Pentax K1000

Pentax K1000 is one of the most loved and most common SLRs of all time. Its production run started from 1976 up to 1997, or 21 years of unchanged design! With electronics, motors, plastics, and computerized automation innovations in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, most camera production runs were only between 2-5 years... the time of high-tech obsolescence. Almost no other camera has had a production run as long as the K1000! Primitive as it may be, the K1000 has been a workhorse for people all over the world. It is cheap, mass produced, and the early versions have superb built quality. The early K1000 production was in Japan, then shifted to Hong Kong in the late 70s, to China in later years. Subsequent designs allowed the cameras to be cheaper, but had more plastics and were more prone to problems. Many photographers talk about their love for the K1000 the same way they talked about the Canon AE-1... cheap, reliable, superb. Given how popular and common the K1000 is, it's not a collector's item like the Nikon F or Leica rangefinders.

The pictures of the K1000 + 55mm f/2 shown here has been my workhorse since I was a kid. It was given to my mom, and almost all of the nice pictures from my childhood was taken with this camera. When I was old enough to hold it, it became my camera. It later became the only camera I used in my photography classes, the only camera I used as a school photographer for newspapers, then yearbook, and the only camera I won awards with. It was an amazing workhorse. Later on in my life I did get other lenses (two Sigma zoom K-mount) and while I loved not having to move around constantly using zoom lenses (I became lazier with zoom lenses), most of the picture with those lenses turned out really crappy. I didn't know it at the time, but now I do: in terms of image quality, consumer zoom lenses paled in performance relative to the amazing (but inconvenient) prime lens such as the 55mm f/2. This is one of the reasons why most of my lenses today are heavily biased in prime lenses. IMHO zoom lenses are for people who are lazy photographers who take same looking images over and over again from their chair.

The K1000 is an all manual camera with a built-in lightmeter. Focus, speed, aperture are all manual. It's one of the most popular cameras in film and photography classes because it's cheap, plentiful, and most importantly, it is completely manual operated. Manual cameras force people to think about photography, there is no way to cheat on it, it's a great learning tool, and it's one of the most recommended cameras in beginning film classes.


This camera dates between 1976-1978-- subsequent models were no longer made in Japan to reduce cost. Also subsequent models do not have the Asahi Pentax symbol on the penta-prism.

It's been 21 years since the camera had service, so I thought I would give CLA a try. First I wanted to clean the penta-prism because it was full of junk. But reaching the penta-prism requires disassembly of the top plate since the focusing screen on the K1000 isn't interchangeable. First, disassembly of the ISO/speed dial (which was actually surprisingly complex for a simple camera):


Then disassemply of the count dial:


Keep in mind I was so confident that I didn't need a service manual that I went ahead with disassembly, and here's the result-- I didn't know this was a LEFT HAND screw and stripped it the wrong way. There goes the screw!




Finally, I got to the penta-prism!


I managed to lose two screws, stripped a screw, and screwed up other things too. Moral of the story: no matter how simple the camera is, USE A SERVICE MANUAL!!! Anyways I replaced the mirror damper which looked amazingly good for an ancient camera. Here's a picture of resealing the film seal: