So little known, in fact, that I had never heard of it myself, the day I walked into the Maidstone shop of Jessops looking for a quick replacement for my Voigtländer VSL1 which had developed a transport problem, during our summer holiday in Boulogne, France.

Apparently, this is a successor to the Program A and Super Program models. Exposure modes are manual, aperture priority and two program modes that work in combination with PK-A lenses. The exposure memory button is another very useful feature.

The camera has a central On/Off switch and the lightmeter is activated by lightly pressing the release button. When this button which is a simple contact in this model developed a problem and I ended up taking pictures when all I wanted was take a measurement, I had to find it was cheaper to buy a second-hand MEII winder than to have the button repaired. The picture shows this winder attached to the camera.

Further features are a 1/100 sec sync speed, a DoF preview lever, a +/-2 EV exposure compensation function, and the LC display showing shutter speeds, program settings, exposure compensation, and whether the camera has been armed.

The only real complaint I have about this camera concerns the measuring system which over-reacts heavily as soon as there is any sky visible in the viewfinder.

My Pentax glassware consists of the 2.8/28 mm, 1.4/50 mm, and the 3.5/150 mm primes as well as the 28 to 135 mm and 70 to 210 mm zoom lenses.

Shortly before the arrival of my Contarex, I was offered a second P50 body at a price I couldn't resist. Both havfe only seen occasional use, lately, mostly adapted to M42 lenses like the 2.8/180 mm Zeiss Jena Sonnar and the 5.6/500 mm Pentacon lens described on the Kiev 60 lenses page.