50 Years of K-Mount Photography
Cameras from 22 companies, with hundreds of brilliant lenses
Perfecting Equilibrium Volume Four, Issue 6
Popsicle toes
Popsicle toes are always froze
Popsicle toes
You're so brave to expose all those popsicle toes
You must have been Miss Pennsylvania
With all this pulchritude
How come you always load your Pentax
When I'm in the nude?
Editor’s Note: This story first ran on Pentax Forums
The Sunday Reader, June 1, 2025
June 1, 2025: Here’s the genius of the K-Mount system: I daily drive a K-3 III Monochrome, Pentax’s newest K-Mount dSLR, released in 2023. The lenses in my little daily carry bag are the 2016 HD DA 55-300mm F4.5-6.3 WR PLM telephoto zoom; the 2013 HD Pentax-DA 15mm F4 ED AL Limited; the 2004 D FA 50mm F2.8 Macro; the 1977 SMC Pentax-M 20mm F4, my all-time fav lens; and the SMC Pentax 50mm F1.2.
Released 50 years ago today.
The genius of the K-Mount system is that SMC Pentax 50mm works just as well today on the 21st Century Monochrome as it did for decades on my Pentax LX film cameras, or on the K2, KX and KM released with it June 1, 1975.
Actually, it works better on the Monochrome, with in-body stabilization and focus confirmation, which is oh-so-helpful wide open at F1.2.
Obviously K-Mount cameras and lenses are our bread and butter over on Pentax Forums. For example, here’s our deep dive into K-Mount technology and how it has changed over the decades.
The Evolution of the Pentax K-mount; Technical Information and a Little Bit of History
So we’re throwing a party all this month to celebrate 50 Years of K-Mount magic! We’re giving away one K2, one KM, and one KX!
OK, we can’t do that, since they’re not made anymore. But we can give away enough to buy them used! Or whatever the winners like, really. So here’s the deal: we're running a raffle from now until midnight, June 30, with a 1st prize of up to $200; a 2nd prize of up to $150; and a 3rd prize of up to $100 toward whatever the winner wants to get. That way, the winners can be in charge of placing their own orders if the desired item exceeds the prize value.
To enter, simply reply to one of the three raffle threads below. You get one raffle entry for each reply; each thread will accept up to 30 replies per user. The system will allow one entry in each of the threads for every 5 posts anywhere else on the forum during the giveaway period and you can enter once every 12 hours, which makes it possible for users to catch up if they didn't start on day 1. Once the contest ends June 30, we will draw the winner randomly based on the replies. Here are the raffle threads:
All you need is a Pentax Forums account. Don’t have one? Just sign up; they’re free! So get to commenting and replying, and best of luck to you!
The Universal Lens Mount that wasn’t, and then was anyway
The K-Mount grew out of a joint project to build a universal camera mount by frenemies Zeiss and Pentax. Zeiss pulled out of the project, but Pentax soldiered on. On June 1, 1975, Pentax launched three cameras and three lenses: The K2, KX and KM cameras; and the SMC Pentax 50mm F1.2, the SMC Pentax 28mm F2, and the SMC Pentax 28mm F3.5 Shift. At the swanky reveal party at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo Pentax also showed off 26 existing SMC lenses that were newly available in K-Mount.
Thanks to Pentaxian kindakaa for sharing this image of the Popular Photography Magazine article on the Pentax K-Mount launch
The K-Mount didn’t become the envisioned universal camera bayonet mount, but it also sort of did: 22 companies have made K-Mount cameras, from Albinar and the Agfa Selectronic Series to Topcon and Zenit. There are too many K-Mount lenses to list – there are simply hundreds of them.
And every single one of them works on your K-Mount dSLR.
And it works the other way, too. That means photographers with extensive K-Mount collections can mix and match film and digital cameras with lenses from every era.
And the sheer brilliance of all those lenses! From the legendary SMC Pentax 15mm F3.5 and SMC Pentax 28mm F2 designed in partnership with Zeiss, to the optical heights of the A* series such as the SMC Pentax-A* 135mm F1.8, to today’s Limiteds, K-Mount glass has rivaled the best available anywhere while maintaining reasonable prices.
Look for more coverage here at Pentax Forums as we celebrate 50 years of the K-Mount!