I remember my dad having a SLR camera as a child. While I was home in Edmonton for the holidays I asked him if he still had it around. Moments later I was rummaging through his old camera bag. What was inside?
- Pentax K-1000
- 55 mm f2.0
- 28mm f2.8
- 3x Teleconverter
Not knowing anything about film SLR I quickly went to Google to find any information I could. To my surprise there is a lot of love for the Pentax K-1000. It was very popular with intro level photography courses back in the 80s/90s. Having never used a 35mm film camera let alone a completely manual camera I decided I needed to borrow it and see what I could do.
To start the internal light meter was not working. I changed the battery and still no luck. After some Googling the most likely culprit was corrosion of the wire connecting to the battery tray. I took apart the camera and sure enough the wire was no longer connected (black wire in image below).
It was time to dust off the old soldering skills. This was tougher than I was expecting and after melting the plastic battery tray a fair amount, I managed to get some solder to stick but it was not pretty. I put it all back together, popped in a battery, crossed my fingers and the light meter came to life!
I picked up a roll of 24 Fuji Superia X-TRA 400 and walked around Calgary for an afternoon. 16 of the 24 photos turned out OK. For the other eight I forgot about adjusting the exposure or the shutter speed was too slow. You can click through the Flickr album below:
Overall this experiment has been a lot of fun. I have since shot a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus black and white film. I didn't realize that this film would require different processing and I could not find a lab in Calgary that would do it so I sent it off to Ilford. It should arrive next week and I am looking forward to the results (assuming I didn't mess anything up).
I am not sure if I will continue to shoot film, but the K-1000 is now included in my camera lineup.
Thanks for reading,
Ken