[StiffLegged]

...I'm not even sure some of the cameras that were available in the '60's...were still marketed. Miranda, Petri...may have bitten the dust by then. Don't know for sure.

Miranda stopped manufacturing in 1978 and Petri in 1980: I remember Dixons using both names for other, rebranded models (usually by Cosina) in the UK.

[garywakeling]

Minor point but... SoNikon F mount still exists on their DSLRs. I can mount a 1959 3.5cm lens on my D700. You of course loose some functionality, but its no different than mounting a M42 Takumar on a K3iii with an adapter. To my knowledge, only Pentax and Nikon kept their mounts compatible. Nikon now has the Z mount for mirrorless but you can still use F mount lenses with the FTZ adapter.

Thanks Tony, looking back it was almost 50 years and my memory has always been dodgy, having only been a Pentax shooter the details of the other systems were only noticed by me in passing. I do remember the big stink at the time Canon changed mounts and my memory thought that the silver tab on the older Nikon mounts went away, nice to see that Nikon kept their mount going until now with the Z mount taking over. One thing I have always admired with Pentax is the way almost all of their systems keep backward compatibility . I have the K-M42, 6x7-M42, 6x7-K, 6x7-645, 645-K, Q-K adapters by Pentax, which allow me to technically mount my 6x7 lenses on the Pentax Q. Yes, Pentax does things a bit differently to other manufacturers, but I like it

[TwoUptons]

I think my first camera was a pinhole made from a magazine that was strapped with an elastic band to a 126 cartridge and then to a brick.
That was maybe 1978, so a few years later...
6 second exposures on Tri-X if I remember right...

What's interesting to me is that when I was selling used cameras in 1995-96, there were tons of ME Supers and K1000s, but hardly any KX/KM bodies that came through.
And I think I only ever saw one K2 (might have been a DMD, but that was a long time ago...)
This was in the US, but I think the real surge in popularity of SLRs really hit for us after the M-series bodies were out.

-Eric

[UncleVanya]

I remember 75-76 Rock n Roll was giving way to Disco, sad state of affairs, and rock and roll bands were turning to Glam Rock. Atlanta at the time was known as the Little Apple cuz one could virtually go clubbing all night long.... As for cameras manufacturers were trying to convince photography buyers the new digital cameras with their smaller sensors and lenses were going to give them extra reach via the new term Crop Factor and by putting the Equivalent reach on lenses... Guess it worked because here we are today still debating it and mostly using digital cameras but now debating in reverse the advantage of crop cameras vs going full frame.

I think you’re mixing your decades a bit. The disco era started earlier but emerged about then that much is true. Glam rock actually peaked between 1970-74 so a bit earlier but again not too far off. However, compact digital cameras didn’t emerge commercially until around 1990 and then they didn’t really gel into the familiar form until the mid 90’s with an lcd plus a sensor.

[LesDMess]

Hi all!

I've got a question about people's recollection around the Pentax sale of cameras in the years 1975-76.
That's about 14 years before I was born, so I don't quite remember it..

What's interesting to me is that:
In 1975 Pentax released the K-Mount with the K2, KX, and KM.
These were revolutionary cameras for Pentax. Finally introducing the bayonet.
However, the very next year a new series was released, the M series in 1976 with the MX and ME (also the K1000).

To me, it just seems like so much offering in so little time.
What was the marketing like back then? How did Pentax pitch these 6 cameras? Seems like this would have confused the consumer?
Was it all because of the competition with Minolta just to make the smallest cameras? That warrants 6 cameras in two years?
Did other companies have so many offerings at the same time?
How did the R&D of this even look? To finally re-envision the Pentax brand with a bayonet mount but yet the very next year have a follow up series? Wouldn't that snipe sales away from expected returns on investment?

Seems like there's more to the story and I'm wondering if anyone would like to share

Thanks in advance!

Just got out of high school at that time and wasn't much into cameras. The extent of my camera use was a Kodak 110 that I didn't use much. Didn't get into film cameras until much later. In fact after DSLRs . . .

Here's a magazine article regarding the Pentax K mount release . . .





Note the magazine ad stating that the K2 was the smallest electronic camera . . .



The OM-1 was already released before then and Herb Keppler was talking about it and the possible responses from the other manufacturers. He figured that since Pentax just released their trio, he said he would be surprised if Pentax released anything in the near future.








Cameras at the time of the Olympus OM-1 and OM-2 release. You can see why they shook the industry.



BTW, in the Yoshihisa Maitani interviews, he said that cameras were too big and singled out Pentax.

[lesmore49]

Miranda stopped manufacturing in 1978 and Petri in 1980: I remember Dixons using both names for other, rebranded models (usually by Cosina) in the UK.

I had a boss, who was from Ireland, who wanted to sell me his Miranda SLR, when I was choosing to buy either a new Pentax or Nikon. I decided to buy a new camera...got the Pentax. The publishing company I worked for had a photography dept. The dept. manager was a Pentax owner, and he recommended the Pentax S1a. Was a good recommendation, as that camera bought in 1968, still works well...and the $ 10 dollar Sekonic meter I bought at the same time...still meters well.

