Asahi Pentax Right Angle Viewfinder, Type II
WHAT CONDITION THE CONDITION IS IN: 88-Day Confirmed Operation Warranty. Fully functional and well maintained, this item shows minimal wear. Optics show light dust typical for its age. Comes with original leather case. Keep scrolling for the full story, or skip ahead to the photo. We won’t judge. Much.
The Asahi Pentax Right Angle Finder (Type II) is one of those objects that makes you wonder why we ever stopped building things this way. This is a late-run Kouki-gata* model, identifiable by its conspicuous lack of an external serial number and an absence of brassing so complete it borders on the suspicious, as though this particular unit spent decades in a velvet drawer, waiting for someone worthy enough to deserve it.
Its 19mm rectangular mount was introduced during the Spotmatic era of 1964 and gloriously compatible with nearly every Pentax SLR built since. It's finished in an anodized alloy so pristine and unyielding that it makes the painted brass of earlier versions and the plastic of later successors feel like a polite joke.
Optically, it's committed to a kind of radical honesty: a silver-surfaced mirror delivering a bright, 1:1 life-size view that's vertically correct but laterally reversed, which is the finder's one charming eccentricity. Its 360-degree rotating barrel and silky diopter adjustment ring make low-angle and macro work feel less like a technical compromise and more like a deliberate choice.
What you're holding is an artifact from the era when Pentax built accessories with the same exacting, slightly stubborn pride they brought to their legendary camera bodies: a simple, honest tool that in all likelihood, will outlast everything else in your bag.
*Kouki-gata (後期型), or "late model," comes from 後 (kou, late), 期 (ki, period), and 型 (gata, model). It's the term collectors reach for when a manufacturer's marketing department couldn't be bothered with a new name, and consumers couldn't be bothered to notice.
