Pentax LX

I know it sound kinda odd asking about a film SLR while everyone is talking about the K-1...but yes I am thinking about getting a LX.

 

It has everything I wanted with a SLR. Weather sealed, changeable viewfinder, accurate meter, all in a small package.

However I just heard that the LX circuit board is prone to aging and would likely to die in thirty years(which is about now) and is very hard

to find parts as Pentax have changed the design of the LX several times.

 

Does anyone has experience with this camera and would you recommend to go ahead?

 

A big thanks in advance!

<p>Yes<br>

No<br>

I bought mine used (press) in 86 or 87. I believe I had surely 2 maybe 3 repairs of the electronics section - suddenly draining batteries rapidly / no longer working in auto mode by Pentax Hamburg without lasting success. <br>

Weather sealing: If you need some, buy a Nikonos! - Pentax lenses weren't sealed and either your gear is able to really stand riding through thunderstorms the police's water cannons or marching through the rain day in day out or why bother about sealing at all if you can just risk another consumer body in the pizza price range? <br>

The interchangeable finders... I have the sports one too but the screen image is so ultra squinty just good to frame zone focusing. (But yes, you'll see the entire frame through a closed crash helmet.) For manual focusing success I'd appreciate more magnification. <br>

Powering the motordrive is a challenge. The original NiCd pack contains tiny oddball cells and the charger is of the cruel nature <br />and the 12 AA case makes the tiny Pentax way too bulky. I also had issues with the rear shutter button getting triggered by accident when I had motor on camera off and was carrying it hanging from my shoulder. <br>

With working electronics it is a really desirable camera no fuzzing with ocular caps, autoexposed night scenes and fireworks...<br>

Without it is probably just the inferior F2 clone. <br>

IDK who is still repairing LX electronics. - An ordinary mechanical camera and a Gossen meter might be the safer bet in the long run.</p>

<p>I have an LX I haven't used much. As you've probably heard before, it really does 'feel' like a step up from most other Pentax film cameras. (I'd say the same thing about the 645N, they just feel better put-together, more attention to detail, etc. I have no experience with P67 but would be surprised if it doesn't share that professional-duty build level.). It is a nice size and ticks a lot of feature boxes, especially in comparison to most other Pentax bodies.</p>

<p>I don't know about a hard expiration date. I think one thing that has kept me from enjoying my LX it as much as I should is the nagging feeling that while it is functional it probably could be that much better if I had it CLA'ed. (Most notably, the mirror lockup isn't quite right on my example) Unfortunately service is rather pricey and I have a lot of other quite like-able Pentax film bodies to choose from, so I haven't gotten around to it. So if you were to pursue this, I'd suggest going in with the attitude that a CLA (if not a real repair) might be warranted to get the most out of it, especially considering that the resources for repairs are not getting less scarce. Maybe look for an example that has had a recent CLA.</p>

<p>I don't want to discourage you though -- something like this can be an itch that you just have to scratch. And this isn't nearly as extravagant a commitment as one might make by going with Leica.</p>

<p>I used 4 of these for 10+ years of hard professional work and only had one repair--the frame counter on one body. I still have two of them and they still work perfectly, although I don't put much film through them any more. The LX is certainly my favorite Pentax 35 SLR, and possibly my favorite 35 SLR of all, although I don't have a lot of experience with pro model Nikons and Canons. The recommendation to add a CLA into the price is probably a good one, since this could be a 30+ year old camera if you get an older one.</p>

<p>Eric Hendrickson in the US does excellent LX repairs. Although there's things that apparently can't be fixed on well-worn ones. For instance, one of mine has somewhat irregular frame spacing, Eric can't help on that.<br>

There's not much in the way of LX parts that Eric can get from Ricoh/Pentax. I suspect he has more than enough LX parts cameras to repair electronics problems. But he certainly has the parts for fixing "sticky mirror syndrome," which is by far the most common failure.<br>

I replaced the batteries in my LX motor drive pack with sticks of 1/3AA NiMH ones. Originals were a bit fatter than that size, but these new cells have much more capacity than the originals.<br>

No, the LX not as rugged as a Nikon F-series. But it's a much finer camera to use. The viewfinder image is just amazingly good, bright, big, etc.</p>

<p>Well, Les has provided you with a great write-up on the LX and I concur with what he wrote. Just to add a bit, though. Chances are that any LX you buy these days, unless it's already been serviced to correct the problem, will be a victim of the sticky mirror return syndrome. This condition manifests itself in two separate areas, one inside the mirror box where you can reach it, and one inside the camera itself, where you can't.</p>

<p>My LX, which I bought for a great price because it needed this specific type of servicing, had both areas that were sticking, plus something had gotten tweaked in the mirror's alignment because the focusing scale was way off. Eric is "The Man" when it comes to Pentax service, but fortunately in the city where I live is a pro camera service place that's been around forever and that was able to do a CLA on my camera for considerably less than what Eric charges.</p>

<p>If you can find an LX that has been recently serviced, chances are its price will be higher than other LXes you see for sale, but chances are also good that, when you add in the cost of a CLA to these cheaper LXes (that are gonna need a CLA), you'll see the LX that has had the CLA is often the true bargain.</p>

<p>Bottom line -- the LX is an incredible camera and well worth being serviced so it'll provide 30 more years of reliable work.</p>

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.