A story that some of you may find interesting: I've been taking occasional pictures for a long time but photography as a hobby was pretty much dormant since the mid 1970s. I was shooting about 12 rolls of film a year and most of those were pictures of my son when he was little. I was using an old screw mount Practica match needle until I bought a Vivitar AE bayonet mount at a yard sale and started using that. In 1999, we took a motorcycle trip from NJ to the Badlands to Yellowstone when the Vivitar shutter jammed at Yellowstone Falls. I guess the vibrations from the motorcycle did it in. I tried to fix it including new batteries etc but alas the poor thing was beyond resuscitation. We were headed to Glacier NP then Banff and Jasper and I HAD to have a camera. While we were riding north through Helena MT, I saw a pawn shop on the right side of the road. My friend had to get some repairs done to his bike at the Helena dealer and I rode back to the pawn shop while we were waiting to see if they had any bargain cameras I could use. I found a K-1000 there with a camera bag, a 1.7 M 50mm lens, a generic 135mm lens and an old 80-200 zoom lens. I bought the camera, the lenses and the bag for $140! The old warhorse K-1000 took such unbelievably good pictures for the rest of the trip that my dormant photography passion came to life and I became a big fan of Pentax gear. I've been adding to my collection of things Pentaxian ever since.
Tom Reese Margo Ellen Gesser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: "Hi Pentaxians, I am about to ask all of you a big question: Why ARE we using Pentax gear instead of other brands? My answer is simple: I started with a K1000 and when I was able to upgrade I wanted to keep my lenses so I bought the MZ-3. I also worked in a camera store that has now closed (sob) where all our new cameras were Pentax or Canon, so I became saturated with all things Pentax. Margo"
