Which would you buy?

[crackers_.]

Ed, what the hell goes on in a 'Lubritorium' ?

[edhebert]

...that's what I wanted to know. It must be an Oldsmobile thing.<div></div>

[bob fowler]

Knowing what I know now... I'd have bought a 2X3 Pacemaker Crown Graphic and a shitload of 6X9 roll film backs. Well, at least 3 or 4 anyway.

[connealy]

Hey Dan,

<br>I don't actually have an argument with what you are saying about the Leica and how nice it would have been to get one cheap in the '60s. My interpretation of the original question was what kind of camera would have been the best choice for a fellow in his formative years during that period.<br>   

When I got restarted with old cameras a couple years ago, I spent quite a while taking pictures only with box cameras including the Jem Jr. and the Hawkeye Flash. I think I learned a lot from the experience and probably would be a better photographer today had I undergone a similar course of study in my twenties. I posted some of those simple camera pictures in my "<a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=229971">Out of the Box</a>" folder and think several are as good as anything I have done.<br>    

Perhaps more to the point I was trying to make in the previous post, I think one of the attractive things about many of the simple old cameras people are so attached to here is their great price/performance ratio.

<br>   

Moving on to actual disagreement, I don't think of leaf shutters and fixed lenses as a liability -- would certainly prefer both when doing close-up street shooting to any whizbang (literally!) focal plane and a bag of lenses. Of course, I admit that is not that far off from your point about the right tool for the job.

[dan_fromm1]

Mike C. wrote "My interpretation of the original question was what kind of camera would have been the best choice for a fellow in his formative years during that period."

 

And mine was, what I should have had if I'd had one. Wasn't photographing then, so its moot. My little brother was, and he had a heap of Leicas and lenses for them. They cost him very little and did the job.

 

Re your interpretation, I've always thought that beginners need the good stuff more than old hands. I used to play cello. Long sad story about why I don't now. Anyway, beginning string players' biggest problem is learning how to make an instrument speak. So naturally we start them out on student instruments that only someone reasonably good can coax a sound out of.

 

And actually I don't regard leaf shutters as an unmitigated curse. German SLRs with leaf shutters seem that way, but lenses in shutter can be very very useful. Little shutters sync flash at 1/400 or 1/500, very useful for out-of-doors macro work with flash. Press shutters allow multiple pops with no risk of shifting the camera. OTOH, my Speed's focal plane shutter is on speed at 1/1000 and is very useful with long lenses and lenses in barrel. Both types of shutter have a place, it comes down to appropriate tools again. But I just don't appreciate, e.g., Retina Reflexes and SLR Contaflexes. Brrrrr!

 

Cheers,

 

Dan

[robert_byrd1]

I'm surprised at the numerous references to the Pentax Spotmatic. That must have been a gem.

[bob fowler]

The Pentax Spotmatic, in all its many incarnations, was the cats ass in its day. In fact, it's STILL the cats ass for manual, screw mount bodies. The Spotmatic F was my personal favorite of the series. The K-1000 was the logical extension of the Spotmatic series into the K mount.

[jsbc]

I mean Contarex could be interesting, but a Spotamic is a run-of-the-mill SLR.

 

Please make no mistake, I am not criticising other people choices. I am very attached to my FM (which does not belong to this forum) even because it was my first camera, though it is really quite a pedestrian design.

 

So I wonder - when people nominate their choices, how much is it really motivated by sentimental value, and how much is ti by the function and quality, and how much is it by the elegance of design or aesthetic concerns?

[lex_jenkins]

The popularity of the Spotmatics was in their functional elegance and simplicity. They offered everything the typical serious amateur and many pros needed and nothing more.

 

They were also restrained in design, size and weight compared with the other serious cameras of the day. Compared with a Nikon F or Topcon the Pentax lines were rounded and sleek. No bulky prisms. The Spotmatic was a study in minimalism.

 

This aesthetic was carried over to the lenses. The slim, anodized black aluminum focus rings were jewels. Others did it but never as well. And rubber grip rings? Forget it. Functional, sure, but elegant? No. Even Zuikos for the OM system, which seemed to pick up where the Spotmatic left off, didn't quite match the elegance of the early Takumars - rubber focus rings...sigh...shoulda been anodized aluminum.

 

The lenses always seemed to be only as large as necessary and no more. Nikkors seemed more like an artist's rendering of what Jules Verne might have imagined an SLR lens would look like: A little too wide here, a little too much chrome there. The heft and bulk are impressive. Pentax simply chose another design aesthetic.

 

Users demanded more flexibility and some of that elegant simplicity was compromised. As with the OM-1, the add-on accessory shoe for the Pentax was an ugly atrocity.

 

As users hankered for additional lenses the screw mount seemed inconvenient compared with the bayonet. I recall earlier pros carrying two or more Spotmatic bodies, each with a different lens, but amateurs preferred one body and two or more lenses.

