Found a used camera at Value Village today.

[Chako]

I liberated another used camera today, and I must say, I think I am now collecting cameras. Of course, I have a very soft spot for Pentax seeing that my father loved the brand when Pentax was a leading innovator of SLR cameras in the 60s. I got my love for the brand from him. My latest aquisition did something that I rarely get from cameras, a good laugh on me.

The camera bag has that Pentax branding, which was the first thing that caught my eye in the display case at the local Value Village. Inside was a Pentax MZ-M in that cheezy silver that was popular ages ago.

20241028_193630A by Chako, on Flickr

The camera looked to be in excellent shape for its age. This is a 35mm film camera, so I bought it for my camerta collection.

20241028_193822A by Chako, on Flickr

The lens looked interesting being an old school full frame 28-80mm FA f3.5-5.6 zoom lens in matching silver no less.

20241028_193832A by Chako, on Flickr

20241028_193848A by Chako, on Flickr

The top controls appear to be rather simple compared to today's digital cameras.

20241028_193904A by Chako, on Flickr

I had to buy a package of 3V litium cells to see if it worked. I bought it with dead batteries and took a chance on the camera. All appeared to work except for something that had me puzzled.

20241028_193917A by Chako, on Flickr

The inside of the camera is shockingly new looking.

20241028_193941A by Chako, on Flickr

Back to  that issue I was having  with this camera. Once I put new batteries into the camera, it powered up and everything appeared to work great except for the lens. Try as I might, I just couldn't get the thing to auto focus.  I took the lens off and examined the connector pins and everything looked good to my eye. I tried half and fully pressing the shutter button. Still no autofocus. I looked into the camera and noticed there is a half focusing prism dead center in the viewfinder., That was clue number one, but I still thought there was an issue with either the lens or the camera. I figured at least it would look good in a display case.

20241028_194046A by Chako, on Flickr

Then I thought to myself, I have a lot of Pentax lenses and cameras. Lets try the lens on a different body and eliminate the lens at least. lI quickly found out that this lens auto focuses great on a newer Pentax digital camera. So the lens works great. Then I tried my newer Pentax lens on the film camera, and it didn't want to autofocus at all. I changed the lenses back to their respective camera bodies but took a real close look at the contact pins and noticed something was a little off with the film camera. I figured the camera was broken. After looking online, I found out that the Pentax MZ-M is manual focus only. There is no autofocus on this camera at all! 

so now I know the camera works fantastic. I am surprised the previous owner opted for an FA lens instead of a manual only K lens. That was what threw me off to the fact that the M stood for manual focus. This makes the MZ-M a rather unique offering for its time period.

The camera also came with a Vivitar Dedicated 3000DT external flash. The flash works great.

20241028_194113A by Chako, on Flickr

20241028_194130A by Chako, on Flickr

Of course, as I was trying to figure out if this camera was broken, I neglected to search the front pocket. Inside was a complete set of instructions. I found out the camera dates to 1997. I was in university that year.

20241028_194257A by Chako, on Flickr

20241028_194410A by Chako, on Flickr

20241028_194420A by Chako, on Flickr

20241028_194457A by Chako, on Flickr

So for a little over 20 dollars, I did rather well. The flash and camera works great. The previous owner sure took good care of this camera. Seeing this was at the tail end of film just before digital made its big splash, might account for its good shape. Figuring out that this was a manual only focus camera was more fun than the little outlay of cash cost me. It is not often I have so much entertainment from camera gear, that I was pleasantly surprised. Another Pentax to my ever growing camera collection.

[PitCarver]

I've always been partial to the old Pentax screw
  mounts.   Got 3 or 4 still sitting around here.   My daughter took a photography class years back and was the only one that didn't have to rent a 35mm SLR from the instructor.   Good times.

[Chako]

That is awesome. I only have the one that is a screw mount. What I also like about Pentax, every lens is compatable with everything. With an adapter, those old screw mounts will work on the most modern Pentax camera. 

[PitCarver]

So true.
It's a shame that 35mm is virtually gone.
I can remember taking my old spotmatic and it's accessories on vacation to DC in the early 90's.
My bag weighed in at over 10 pounds. 
Early digital cameras were still in their infancy and died yet compared to film.
These days, all most folks need is a smartphone to capture the memories.  Still, I miss those days.  I'm quite curtain that when I die my old equipment will be donated to some thrift store or another without any regard to the happiness that I had with all of it.

[Farmer X]

Nice find!

I took a photography class during my first trip through college (winter/spring of 1999), and I seem to remember using a Konica or Mamiya-Sekor 35mm. I miss my Rollei 35T, but not having to have photos developed...especially when I found out that one was out of focus or I hovered a finger over the lens. Though film cameras are old-school cool, just deleting crappy photos is a major advantage for me. I'm sure that, as with vinyl records, there is a small group of enthusiasts who swear no digital photo will ever equal one taken with a film camera.

[Chako]

I am not one of those, I converted to digital very early in the game. My first good digital camera was a Nikon Coolpix 990 back in 2000. With that said, I taught high school photography for a number of years in the early 2000s, and that involved film and darkrooms. Even developed a bit of an alergic reaction to some of the chemicals due to a lot of exposure.

Yes, I thought I was just adding another Pentax film camera to my slowly growing collection of cameras, but found out that this is an interesting model without auto focus. That sort of makes it more interesting to me.

[Whoey]

I have collected too many things already that I don't use enough including a slew of Nikon stuff for both film and digital.

That being said not a bad find for the money!

[Chako]