The Pentax KM

Tank mode engaged!

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With the 36th press of the shutter on my first roll of film in my newly obtained Pentax KM, I thought back to when I had first loaded it and how I was absolutely certain that I’d done it wrong. I was fully positive the roll would be a complete wash, but I kept shooting anyway, because for all intents and purposes the camera seemed to be operating as it should with a properly loaded roll of film. But, that sinking feeling was always there; with every press of the shutter, i thought “fuuuuuck…”. 36 separate times.

As I rewound the film back into the spool and took it to be developed, I asked the developer to let me know if it was ruined before it was scanned (no one wants to pay for useless scans). But, the call never came, so I assumed all was good. And to my good fortune, it was!

With that harrowing intro out of the way, lets talk about the Asahi Pentax KM!

First off, this camera is an absolute tank! Take a hammer to it and you’ll end up with a broken hammer. It’s heavy, but not cumbersome. The weight is manageable if you have a sturdy strap and sling it cross-body, as opposed to wearing it around your neck. In a pinch, it also doubles as a weapon that you could easily protect yourself with, you know, if you were ever in a situation where your camera was the deadliest thing you had on you.

After replacing the light seals, I loaded the camera up with Ilford SFX 200 (which I got half price, because it had recently expired - score!). I shot the roll at box speed, and while I’m not one to shoot a lot of black and white with actual film, it was really fun (despite requiring some extra contrast and exposure adjustments). Judging how strong the contrast will be in your photos when seeing everything in colour through the viewfinder is challenging. I definitely learned a few things with this first roll, so I will chalk that up as a win.

Lesson learned: I thought the darkness of the damp road would pick up on film, creating a cool contrast against the lighter sides of the street. However, the glare of the sun stepped in and washed it all out.

For reference: You can see how dark the road is without the glare of the sun.

The dials are a bit stiff, but in a good way - no risk of bumping your shutter speed up or down accidentally. And the snap of that shutter? Absolutely way too loud. Easily the loudest shutter that has ever existed. There is no sneaky street photography happening with this loud boy; people will absolutely know you’re taking photos around them. If you are more of a low profile street photographer, I’d use this one more for distance photography (buildings, landscapes, etc.).

The camera I got came with an SMC Pentax 55mm f1.8, which I believe was the kit lens that originally came with the KM. It’s definitely in the “good enough” range in terms of sharpness so far (I haven’t had enough time with it to fully assess it’s clarity, but right now, based on the first batch of photos, I would say it’s not super sharp?). I am not experienced with lenses of this age, so I really don’t know where my expectations should be. Maybe it was the film? It has a lot of grain…I did zero research on it, so who knows. If you have any insight on old lenses or this film stock, lemme know in the comments!

Focusing with this lens is simple and quick, and that was the most fun part about shooting fully manual for the first time. I thought the process was going to slow me down a ton (as I tried to dial things in perfectly for every shot), but with this camera it feels relatively seamless. That may change once I get this into the streets downtown and around people, but i’m excited to try it out.

The light meter seems to work well: it’s easy to read, adjust as needed, and seems accurate, but the combination of the camera’s age and this expired film didn’t produce the best results indoors in low light. My house doesn’t get a lot of natural light because of the direction it faces, so it’s dimly lit for a good part of the day (nothing a flash can’t fix, though! And I have managed to collect a few good ones over the past year or so). When outside, I just have to be more careful and underexpose when necessary, as I had a couple of blow outs.

There were clouds in the sky, but I failed to underexpose when facing the direction of the sun, so it got pretty blown out.

See! Clouds!

The camera told me this was perfectly exposed, I should have overexposed as it was so dark in the house. But, would you look at that little potato!

Got a better exposure when I positioned myself more in the light of the window as opposed to facing the window.

Overall, this camera is very fun to use. Fully manual is definitely a thing I enjoy; slowing down and having a high level of control is great. My XT-30II misses focus a lot - like seriously a lot, but I’ve just had to embrace it because frankly, Fujifilm autofocus sucks (especially on an older camera that no longer gets firmware updates).

Unfortunately, focusing manually on a mirrorless camera using focus peaking is something I can’t seem to get used to, no matter how hard I try…I hate it. With the Pentax, that’s not an issue, the level of control is amazing and it’s hard to go back to missing focus on such a modern camera like the XT-30II. If you have any tips on how to get better at/used to focus peaking, let me know below!

I recently got a couple more rolls in from the developer that I’m excited to report back on - including a test roll from the Minolta Hi-Matic F, a camera that has given me conflicted feelings that I’m currently working through after seeing the photos, so stay tuned for the DRAMA that will unfold in that write-up.

If you have experience with similar Pentax SLR’s, or even this SLR (which I’ve gathered isn’t well-known and is often overshadowed by the K1000 and the Spotmatic), leave a comment and share your story!

It’s nice living here.

Thanks to everyone that has subscribed so far; I’m closing in on 100 subs, which is so rad - all the comments and conversations have been the best part of all of this. It truly means the world that you are here hanging out with me.

Stay Focused.