Originally posted by tibbitts The K1000 was not a particularly well-liked or well-featured camera in its day - its advantages pretty much ended with "economical." However you do have to determine which features that you want in a new camera - such as open-aperture metering - and the degree to which you can, or will want to, use your lenses will depend partly on that.
Realistically you would probably be very happy with a K100 or similar digital camera.
Paul
Its true that the K1000 was hardly a full-featured camera in its day, but, if it was not liked, why did it stay in production for 21 years? The only other camera I know of that remained in production that long was the Argus C-3 (The Brick), which was made from 1939 until 1966.
I think I understand the desire for a bare-bones dslr, just as the K-1000 was a bare-bones film slr. However, there is no economic reason for it. A modern dslr is as much computer as camera. Software is expensive to develop, but the production cost for each camera is essentially zero, so you save no manufacturing costs by removing functions that are purely software in nature. Since the software is already developed for other cameras, there's little to be saved there. In fact, there would probably be additional development costs to remove the features and test the software to make sure it still works as it should. I've been in IT for more than 30 years, and I've done commercial software development, so I have some idea what I'm talking about.
You can save production costs by eliminating hardware. Probably the biggest cost savings would come from eliminating SR. That's been done. Remember the K110D? Pentax could hardly give them away. Once SR was available on the K100D, no one wanted the K110D, which was otherwise identical and cost $100 less. That was a significant cost saving, but it was not enough to attract buyers.
They could eliminate autofocus. That would save the cost of the drive motor and the power contacts for the SDM lenses. But then they have no manual focus k-mount lenses in production. I don't think there would be much market for a manual focus dslr in today's market.
Liveview and video both probably have some electronics on the motherboard, so leaving them out might save a few cents there. Both are largely software driven, so, again, there's no great savings.
I can't think of any other major hardware components that could be left out. They already leave off the top LCD on entry level cameras, such as the K-m, K-x and K-r. What other HARDWARE could be left out?
Like I said, I understand the desire for a digital K-1000, but I think that people are under the mistaken impression that Pentax could build a $300 dslr by leaving out all the features. Even if they DID leave out SR and AF, I don't think that the price could be brought that low. The fact that the market for such a camera would be extremely small means that economies of scale would work in reverse, and probably drive the price UP, rather than down.