When i started analog photography I litterally just went to the camera shop and picked out the camera that looked the sexiest for my price bracket. I mean I could have picked the hasselblad 500c but that's not my price bracket even today, so I picked the next best thing which was a Pentax p30t.
Had I done my research i'd have found out that it'd been an excellent choice for learning photography, with aperture priority easing me into the tech of catching photons. It helps that pentax lenses are cheap and plentiful, friend had a f1.4 (of which I quickly learned that the 1.4 was a marketing gimmick, oh how times have never changed). But after a bit of scouting I came across one of my favourite lenses for available light, a modern macro lens with a vintage tint is how I'd describe the 50mm f2.8 macro. It was sold by a shop that just thought it was some cheap slow lens, not realising it is the sharpest lens pentax makes; and anyways even if it was shit i could repurpose it very well if i ever wanted to get into DSLR scanning (hint hint).
Ergonomically the p30t is most excellent, fitting perfectly in my pocket with just the right amount of thumbgrib. The viewfinder is good with a split-prism, and even in manual mode the camera not only displays the selected but also the "wanted" shutter speed (take that, minolta CLE!) making it good for upgrading to manual exposure too. Oh and exposure lock (which I occasionally use) and depth of field preview (do youtubers never do macro shots to never have used that?).
But what stopped me using it was it occasionally underexposing a whole bunch of photo's in a row with no rhyme or reason. And as soon as the problem came it'd went away, but it was always annoying; and i did not notice at first as I mostly shot kentmere APX 400 developped in rodinal, so it'd be a while before I noticed. But for colour it was hopeless.
Anyways it was not the perfect camera but it was quite superb. It's still the camera that carried me through several cons, and i'm glad for it.
