The Joys of Simplicity with the Pentax MV
Personally, my background is heavily steeped in all-manual cameras. I first purchased a Nikon FM2. That was later joined by a Pentax 67 and a Hasselblad 500C. I have spent so much of my photographic life setting all my exposure settings manually. I am comfortable working this way. But the side effect is perhaps a little unconscious bias against cameras without all manual modes, such as the Pentax MV. But these cameras have something going for them. Recently I was casting about the shop looking for a 35mm I could take out to shoot a test roll of Harman Red with. I wanted something easy and simple and fast. I wanted to think more about the photos I was looking for than the camera settings. So I grabbed a Pentax MV. This camera, with its limitation of only shooting in Aperture Priority, is only one step removed from a "point and shoot" camera. But point and shoot was more or less what I wanted.
It is also good to consider that the "technicals" are not for all photographers. Sure, for some setting your shutter and aperture manually are easy and preferable. But for others, having to think about such settings is an obstacle to what they really want to be thinking about which is the creative aspect of photography that happens in front of the camera.
There are of course other benefits to simpler cameras like the Pentax MV, but I wanted to share these recent experiences with this post.
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