A few years ago, my brother bought me a book published in the early 1960s about photography with Pentax SLRs. Ever since, I’ve wanted a Pentax from the same era to display with it. It took me a while, but I finally found one: this Pentax H3.
I got this H3 for about 30 bucks from the used section at my local camera shop. I should do this more often: they offer a short warranty in case something’s wrong with the camera!
Known as the S3 everywhere but the United States upon its 1960 introduction, it was the fifth iteration of the original 1957 Asahi Pentax. It’s all metal, all mechanical, and offers no focusing or exposure help to you. This is 35mm SLR photography at its most elemental.
That 1957 Pentax is historically significant. 35mm SLRs have existed since the 1930s, but you’d hardly recognize the early ones. They usually had waist-level viewfinders that you peered down into. The pentaprism viewfinder wasn’t introduced on a production camera until 1949. The Asahi Optical Co. waded into the SLR waters in 1952 with the Asahiflex, which had a waist-level finder. But when they fitted a pentaprism viewfinder and a right-hand single-stroke film advance lever to it and called it the Pentax, they pretty much defined the 35mm SLR idiom.
The original Asahi Pentax still had a couple quirks, such as a front-mounted dial for slower shutter speeds. Asahi kept refining its Pentax cameras over the next few years to work out these quirks, issuing the Pentax S, Pentax K, and finally the Pentax S2 (H2 in the United States).
The S3/H3 differs from the S2/H2 primarily in its 1/1000 sec. top shutter speed; the S2/H2 went only to 1/500 sec. The S3/H3 offers a Fresnel focusing screen with a microprism spot in the center. Anything out of focus in the microprism shimmers; you twist the focusing ring until the shimmering stops, and then you’ve got good focus. The S3/H3 has a couple minor usage quirks: to open the camera back, don’t pull up on the rewind knob; instead, pull down the tab on the unhinged side. And turn the film counter dial clockwise to zero after loading the film — the S3/H3 counts up from there.
If you like Pentax SLRs, I’ve reviewed a bunch of ’em: the Spotmatic SP (here), the Spotmatic F (here), the ES II (here), the K1000 (here), the KM (here), and the ME (here). Or just check out all of my camera reviews here.
While I’m an enormous fan of onboard metering, shooting my bare-bones H3 was refreshing. My H3 came with no lens, so I screwed on a 55mm f/2 Super-Takumar lens I already owned. Pretty much any M42 screw-mount lens would do, actually. I loaded some Kodak Gold 200 and got to shooting. Typically, my first shots were around the house, just to get a basic feel for the camera. We’d gotten a little snow.
I took the H3 along when I took my son back to Purdue after Christmas break. I really wasn’t thinking: it was a few degrees below freezing, and old cameras usually don’t like the cold. The mirror stuck up after this shot. I got one more quick shot hoping the mirror would come down, and then it dawned on me I probably ought to put the H3 back into my warm car and then wait for more favorable temperatures before continuing.
We got those favorable temperatures in late January, to my surprise. Margaret and I took advantage of them to drive along the old Lafayette Road. Here’s Margaret looking lovely on the square in Lebanon.
Well north on the Lafayette Road we came upon this old diner, a 1950s Mountainview. It looks like it hasn’t served a customer in a while.
I put another roll through the Pentax H3, this time Agfa Vista 200, a couple years later in the autumn. This time I screwed on my 55mm f/1.8 SMC Takumar lens.
I tried a little up-close photography; this little ceramic owl sits on a table on my mom’s patio.
Except for stopping to meter, the H3 is lovely to use. The controls all feel good under use, but not quite to luxury levels. Even after nearly 60 years, mine still works like a jewel. And that SMC Takumar is a peach.
I stepped right out my back door to capture this beautiful sunset.
You can see my entire Pentax H3 gallery here.
The H3 felt right in my hands. I’m sure it’s because I have experience with this basic body, which my Spotmatic SP and my ES II share. And I didn’t even mind too much having to use an external light meter or guess exposure. I was sure, actually, that I’d bollixed the exposure on a handful of shots where I absentmindedly metered at ISO 400, but the consumer-grade films I used accommodated my mistakes just fine.
I bought this camera because I wanted to display it, but it turns out to be a great user. Win!
If you like old film cameras, check out all of my reviews here!
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