.

I got the Pentax K1000 on the same day I returned the faulty Yashica Mat 124-G, and I’m glad I made that decision! This camera taught me a lot about photography and helped me understand its principles more. And it’s a joy to use! Just a pure, fully mechanical camera, stripped off of anything that you don’t need, and has everything you’ll ever need to capture great shots! You just need a battery for the internal light meter -and that’s the non-mechanical part- to work, but that’s about it!

I had two lens options when I was buying it, either the 50mm f/1.4 or 50mm f/1.7 and I wanted to get the f/1.4 lens but it had some haze in it -How lucky am I!- so I went with the 50mm f/1.7 lens. The lens provides tack sharp results on f/5.6 and provides a nice subject/object isolation or what we call “bokeh” on f/2.8.

Anyway, I bought the camera -from another store of course!- along with the 50mm lens and the original box & case.

The store owner gave me a lens filter -which I’ll talk about later in another article- and a film roll as a gift. It was a fresh Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400.

I went on my way back home to test the camera! Loaded the roll, adjusted the ISO on the camera for the light meter to work properly, and I started shooting!

When I reached my 25th frame, the film advance lever got stuck and I thought something was wrong with the camera! I panicked, then I tried to calm myself down before doing anything stupid that I might regret later! Plus, I still didn’t recover from what happened with Yashica that I had before the Pentax.

Called the store owner, sent him the camera, and guess what?! :D

The film roll was 24 shots only, not 36! God, I was so embarrassed. But what can you do? You live and learn! Just an innocent mistake from an amateur. :D

Anyway, I received the camera back and sent the film roll to the lab to get it developed and get the scans.

Enough with the chitchat, I'll leave you to some of my favorite shots from this film roll: