[hiktaka]

And the MF-1

This one remind me of Ultraman.

[jogiba]

[Digitalis]

Awww come on people...even Leica has had the odd bad hair day...

[K(s)evin]

Pentax has one of these on display in a glass case in the lobby of its' HQ in Denver. (along with other digital bodies and lenses.)

[Kerrowdown]

When I whip it out, it isn't the looks that shocks people, it is the size of those things.

In some countries that could get you arrested.

[bullitt_60]

Is that... The back? Where's the handset?

[Nick Siebers]

I used to have a film *ist, and I loved it. That thing was good looking and worked really well. The SF series, on the other hand - yuck. And the oddities on display in this thread - wow.

[Arjay Bee]

The SFX series is to camera design aesthetics as the Toyota FJ Cruiser is to SUV design aesthetics - as an earlier poster said - it is just a different way at looking at design.
There was a time when cargo pants would have been considered odd but now we look at the men's shorts from the 70s and wonder how we wore them without feeling stupid and or embarrassed.

[spectamaniac]

My k-30 has never been so beautiful...

[hks_kansei]

I'm not a fan of the late 90s stuff.

the MZ through to the *ist film are all boring and just look cheap (the *ist film looked like Pentax spent all of $5 making it)

Odd though that the *istD has a different shape and looked much better?





But then again, I love just how brutally functional the SFX is, no fancy styling, just "I AM A CAMERA, CLEAR MY PATH SO I MAY CAPTURE LIGHT!"
(probably helps that I started off using an SFX)


I'd say the best looking ones are the late 70s, ME, MX, LX, those styles are just timeless.

[monochrome]

I love my SF1. Several times each year it is my favorite camera, in a bag with the F35~70 and F70~210. Maybe because it is nearly mint, came with both lenses, an AF240 flash, a Nova 3 bag, couple rolls of film, fresh batteries and a French and an English manual.

For $50.

[builttospill]

the MZ through to the *ist film are all boring and just look cheap (the *ist film looked like Pentax spent all of $5 making it

The *ist shown in the first post is a terrible angle and doesn't give that camera a fair chance. It's a nice little camera built fairly well and with the grip attached I quite like mine.

I'm not a fan of the cheap MZ series at all, but I think Pentax did a nice job with the *ist, which is quite different from the MZ cameras.

[Mookster]

I love my SF1. Several times each year it is my favorite camera, in a bag with the F35~70 and F70~210. Maybe because it is nearly mint, came with both lenses, an AF240 flash, a Nova 3 bag, couple rolls of film, fresh batteries and a French and an English manual.

For $50.

I got the same setup, minus flash and French manual, for twenty bucks last year! Sometimes ugly and old can really work for you.

[bossa]

The first time I saw one of those it was instant loathing and I've never in my life felt that way about a Pentax camera. I don't particularly like the K-01 but I don't loathe it. But that SFX there's just something very, very wrong with that camera. I mean who actually designed that THING? Someone must have been crack at the time to actually approve that design. It looks like something the Stasi would have designed at the height of the Cold War...

You only have to look and the 80's & 90's: the haircuts the balloon pants, the happy pants, the shoulder pads women wore.. Those two decades were bad taste personified and nothing I can think of from that time still looks right. Think of EVERY Macintosh you ever saw.. they looked cool for 10 minutes and like shite forever. Style should only be handled by really really good designers and artists.. Great art and design is not a democratic process either and has NOTHING to do with popular taste. I think you'll find the K-01 will end up a collectors item despite what all the knuckle draggers think.

[Mookster]

C'mon Bossa, really? A-series Pentax lenses, New Order, Molly Ringwald movies; ... Not everything in the 80s sucked.