[Oldbayrunner]

Huh?? I musta been hiding under a rock, 'cos I don't remember any digital cameras in the 70s. I do remember the M42-mount Pentax (used...) cameras that started my SLR habit and lots of other cameras which ran on film.

OOPS My Bad... your right

[Lord Lucan]

I have found a detailed comparative review of SLR cameras, dated January 1977. This was in Which? magazine which was (is?) a relatively unbiased source, even if sometimes not very expert because they covered everything from cars to kettles.

Interestingly they say :

"Since we started our tests, several manufacturers have announced new SLR cameras which are smaller and lighter than the models we tested - a trend that is likely to continue over the next few years"

This is the "seismic move" I referred to in an earlier post.

Also interesting is that what we now call "Metered Manual" they call "Semi-Automatic". Petri and Ricoh, were behind the curve in requiring stop-down metering.

According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, £100 in 1977 would be worth about £550 today.

[RBIV]

What a great thread. I've been reading PentaxForum for awhile now, but this is my first post. I guess I've posted this right, I'm a victim of the DPReview fiasco, so on with the future...

My first SLR was a Mamiya/Sekor 1000DTL purchased in 1967 I think while in the Service. I went overseas a year later and learned that Pentax was really good, so I bought a Spotmatic and over the years acquired a collection of Super Takumar lenses.

By 1972 I was out of the USAF and looking for a career in photography. Finally landed a job with a commercial lab and decided I needed a "Pro" camera, and in the U.S. that meant Nikon or Canon. Sold off the Pentax gear and began "pro" life with a Canon F-1 and 28 thru 200 FD lenses, plus a converted Takumar 400 f/5.6

In 1976 I wound up employed by Ilford US and held various positions with Ilford over a 30 year career -- so obviously I kept the Canon film cameras but did not upgrade to the EOS bodies as I thought they were too weird. But time marches on and digital was clearly the future -- and Canon DSLRs still looked weird to me so....

....back to Pentax with a K20 and DA Ltd primes. Way cool, lose the film! I currently use a K5 and KP with those old primes, and I've also acquired a Zfc because, yes... the looks. But I have kept one of my F1 Canons, and all the FD lenses and still shoot a roll of B/W on occasion.

Sorry, for so much blah blah, but, again, I found this thread informative -- and interesting.

[Sam_I_am]

Hi all!

I've got a question about people's recollection around the Pentax sale of cameras in the years 1975-76.
That's about 14 years before I was born, so I don't quite remember it..

What's interesting to me is that:
In 1975 Pentax released the K-Mount with the K2, KX, and KM.
These were revolutionary cameras for Pentax. Finally introducing the bayonet.
However, the very next year a new series was released, the M series in 1976 with the MX and ME (also the K1000).

To me, it just seems like so much offering in so little time.
What was the marketing like back then? How did Pentax pitch these 6 cameras? Seems like this would have confused the consumer?
Was it all because of the competition with Minolta just to make the smallest cameras? That warrants 6 cameras in two years?
Did other companies have so many offerings at the same time?
How did the R&D of this even look? To finally re-envision the Pentax brand with a bayonet mount but yet the very next year have a follow up series? Wouldn't that snipe sales away from expected returns on investment?

Seems like there's more to the story and I'm wondering if anyone would like to share

Thanks in advance!

I had a similar question I posed sometime last year. I have a few Pentax, Olympus, Minolta, and Konica. All from the same "era". I wanted to know which models from each company were equal to each other, in hopes to see what each company was targeting in their competition. What I came away is that each manufacturer was trying to one up the competition. Pentax included. So none of the models were identical to their competition in any given year, but each model produced was released just so each manufacturer could offer a camera that had a slightly different feature than its competition. That is probably why Pentax released these different models in a relatively short period of time.

[Bbsteinle]

As a high school senior in 1974, I was impressed by my classmates taking yearbook photos with the school’s Spotmatic. Taught myself photography on my Dad’s Voigtlander BR, while lusting after a KX for two years. Finally snagged that KX in 1976, but it was unfortunately stolen in 1979, and I moved to an MX. Sold the MX in 2000 to go digital(!). Picked up another MX and an ME Super in 2015.

[ChrisPlatt]

I have found a detailed comparative review of SLR cameras, dated January 1977...

Those were the glory years of 35mm SLR photography. IMO the years around 1977 were the high point.
Although each manufacturer did things slightly differently the few simple settings required were all the same.

Any one of us who learned photography then and has continued to use film can pick up any one of those cameras
and after ten minutes of examination we'll be shooting away happily, taking well-exposed properly focused photos.

Later when multimode automatic exposure, autofocus and electronics were added things became far more complicated and to me less interesting, culminating in digital.

