fujica st701

I've found a fujica st701 with fuji 50/1.4 lens on sale. How good is

it? What is the appropriate price?how well does the meter work on

modern batteries? How good the lens is?

 

Thanks

This should give you some idea of what they've been going for lately (not much!):

 

http://tinyurl.com/btthf

 

Back in 1978 when I got my first SLR (at age 15) I drooled over the Nikon FM2 and Olympus OM1 (way out of my price range) and debated between a Fujica outfit or a Pentax K1000. Got the Pentax in the end. But the Fujicas were fairly well regarding (in their tier). As long as it's working well and you can get it for around $30 or so I'd say grab it.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Fujica-ST701-Fujinon-1-8-55-innesto-M42_W0QQitemZ7564242862QQcategoryZ15241QQssPageNameZWD4VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Similar to the mamiya DTL1000, but the Fujica has a higher top shutter speed of 1500th. I prefer the Mamiya and other screwmount bodies personally. As said above it will be a good buy anyway, but I'd rather go for a camera with more lenses thrown in to the deal, saving on postage. There are planty of Mamiya cameras with M42 mount and a heap of very good lenses and accessories.

 

http://search.ebay.com/Mamiya_35mm-SLR_W0QQfrppZ100QQfsopZ1QQsacatZ15303

it's top shutter speed is 1/1000 not 1/1500.I think you think of a different camera or model.

My first ever SLR was a secondhand Fujica ST705 which served me very well until I traded it,in Part-Ex for a Nikon FM.The standard lenses were(are) very well regarded but Fujinon glass is quite hard to come by now. Of course any M42 will fit but I have a recollection that the Fujinon lenses carried an extra pin for open aperture metering. I could be wrong here though.

I purchased a ST701 when they were new, mine was the early one, metal selftimer lever, no hot shoe. My reasons at that time were price, less than a Pentax Spotmatic, and a brighter focusing screen than the pentax. The camera proved rugged enough however there were some problems with it. It came new out of the box with the mirror angle set wrong, this was adjusted with a small screw in the mirror box that the bottom of the mirror rested on and was set too high. This meant that screen focus did not agree with film plane focus. DOF covered up this descrepancy with wide to normal lenses but it showed up when I purchased a 200mm lens. I was able to correct this myself and after adjusting the screw relocked its position with a dab of clear nail polish. Later when shooting with the camera the advance locked up. This failure was traced to a subassembly attachment screw that hab woorked loose and jammed a cross linkage. Again this was user repairable as it was right under the bottom cover and involved fishing out the screw and putting it back, again, a dab of nail polish was used to lock down this screw. This was a very early model and it looked like Fujica had not worked out all final assembly checks. On the plus side the camera handled well and was very easy to focus. I never used the f1.4 lens but the 55mm f1.8 had good contrast and could render very fine detail. The meter seemed to be faster to settle than the Spotmatic. Really, I miss that camera......

I have 2 Fujica ST models, one is an ST705 and the other an ST901. My total investment in both cameras is around $45.00 and both are working and in good condition. The ST705 spends most of its time being used to compare light meter readings with cameras whose readings are in question. (I found the light meter to be very accurate on this unit after shooting some film through it in very bright light) The ST901 was liberated from a pawn shop about 2 weeks ago and is actually in use today after getting a good cleaning. Both cameras are your typical Japanese SLR, good quality overall, but a bit on the noisy side and control movements not on the level of let's say an F2 Nikon. The lenses use a grease that's semi-solid which sure means that you won't have any focus creep. I like them because they're beaters, take a lickin and keep on tickin. The early generation flickering LED readout on the 901 is very, very cool, and there's also a display on the L/H side in the viewfinder giving information on under/over settings. The viewfinder also has an internal shutter that allows you to close it to prevent stray light from entering the camera. Very nice. The ST901 is quite a bit larger and heavier than the 705 and in an emergency can always be used as a weapon to beat down the opposition.

As the 701 uses stop down metering the existence or not of the extra pin is irrelevant.

You could also use some of the very excellent Pentax Super Takumar and SMC Takumar lenses available at very reasonable prices.

The extra pin locks the lens into place.

I have a ST-605N which I bought for $19. The camera is a fine picture taker, but it is definitely a "consumer" grade body. What I mean by that is the Fujica is not as smooth and makes noises that are more clunky and "sproingy" in comparison to my other SLRs (which are a Nikon F2 and Olympus OM-2N). It works fine, it just doesn't feel or sound like precision equipment.

 

The ST701 is fine if you can get it really, really cheap. It will give you access to a huge range of M42 glass. But consider that nowadays, you could go up to a professional grade body for just a bit more (check out the prices on the 'bay for an OM-1 for example).

The ST701 was my first real SLR, I bought it new and used it all over Eurpoe for 20 years. It needed a few repairs (strap-lug fell off, take-up spool leaves broke, wind lever came off - all repaired by Fujica). They are very very good cameras, much better than Pentax Spotmatics. Very bright screen, silicon-cell metering, quiet shutter, stop-down metering. There were two versions: the first has chrome nameplate and no hotshoe, later model had hotshoe and engraved nameplate. Both types came in chrome and black versions. The 1.4 lens is uncommon, most came with 1.8. They use a mercury battery - the reason why I sold mine. The ST705 is a later derivation with full aperture metering and uses a current battery.<div></div>

I have one downstairs-my first camera, bought in 1975. I actually sold a few pictures with

it back then.

 

It went through a few family members and returned to me with a locked-up shutter-

maybe someday I'll fix it. Nice lens, pretty good camera, and the stop-down metering/DOF

preview is nice. Not worth much, though.

Use the older and the newer model of the ST701 different batteries? My is the newest (hotshoe, plastic selftimer, plastic film advance lever tip, etc.) and uses two V400PX batteries, the ones with a blue plastic collar.

On most sites where recalibration to 1,5 V cells is presented they talk about the older versions of this camera. As they never mention the biggest problem, getting batteries (alkaline, silveroxyde) of matching size I suspect the older model used a different type of battery.