The other day I received this really nice Ricoh KR-5 in the mail from Canada.
If you didn’t know, Ricoh owns Pentax, they bought all rights around 2011 (I find several dates so 2007, or 2008 are possible too). When Pentax released the Pentax K2 (I will own one one day!) with its “K-Mount” style lens mount (1/3rd twist to lock it on as apposed to the older M42 lens mounts that threaded on) several other camera manufacturers also jumped on the “K-Mount” bandwagon (From Sears, Ricoh, and Petri to Vivitar to the Russian Zenit brand cameras). To this day, Pentax still uses this same mount, so any lens from 1975 until now, can physically screw onto any Pentax K-mount camera (conditions apply).
I already have a decent 35mm film camera, but I only have one lens for it, and a vintage (because, 1978 is vintage) lens cost more than this $20 Ricoh ($25 with shipping). I have a few vintage lenses for my Pentax cameras, so I decided to stay with that and ordered this Ricoh (because the cheapest Pentax K2 I could find was $125 + $10 s&h).
I haven’t finished a roll through this KR-5 yet, but it feels so nice in the hand, the shutter sounds like magic, and so far everything just works smoothly. Even the electronic light meter (I’ll explain in a second).
The lens I’ve been playing with is a little newer than that but still solid classic glass (and makes the camera even heavier). I think I ordered the lens from KEH.com a couple years ago, maybe off Etsy (yes that Etsy). The Tokina AT-X 24-40 review is here.
Looking through the view finder with a cell phone isn’t magical what so ever.
Looking through the view finder with your eyeball is wonderful, trying to do it with a phone camera is junk :). BUT .. on the right of each image you see the bar with a circle on it and the other dial sticking out. The round one moves with the f/stop (f/2.4 – f/22) and the dial moves with shutter speed in relation to the light around the center of the view finder ( you can kind of see it when you zoom in). My old Nikkormat just has a bar that moves towards the + or towards the – no matter what you adjust.
Okay, time to get to work. Just a quick note to give the KR-5 some love.