 

And threaded a 300mm or larger Takumar onto the body require a balletic exercise in strength and agility. The correct way to mount a threaded lens is to reverse it 'til it slips into the starting thread, then reverse directions. Not easy with a big, heavy lens and wet, frozen or gloved hands.

 

The appeal of the Spotmatic, as with most older cameras, is pretty much the same as the appeal of the Leica. At a fraction of the price. And without the hallucinogenic properties of Leica vulcanite and leatherette.

 

In my case, it's mostly nostalgia. It was the first SLR I handled and used. Durned fool that I was, I turned around a bought a Miranda. But that's another tale.

[jsbc]

Thanks Lex. Your enthusiasm for the old Pentax's is really apparent.

 

Somehow, the Pentax SMC coating is impressive (I have not seen any Pentax lenses which are very flare-proned) but never quite attain the panache of T*.

[douglas_green1]

I'd have bought what I DID buy: A Konica Auto S2 Rangefinder, and a Yashica Mat TLR.

[h._p.]

Lex is, as usual, irritatingly complete and correct :-)

 

The Spotmatic and it's immediate predecessor the SV (HV in the US, I believe) were the high points of Asahi's designs. They were absolute jewels and the lenses were excellent both optically and mechanically. The only problem was that you were limited to the built in focussing screen. If it worked for you, then you were in clover; if not, you had problems. I'm afraid I had problems.

 

That's why I swapped in my Spotmatic for a rather battered Nikon F which was bigger, heavier, noisier and uglier but it had a plain focussing screen which worked with my eyes. I've got a few shots from my short fling with the Pentax but nothing like as many (or, I'd say, as good) as I got from that Battered Nikon.

[dan_fromm1]

Not to offend the Spotmatic's many partisans, but it didn't, the name notwithstanding, have spot or even center-weighted metering. Average everything, its motto. And it wasn't particularly automatic or even fast-working, thanks to its infernal stop-down TTL metering. The contemporary Nikkormat, from the FTn on, was a much faster-working camera and had full aperture metering.

 

The Spotmatic was indeed the most popular SLR among GIs in Germany in 1970 when I was there as one. It was about the least expensive SLR in the PX and all the PXs had 'em, so it was very easy to get.

 

Against that, many of the guys I went out photographing with who had one complained bitterly about shutter jams. I don't know what trick was involved in getting one to freeze up, but many of the guys were good at it.

 

Canon FTbs, Minolta SRT 101s, Nikkormats (my camera), and especially Konica ARs were much better cameras. And yes, they were all larger, especially the Konicas.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan

[lex_jenkins]

Lies? Dunno, I thought everybody already knew the Spotmatic didn't have spotmetering. It was considered during the prototype phase but the idea was discarded as being unsuitable for average users. Funny, since the stop-down metering, as Dan noted, slows things down. Pentax might as well have kept the spot option and forced users to get smarter and more selective about metering. Worked for Mamiya 35mm SLRs.

 

Anyway, nostalgia aside, I've never owned a Spotmatic. The pro who mentored me when I was an endlessly inquisitive kid let me use his. Later my best chum bought one while I opted for a Miranda Sensorex. I think he made the better decision.

 

Nowadays I use Nikon and OM gear. Nostalgia has its limits.

 

Except where folders are concerned.

[dan_fromm2]

Lex Jenkins, a refugee from Compuserve, remarked, after editing, "Later my best chum bought one while I opted for a Miranda Sensorex. I think he made the better decision.

 

... Nostalgia has its limits.

 

Except where folders are concerned."

 

Re the Miranda, second the motion. One of my friends was in Viet Nam in '67, saw that Consumer Reports rated the Sensorex highly, bought two of them. They turned out to be very troublesome, I once saw both of his cameras crap out the same day. He was considerably frustrated. Eventually switched to Nikon, and instantly started missing his Miranda Macron. It was one of the few ~50 mm macro lenses that went to 1:1 on its own mount.

 

As for folders, second that motion too, with reservations. On the one hand, Graphics are folders and provide a good grade of cheap thrills. On the other, my pretty Selfix 820 what fits in a large pocket will be a paperweight until I get its lens collimated to the body and my Ventura 66's Solinar has terminal internal coating damage. Buying old folders sight unseen is risky.

 

Cheers,

 

Dan

[dougmiles]

Nice nostalgic thread! My first good camera was a Pentax H3 I got used in 1964 while still in the service in So. Dakota. I was working part-time in the camera shop downtown, so had the opportunity to try lots of stuff. A year later I managed to scrape together the cost of a new Spotmatic, and that served me well for quite a while.

 

But I had been exposed to Leica and Nikon rangefinders at the store, so later on (1967) in Seattle I got a used M2 body (button rewind) for $150 and a new 35mm Summicron for $164. I still use that M2 & lens. There's a classic!