C41
Kodak Portra 400
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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slr-35mm
The K1000 is deliberately spartan: match-needle metering, manual everything, no self-timer (on later versions), no exposure modes, no depth-of-field preview on the base model. That austerity, plus a price that undercut every Japanese rival, made it the default photo-school camera from the late 70s through the 90s. Roughly three million were sold, which is why every used-camera shelf has at least one.
Reference
Recommended film stocks for the 35mm format your camera takes.
C41
Kodak Portra 400 is a professional C-41 color negative film known for flexible exposure latitude, natural skin tones, and fine grain.
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Kodak Tri-X 400 is a classic black-and-white film known for strong tonality, visible grain, and documentary character.
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Kodak Gold 200 is a daylight-balanced C-41 color negative film with warm color, moderate grain, and a classic consumer-film look.
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Before you buy used
About this camera
The school camera. A no-frills mechanical SLR sold for two decades, a fixture in every photo classroom that ever bought equipment.
| Field | Value |
|---|
| Format | 35mm |
| Mount | Pentax K (PK / KA) |
| Years | 1976–1997 |
| Shutter | 1s – 1/1000s, mechanical horizontal cloth |
| Flash sync | 1/60s |
| Meter | Center-weighted, CdS |
| Weight | 620 g |
| Battery | 1× LR44 (meter only) |
Launched in 1976 alongside the more sophisticated KX, KM and ME. Production moved from Japan to Hong Kong (1978) to China (1990) over its life, with corresponding changes in build quality — early Japanese-made K1000s are noticeably more refined than late Chinese-made ones. A "K1000 SE" trim added a brown leatherette and a split-prism focusing screen.
The K1000 anchored film-photography pedagogy for a generation. Schools bought them in pallets because the mechanical shutter meant students couldn't break them with a dead battery, and the lack of automation forced them to learn the exposure triangle. When film returned in the 2010s, the K1000's reputation as the "right" learning camera was already cemented in textbooks.
Pentax K mount. The kit lens was the SMC Pentax-M 50/2 — perfectly sharp, cheap. SMC Pentax-M 28/2.8, 50/1.7, 135/3.5 are all good companions. K-mount lenses (PK, KA, KAF, KAF2) all mount, though only manual-focus K and KA meter properly on the K1000.
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Ilford HP5 Plus is a flexible ISO 400 black-and-white film with classic grain and strong push-processing tolerance.
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Kodak Ektar 100 is a fine-grain C-41 color negative film with saturated color and high sharpness.
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