Chris

[Neuse River Sailor]

My mother gave me an old Brownie box camera when I was 7 or 8, in the early 1960s, and then when my grandfather died I got his Kodak Retina Reflex and Ansco Viking. By the time I reached my early teens I had some money from mowing lawns and working at the tennis center. I had friends with modern SLRs, Nikkormats, Minoltas and Mamiya/Sekors, and I wanted one. At the time the local camera shop mostly sold Leicas and all those strange European brands you used to see, so after reading lots of articles and debating things with my friends, I nerved myself up to mail a money order for around $200 to one of the NYC camera stores, probably Ritz, and in a couple of weeks I was a proud owner of a Spotmatic 1000 with SMC Takumar 55/2. A couple of years later I had saved enough to buy an SMC Takumar 105/2.8. All this kit still in my possession, and the lenses getting regular use on my Fujifilm. I'd say back in the early 1970s Pentax had a reputation for being well-made and polished, the Nikons had every possible gadget and attachment, and the Minoltas and Konicas were the most technologically advanced.

One thing I remember is the two competing magazines, Popular Photography and Modern Photography, which had grown to hundreds of pages each issue, with endless product reviews, editorials and advertisements. One stunt I remember, one of the editors who was dedicated to screw-thread lenses, had a Pentax Spotmatic body and Takumar lens machined so that the lens would bayonet in and lock with a quarter turn, by machining off the threads in two quadrants. He lobbied Pentax to make their new bayonet-mount like this, on the grounds that any new lenses would continue to screw into the old bodies, and old lenses could be machined to fit the new bodies. Of course it didn't go anywhere. The late 1960s through the early 1980s were truly the high-water mark for amateur photography.

As teenagers on limited budgets, we didn't have many lenses, and we were stingy with our film, since even developing and printing it ourselves, it was still expensive. As far as lenses went, a 135 was considered a "cannon", and a 35 was a "fisheye". Of course, there were wealthy older amateurs and you might get to see their kit if you were working toward the Photography merit badge at scouts. Seems like most of the real professionals of the time, the wedding and studio photographers and the photo-journalists, were still using large format, at least around here.

[RBIV]

My mother gave me an old Brownie box camera when I was 7 or 8, in the early 1960s, and then when my grandfather died I got his Kodak Retina Reflex and Ansco Viking. By the time I reached my early teens I had some money from mowing lawns and working at the tennis center. I had friends with modern SLRs, Nikkormats, Minoltas and Mamiya/Sekors, and I wanted one. At the time the local camera shop mostly sold Leicas and all those strange European brands you used to see, so after reading lots of articles and debating things with my friends, I nerved myself up to mail a money order for around $200 to one of the NYC camera stores, probably Ritz, and in a couple of weeks I was a proud owner of a Spotmatic 1000 with SMC Takumar 55/2. A couple of years later I had saved enough to buy an SMC Takumar 105/2.8. All this kit still in my possession, and the lenses getting regular use on my Fujifilm. I'd say back in the early 1970s Pentax had a reputation for being well-made and polished, the Nikons had every possible gadget and attachment, and the Minoltas and Konicas were the most technologically advanced.

One thing I remember is the two competing magazines, Popular Photography and Modern Photography, which had grown to hundreds of pages each issue, with endless product reviews, editorials and advertisements. One stunt I remember, one of the editors who was dedicated to screw-thread lenses, had a Pentax Spotmatic body and Takumar lens machined so that the lens would bayonet in and lock with a quarter turn, by machining off the threads in two quadrants. He lobbied Pentax to make their new bayonet-mount like this, on the grounds that any new lenses would continue to screw into the old bodies, and old lenses could be machined to fit the new bodies. Of course it didn't go anywhere. The late 1960s through the early 1980s were truly the high-water mark for amateur photography.

As teenagers on limited budgets, we didn't have many lenses, and we were stingy with our film, since even developing and printing it ourselves, it was still expensive. As far as lenses went, a 135 was considered a "cannon", and a 35 was a "fisheye". Of course, there were wealthy older amateurs and you might get to see their kit if you were working toward the Photography merit badge at scouts. Seems like most of the real professionals of the time, the wedding and studio photographers and the photo-journalists, were still using large format, at least around here.

Regarding the two competing magazines, I'd like to add a third. I also looked forward to Camera 35 and especially the columns written by David Vestal. The magazine was a bit less equipment oriented, and I always came away enthused to take pictures with the cameras I had.

Not that I didn't pour over Pop and Modern for the equipment I didn't have...

[Lord Lucan]

Seems like most of the real professionals of the time, the wedding and studio photographers and the photo-journalists, were still using large format, at least around here.

My father was a semi-pro in South London in the 1960s and 70s, doing weddings on Saturdays, occasional portraits in people's homes, and publicity shots for a local theatre. For weddings he worked for a company called "Surrey Studios" (not the present day sound studio) and they issued him with, I believe, something like a roll-film Speed Graphic (which he grumbled was worn out and unreliable). For his other pro stuff he used a Rolleiflex TLR, and for his own use at that time an Exa 35mm and later a Minolta SRT. I believe he used the latter with a 135mm lens for theatre stage shots.

He was good, portraits were his forte, but he never really took to colour, and I learned the basics of photography from him. We were very different people - he was an extrovert who didn't see the point of a photo unless there was a person in it, while I take landscapes with no-one in them. In my teens he gave me a couple of his older cameras including a quarter plate Ross Ensign and his remaining stock of glass plates, which I was using in the 1970s. I'm probably the only PF member who started photography with a glass plate camera