Pentaxonomy: The Pentax ZX-7

It was with mild interest as I mused back upon my photographic past to realize that prior to my "digital hiatus" beginning in 2001, the camera maker from which I had shot the most different models of film cameras was in fact... PENTAX!

Among my earlier film camera experiences was shooting staff K-1000 cameras as a photographer at my college yearbook in 1991.  Later, when I became the editor of this yearbook, and enabled with some funds to replace the "K-Grands," I selected the P-30T model for offering an affordable choice with auto-exposure.  Years later, when I was a Bus Operator, I snapped up an IQ-Zoom 80 QD to carry with me as a means to occasionally document (on slide film!) the buses, routes, and settings I had the privilege of driving.

When I got back into film shooting however, Pentax had been conspicuously absent my "wants list." In each of my earlier examples of using a Pentax, the camera model was selected more for a pragmatic aspect of cost benefit in a pricey camera market than it was selected for the shooting experience.  The K-1000 simply was there already, and I didn't recall liking it much.  The P-30T performed fine, but always felt a bit cheap.  The IQ-Zoom was actually rather likable, and produced some decent results in favorable conditions, but seemed easily thrown by any varied lighting situation. Simply put, despite my interest in photography and sentimental ways, I was at a loss to conjure up nostalgia for shooting a Pentax.

You would at least think that given my exposure (pun intended) to the brand throughout the 1990's, I would at least be pretty well versed in "Pentaxonomy" but even this fails to ring true. Despite being a Popular Photography subscriber for most of the 1990's, I paid little in the way of attention to the Pentax brand, though much of this is due to the maker rarely getting much in the way of prominent attention at the time.  While Canon, Nikon, and Minolta stole the show with their many new releases, Pentax's line-up generally sat humbly in the backdrop.  There were some occasional feature stories on some of their more innovative releases, but most of the buzz tended to focus on the industry's "Big Three."

Or at least that's how I remembered it.  But then as I was digging through some online copies of Popular Photography from 1999, I spotted an advertisement that suddenly spurred a memory for me:

Suddenly, I could remember being the twenty-something "Quirky Geeky Guy with a Camera Magazine" seeing this very ad back when it first was featured.  I was totally enchanted by the idea of the light up dial featured on the ZX-7 at the time, but had not long beforehand picked up a Canon EOS Elan II-e, so this Pentax and its novel arrangement showed up just a hair too late for me to consider at the time.

But... here I was remembering this in a new era where the film cameras that cost several hundred dollars a decade and change ago could now be had for barely more than lunch money.  I stole off to ebay, found a nice looking ZX-7 for under $20 and pulled the trigger with little hesitation.

The Pentax ZX-7 has a fairly basic look that is hardly intimidating to the amateur photographer.

Admittedly, I was making a buying choice based on little more than a novelty feature, but it wasn't a huge investment.  Looking through what I could discover in documentation seemed to support that this Pentax could provide a new and welcome shooting experience for a person like myself who had been largely used to a much more manual experience.  I certainly looked forward to giving it a try.

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: The Konica Aiborg

May the Fourth be with you!

The glittering black camera sat on the nearby shelf, awaiting its first use by me.  A generous loaner from Mike Eckman, it awaited a roll of film for an initial trial. And as I glanced at it, the tag line above from the classic space trilogy kept ringing in my head.

Where does one buy an Aiborg?  In the Darth Maul (sic) of course! 

Normally, the benevolent gift of a loaner camera is one met with great excitement, but my excitement was tempered by a large dose of skepticism.  Not only had I read Mike's excellent review in which he candidly shared his frustrations with this camera, but as I took my initial glances at the form factor of this camera, I could only seem to feel confusion regarding its operation.

In a film camera world where we often lament the degree of sameness evident across different models from different makers, the Aiborg does stand out as truly unique, but it is this uniqueness that helps make it feel intimidating.  Add in the "Death Star" styling and dizzying array of buttons, and the result is a "point and shoot" camera that feels like a far more complex and challenging machine than most of its genre.

Swell Reflex Too: The Minolta SR-T 200

I'm the Quirky Guy with a Camera, and I approve this message:

"In the market for a Pentax K-1000? Do you actually want to use it as a film camera, and do you have no sentimental attachment that makes you specifically want this model?  Do you actually like saving money?  Would you like a camera with nearly identical capabilities to a K-1000 at a fraction of the price?  If so, I present your camera!"

I rarely editorialize in my posts.  I tend to simply lay out my personal observations specific to particular camera model or film, present these observations along with my results, and let you, the reader, make an informed choice from the information I present.  I don't typically get into the heartfelt and often irrational positions that Camera A is "better" than Camera B so you'd better not buy the latter.

But every now and again, I notice something really off about the film world at large to which I feel I need to add a sanity check, and this is very much one of them.

One of the most iconic of 35mm film cameras of the later decades of film's prominence was the Pentax K-1000, a fairly simple 35mm SLR camera offering metered manual shooting and little else in the way of bells and whistles.  For years, it was THE standard camera for photography students and school yearbook offices, largely because it was the cheapest manual control camera available at the time.  It is a ubiquitous piece of film history as classic as a Hershey Chocolate Bar.  And it's also quite overpriced in today's market.