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The Pentax Corporation is a renowned manufacturer of cameras and photographic equipment. Pentax derives its lineage from the Asahi Optical Joint Stock Company founded in 1919, which later came to be known as the Asahi Optical Company Ltd. The name Pentax Corporation was adopted only in 2002.

The Asahi Pentax camera (introduced in 1957) is widely recognised as one of the breakthrough SLR designs of the 20th century. The Asahi Pentax’s (AP) form and layout had a great influence over the next 30 years of SLR design. The AP was not necessarily technologically innovative, as most of the technologies present had already been developed. However, the AP for the first time brought together the best SLR technologies of the time, in one compact package. The modern camera design still retains many of the user-friendly features of that classic design.

Among these features are the instant mirror return, a hinged film back for easy loading and the rapid thumb-wind advance feature on the right of the camera. The Asahi optical lenses were called Takumar and quickly gained a high reputation. The next innovation came in 1960 when Asahi revealed the Spotmatic prototype. This camera took exposure measurements through the lens (TTL), using a spot-metre. The Spotmatic was introduced onto the market in 1964 and became an instant hit. In the 1970s Pentax discontinued the screw mount system for its lenses and adopted the bayonet mount later called the K mount (introduced in its K Series of cameras). The K1000 became the perennial camera of choice for photography students.

With the advent of digital cameras, Pentax introduced its first digital single-lens reflex camera series, the Pentax MZ-D, at Photokina in September 2000. In 2003, Pentax released the Pentax *ist D which uses a six megapixel CCD. This has been followed with the *ist DS and the *ist DS2 in 2006.

In May 2006 Pentax introduced the K Series. This started with the K100D, followed by the K10D, a low-priced ten megapixel weatherproofed model. The latest includes the K100D Super. January 2008 saw the introduction of the K20D with a 14.6 megapixel CMOS APS-C sized sensor.