Pentax MZ-M (ZX-M)

Put it next to a Nikon FM10 and the Pentax MZ-M has the better claim to its own badge. The FM10 was a Cosina build that wore Nikon's name. The MZ-M was real Pentax, the manual-focus member pulled out of the autofocus MZ line of the late nineties so that schools and beginners could buy a body that kept exposure in your hands. It arrived when most of the catalog had gone fully electronic, and it gave photography classes a body where students still had to think about shutter speed and aperture themselves.

So this is a manual-focus SLR with a focal-plane shutter running from a long 30 seconds down to about 1/2000, flash sync at 1/100. The exposure modes hang off a green "A" position on both the shutter dial and the lens aperture ring: leave both on A and the body runs program, leave the aperture on A and it works shutter-priority, leave the shutter on A and it works aperture-priority, and turn both off A and you are in metered manual. No autofocus. The point of buying this one is that you set the aperture, you focus, and you dial the shutter yourself, even though the body will pick the aperture or run fully automatic if you let it. The finder is bright enough, with a split-image and microprism collar in the center so you snap focus the old way. The meter is an averaging one, shown as a plain plus/zero/minus in the viewfinder. It reads the middle of the frame and reports the middle of the frame, so a bright sky or a dark backdrop pulls it around the way any averaging meter does.

The build is where the price shows. This is a polycarbonate body from the cheap end of the MZ family, light in the hand and a little hollow next to an all-metal Spotmatic or an FM2. The shutter and meter both run off two CR2 lithium cells, and there is no mechanical backup speed, so a flat battery is a stopped camera. Carry a spare and you will never notice; forget one and the body is a paperweight until you do.

What you get for living with the plastic is the entire K mount. Pentax glass going back decades will mount and meter on this body, from the SMC primes people still pay for to the cheap zooms left over from the autofocus era. That is the real argument for the MZ-M over a rebadged Cosina. You are buying into a deep, affordable lens system, and the body is the cheapest ticket into it.

Today it lives on the entry shelf. It is the camera you hand a teenager who wants to learn exposure by hand, and it costs almost nothing because nobody collects it. People cross-shop it against the FM10, the Canon AE-1, and Pentax's own K1000, and the usual line you hear is that the K1000 wins on nostalgia while the MZ-M wins on working with newer Pentax glass. Take that for what it is worth. When you are in a high-contrast scene and the meter wants to average a bright sky into mud, pull an incident or spot reading from the Zone Light Meter app, place your shadows where you actually want them, and set the dials by hand. The body does not argue, which is most of the reason to choose the manual one.