Pentax H3

The 1960 Pentax H3 is a camera you’d recognize as a 35mm SLR. That may sound obvious. But 35mm SLRs had existed since the 1930s and you’d hardly recognize the early ones. It wasn’t until the Asahi Optical Co. fitted a pentaprism viewfinder and a right-hand film advance lever to an SLR in 1957 and called it the Pentax that the modern SLR idiom started to form. Asahi kept refining the design through successive Pentax models. The H3’s predecessor, the H2, had fully formed the idiom. The H3 adds only a faster top shutter speed. First impressions Known as the S3 everywhere but in the United States, the H3 is all metal, all mechanical, and all manual. There isn’t a light meter on board to help you. This is 35mm SLR photography at its most elemental. In the hand, the H3 feels solid and purposeful. It bears the weight of all-metal construction, but it’s not overly heavy. There isn’t even an accessory shoe to mount a flash on the H3. But you’ll find X and FP flash terminals on the front —…