Mastering Exposure using the Pentax K1000

A classic student camera

By PF Staff in Influential Photo Gear on Jan 25, 2013

I began my film photography adventure with a plastic Holga camera, but I was unsatisfied with the lack of control on exposure settings. Later I purchased a second-hand Pentax K1000 due to its cheap price. Soon I found myself experiencing a very steep learning curve in the mastering of exposure.

The beauty of the K1000 is it simplicity. So simple that you need only to care about the fundamental aspects of photography - shutter speed and aperture settings. The K1000 keeps you focused on the subject, not fiddling with various camera settings. Because there is no automatic exposure, a K1000 user is forced (or encouraged) to carefully examine the light condition, choose the right shutter speed and aperture value combination, and then click the release button.

Aperture ring of my Pentax-M 50mm F2 on my Pentax K1000

Shutter speed dial on my Pentax K1000

The results from my first batch of films (I was shooting with Kodak BW400CN and Tri-X 400) were surprising. I had never seen this kind of images before. Because of the manual exposure, I had selectively exposed for the part I thought important, thus resulting in very good contrast (in my opinion) and no overexposures like I often got when I was shooting digital/auto exposure. The images are so special, to me, they seem to have a life of their own. Although I was very happy with the results at first, I quickly felt depressed because obtaining unexpected images means that I was not consciously producing them. In other words, they were not my images, they were my K1000's images. I could feel how my K1000 cynically laughed at my poor exposure skills.  

Here are some examples from my first batch of images:

Adelaide Street, Brisbane

Mt Tibrogargan, Glass House Mountains National Park

Painter, Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve, Maleny

Later I set out to master the exposure through many experiments and daily shooting. The more I shoot manually, the more I understand the light intensity and which exposure combination to use. I started to befriend the Sunny 16 rule, I started to be able to guess the exposure correctly, and I started to use Manual mode even on my digital cameras. As days went by, I felt more confident that the images produced were results of my conscious decisions.

As I shoot, I am always conscious about the tonality of the scene, the contrast, the direction of light, the position of shadows, and which part of the scene my K1000 is metering (i.e. where the midtone is). Because I want to learn about printing in the future, I am also consciously overexposing slightly in some occasions to preserve shadow details and I may have to recover the highlights during printing.

Here are some example of my later images:

Backyard tomatoes

Edward street, Brisbane

In conclusion, the most fruitful experience from the manual-ness of my Pentax K1000 is the mastering of exposure. I have to admit that the tonality of the images above are not prefect, but I believe these pictures are better than my previous digital works, which are largely dependent on auto-exposure. My humble advice to any learner of photography is to do more manual exposures, or to use the Manual mode on your digital camera more frequently. Only when you start metering the light yourself will you understand the fundamentals of exposure. Now I have developed a habit of assessing the light distribution before shooting - and not to shoot blindly.

- mythguy9