K2

General Description

When introduced in 1975, the beautiful K2 was one of the first cameras having the K-mount, and it was the one Pentax K-mount camera offering automatic (aperture prioroty) exposure.

4 years before, the screw mount Asahi Pentax Electrospotmatic was the first SLR camera to automatically select the correct shutter speed in accordance with the priorily selected aperture value. This “Automatic” or aperture priority mode became the backbone of many Pentax SLRs. The next ones – still with screw mount – were the ES and the ES II. Apart from the “Automatic” mode, manual operation was possible, too, however these cameras had a rather limited range of manual shutter speeds (1s/60 … 1s/1000, and B). For the K2, the manually selectable shutter speeds range from 1s to 1s/1000 (and B).

The K2 was also the first Pentax offering exposure factors (¼×, ¼×, 1×, 2×, 4×) to deliberately under- oder overexpose, or to correct the automatically selected shutter speed in accordnace with the brightness of the subject or with the lighting conditions. The exposure factor can be selected with a ring or wheel that encircles the bayonet mount – a construction that is found on the K2 and K2 DMD, only.

Technical Specifications