Pentax K2

From Camerapedia.org

The Pentax K2 was the flagship camera model introduced with the dawn of the bayonet mount cameras from Pentax in 1975. It featured a fully coupled light metering system, which, if you enabled it by setting the shutter speed dial to 'Automatic' would select a shutter speed from 1/1000th to 8 seconds. [auto exposure (aperture priority)] The user would normally select an F-stop depending the lighting conditions that would produce a 'reasaonable' shutter speed, and from there only needed to push the shutter release to take a photo. Metering was done 'wide open' which was a big deal at the time, as most of the prior generation screwmounts required the lens to be stopped down for metering. The driving reason for the new K-mount was to allow wide open metering.

Other features of note on the K2 include a mirror lockup, and the fact that the camera besides being electronic was also fully mechanical. If you took the shutter off of automatic you could even remove the batteries, and except for the light meter, the camera was fully functional except for shutter speeds longer than 1 second. Though its production run was fairly short it set the stage for fine Pentax products to follow.

Forgettable features included slip rings behind the lense for setting the ISO or ASA as it was called then, and exposure bias. Their frustration was that they were particularly hard to set.

K2 Feature:

Self-timer (5 to 9 sec.)

Depth-of-field preview

Auto exposure (aperture priority)

Exposure compensation (4x, 2x, 1x, 1/2x, 1/4x)

Shutter speeds down to 8 seconds, flash sync at 125th/sec

Manual Mechanical shutter: 1/125, 1/1000 sec and B

Pentax K mount SLR Cameras
K2 | KX | KM | K1000 | MX | ME | ME Super | ME-F | MV | MV1 | MG | LX | Super-A | Program-A | A3 | P30 | P50