Asahi Pentax

It’s very fitting that my favorite beer available in China is Asahi, a Japanese beer.  A late-comer to acquiring a taste for beer, I have learned to love the beverage, and I especially love Asahi.  So, when I bought an old second-hand camera a while back, I was happy to find one called an Asahi Pentax.

The camera I found in the second-hand electronics market here in Guangzhou was an amazing find.  A few vendors have stalls filled with nothing but old cameras…everything from Polaroids to functioning old Seagulls and more.  A friend of mine has a few old cameras and got me interested in the hobby.  Having taken my fair share of photographs in high school in yearbook class, I quickly remembered a latent love of capturing the unique, the interesting, the bizarre.

My Pentax has a very nice lens, made who knows when.  It seems older than the body, which is the original Spotmatic model (which Wikipedia says dates back to 1964).  It takes regular 35-mm film, and I’ve had 4 rolls developed so far (with more on the way).  I’m not posting any of them on this site because it’s too slow and cumbersome, but below is a link to my Photobucket site with an album containing the best of the first four rolls.  I’m still learning a lot about aperature, ISO, and shutter speed.  I have no ability to zoom or flash, but using natural lighting and the ability to focus crisply on objects in the foreground or background, I’ve been able to play around and take a few photos that show the side of Guangzhou I find most appealing.

Here’s a stock photo from the web of my camera.  I don’t have the same lens; I think mine’s much newer model.