A Kodak Box Brownie then later a Kodak instermatic 33 and my first 35mm a Helina without rangefinder or exposure meter, my first 35mm SLR ... A black bodied Pentax S1A with 55mm f2 lens.

Go and get them Steve...nice of them at Pentax ... way to go guys.

HI Guys
I am down here in Grahamstown....

If and when the AF finds it hard to focus, I just switch to manual...so AF in not a problem with me. I I could have the choice between the two I would thak the K7.

I would love to see a model in camo for the wild life photographers..lenses as well. talk about a walk and stalk hunt with a camo pentax using a modest tele lens....

hay that pink is lovely, but I am female, LOL, only if it was a lighte shade of pink. Only jokeing, I love the standard black as well... but a camo coloured model well that would go down just fine with me.

The K- x looks to be a nice model.

O WOW beautiful .... nicely taken as well

A soft well washed clean cloth is what I use no solvents, I also have a old paint brush with the handle cut off and have used it from around 1975 to sweep off any dust. Makeup counters sell a soft brush for face powder and that would also fine for dusting off lenses and cameras bodies, not on the lens glass but just the body. A blower brush for the deligate parts, ie sensours and mirrors.

Many years back when I was starting out the money was in short supply and well I compeated against guys with all the gear that even pros dream aboy. Well with in three years I was 3 star, they still used star ratings back then. Some had canon outfits with all the lenses one wished tp own or Nikons with all the extras as well a the Big 6x6 from Sweden. I all in the eye and how we see and compose in the end. Do this exercise; take a simple digital, in the dark ages a instermatic would be used, creat set catogory ie. flowers, and then every one must take a picture of a flower or even the same flower with the same camera and then without any digital effects see what every one comes out with. I all in the vision as some famous photographer said many many years back

This is a fun club activity to do.

I found this discussion very amusing and have to say that I agree that Pentax is a ‘better’ product than Canon and Nikon in some ways just as Canon and Nikon are ‘better’ products in their own way. I the far past I used both Pentax and Canon and enjoyed both, but I did find the Pentax Spotamatic II and the Pentax ME was nicer to handle for my hands than the Canon and that the Pentaxs both had better viewfinders, lenses well lets just say all were fantastic in the resolution and quality, even many independent manufactures were super optics. I include Nikon here as I have handled and used then a bit, all were friends’ cameras while some were cameras that I demonstrated for a camera shop. Another thing is that as far as lenses go many bought blanks from each other while Pentax, Canon, Olympus?, and Minolta made their own glass others purchased the raw blanks from other sources as did the Top 5, Minolta, Canon, Nikon, Pentax and Olympus. Many parts and lenses were also outsourced by all these manufactures as well as others, Yashica, Konica etc. Ther was also interchange of technologies, way back in the 1970’s and up to and still today.
No wonder that there as many similar and well just plain the same features within the modern day SLR. The same goes for cars, many manufactures using the same engine in their models, Toyota Yaris, Chev Spark, etc,for an example, capacity varies but it is the same engine assembly from the same manufacture.
This practice is very common in industry and can be found all over, in fact there was only really two factories in Japan, I think that is still true today, that made lens glass and lenses for all the major camera houses.

The KM and the K2000 are one and the same camera. Funny thing is the specs on most digital cameras are all the same, I talking about cameras within a pixel rangs say 10. Anyway I had the choice of a Nikon which gave the exately same specs and functions as the Pentax but chose the pentax as the view finder on the Pentax was far brighter under the same light comditions. Well having owned a few pentax's over the years, S1a, Spotmatic II, ME and ME Super, and haveing used other makes as well helped. So one can say I have a fondness for Pentax. The S1a was my first SLR.