ivan_j._eberle1

Do you want a different look or a different style for how you work? Your desire for something reliably rugged + old style MF digital backs-- I'd say these are competing priorities and are mutually exclusive. Digital backs of more than a few years ago will be far, far less reliable than anything you're likely used to in 35mm DSLRs. Worsening matters, what may be most affordable today will have the least technical support going forward. There's been wholesale hari-kari in the MF world over the past decade, in no small measure because FF 35mm has become so good.

IIRC, with an insert installed, you've got to have film loaded in the P645N. You can't dry fire it without an flashing error code otherwise.

I used Pentax gear exclusively for 20 years before jumping ship, and have owned numerous Pentax LXs (one body owned from new that I beat the snot out of it for a dozen years before it required its first service). In its moment, the LX was a better build-quality camera body than anything Nikon then had new. The Pentax LX offered weather sealing when Nikon did not have any in its SLRs, and it was very, very compact and yet truly a pro system camera. However, it must be realized that moment we're talking about was 1980 and that's nearly 37 years ago! By 1990, the LX was eclipsed by several other cameras, and it never got any metering or feature upgrades, which was rather a pity. By 1992 I was using a PZ-1 for its spot metering in Hyper Manual mode, and getting consistently better exposures on color slide film than I ever got shooting the center-weighted LX (The PZ-1 is admittedly ugly as sin, but they're super reliable and vastly more modern and feature laden than the LX. I sold mine for under $50--still working perfectly-- several years back). The Pentax lenses that were spectacular in the day were the normal lenses that were quite commonplace, and notable other gems in more extreme focal lengths that often seemed as rare as hen's teeth. You will today pay silly money for the best of the Pentax exotics of that era, but so few come up on the market that it becomes a real waiting game. (The legendary SMC-A 200mm f/4 Macro? When it was yet "in production" in 1992, there were only 4 copies that had made it into the USA. I couldn't for the life of me get my hands on one.) I jumped ship to Nikon in 2005 while still shooting film because even the upper echelon EDIF lenses for Nikon are not so exotic that you can't find several examples to choose from on any given day. The F5 Nikon turned out to be a vastly better picture taking instrument for most things than was my PZ-1 or venerable old LX, except that with it's integral motordrive, the F5 was a beast. Spot-metering, Matrix and really great fill flash were features the LX never got upgraded to (As mentioned, my PZ-1 had them, but it was no LX). Yet for what it did best, e.g. rugged and ultra compact backpacker's camera, the LX truly once was and still might be somebody else's perfect gem. Me, I never really abandoned the LX gear and tried to keep it alive by buying replacement bodies. This proved somewhat frustrating. Like mine, most LX were so well loved and well used that they'll be well worn or worn out. Even pristine looking ones that are shelf queens develop issues over time. I learned to repair cameras myself through keeping my LXs alive. But eventually all LX bodies develop focus problems as the rubber mirror rest stops compress every 12 to 15 years and the focusing gets out of register. Calibrating this is not an easy DIY job. Most repair shops that don't specialize in Pentax LX will not touch them or get it right if they try to tackle it. These are very complex cameras as there was both an electronic side and a full mechanically-timed shutter from 1/75-1/2000. If you do decide to take the LX plunge anyway, the only person I know of who may still work on them is Eric, as noted above, though I've not used his services personally.

Reality today is that if you don't get out in front and specify one time publishing rights that do NOT include the web, and that your images are not to be used on the web edition for free, you are likely to discover too late that if your story does blow up big, it will be the result of everybody linking to the original story on the web, for which you got paid squat.