Originally posted by normhead Wow that is just so full of assumptions. As a former head of a photography department, and opening a darkroom in a new school, I can tell you, based on my sample of one, you're dead wrong. It was the exact lack of features that we wanted. The needle matching exposure makes it really easy to explain and demonstrate exposure with the relation ship between shutter and aperture. The all manual operation meant the student has to come to terms with every aspect of the operation, exposure etc. The depth of field guides on those old 50's made understanding depth of field a snap, and any picture a pro could take with a more feature laden camera, a student could learn to take with a K-1000 and know more because of it when they were done. To get an A in my class you had to d professional quality work on the at least one of the 7 grade 10 assignments. Using a K-1000 it was demonstrated that that was possible hundreds of times. Not to mention the ruggedness in student hands.
normhead - you are correct in principle and, to a point, in fact. As I stated from experience on a school board, teachers adopted the K1000 because of its simplicity -
and its price. Add to the K1000 a self-timer and Mirror-Up lever and you have a KM Add a mechanical Judas window aperture readout and you have a KX. Perhaps the Judas window is a luxury. I submit the MLU and timer aren't. Everything else you believe beneficial on a K1000 is also true of the KM and KX.
My daughter learned photography as a vocation, as it is taught in our public school district, became Senior Student in the Journalism program (meaning she ran the program with faculty guidance), attended college on a half-scholarship for journalism and is now employed full time in media (though as a Producer for a broadcast network news division). She learned photography on K1000's and K lenses and printed in wet darkrooms. Her final "task" in High School was to specifiy the bodies and lenses when our school district converted to digital (because of the savings in paper and chemical printing costs and for digital-file-sumbission for the Yearbook and Newspaper). The K1000's were put into storage and the darkrooms closed. She was allowed to keep a dead K1000 that Eric restored.
She continued this path in college, during which she attended an intense 6 week B&W mostly-landscape for-credit seminar in Abiquiu, NM (Ansel Adams / Georgia O'Keefe) which required a fully-mechanical film camera, tripod, 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 100mm lenses, O2 and Y2 filters and 20 rolls each of TMAX and Tri-X. Class half-day, shoot landscape half-day, print at night.Of note for this discussion is the portfolio brief, which included night photography and a self-portrait.in landscape. For her needs the additional mechanical features (MLU and self-timer) were essential.
She took my KX instead of her K1000. I intentionally didn't suggest a K2 (electronic Seikosha stepless shutter, Exposure Compensation) or K2DMD. In fact, if you look closely, many K1000's have a bump on the top where the (omitted) KM battery check button is normally found.
I maintain the K1000 was an afterthought by Pentax. It did not sell well at first. A KM or KX would be a better teaching choice but the K1000 was selected on price and the best was made of the decision.