K-01 WG

 Huh?

Time to upgrade my Pentax K-01 mirrorless DSLR. With a custom made wood grip. WG!

The Pentax K-01 is a very good, if quirky camera. With horrible ergonomics due to Pentax's unfortunate decision to let it be designed by a 'famous' industrial designer. It feels and handles like holding a brick. I planned to do something about the clunky design for some time, and I finally did.

The basic body. This is the ugly duckling. How to make it a swan...

My initial idea was to stick on a rubber grip extension on the front, along with a smaller one on the back. Bought some stick on grips. But never put them on. They'd both need a lot of cutting and trimming. While it would probably work, I kinda shelved the idea for a while.

Just recently got back to it. But, using wood! Much easier to work with. So using some high grade plywood for a base, a piece of a large dowel for the front grip and a piece of scrap wood for the side. Along with some small screws and some Gorilla glue. And a lot of sanding and rounding off of corners. Finished with some walnut stain and matte urethane. I think it ended up great!

The small bolt in the bottom screws into the tripod socket to hold it on. Cut a slot in the bolt head with a Dremel so it could be tightened and removed with a coin.

The finished product! I now have a considerably larger front grip to hold on to. Plus a place on the back to rest my thumb against. This is a pretty good result, for making it out of scraps. The only thing I left out was a hole in the grip. In the first photo you can see the small red IR receiver port. For the handheld remote shutter. I could have drilled a hole in the wood but I didn't. The remote would mostly be used if the camera was on a tripod. And the wood grip has to come off to do that.

It feels pretty good, and is MUCH easier to hold. The wood is slightly slipperier than the rubber-like body of the camera, but overall a great improvement. The wood finish will wear over time, but that's just to be expected.

If Pentax made this camera body with a larger front grip and a back thumb grip, it might have been a much more successful camera for them than it turned out to be. And they'd still be making a mirrorless camera. Which is one of the hot markets for cameras these days.

A flip/swivel back screen (a personal preference of mine) and a more professional, less Playskool finish to the controls wouldn't have hurt at all either!