This may be a weird question here, or it may be more common than I thought, but here goes...
In 5th grade, my science teacher had a darkroom and for those of us interested, we could borrow a 35mm SLR camera overnight and get all the free Tri-X (rolled off a big reel) and paper we wanted, developed and printed ourselves.It was a great intro to photography for me and now in the days of ebay I have found myself interested in getting one of those cameras again to re-live that part of my childhood.
The problem is, I don't remember what camera that was. Until recently I would have said it was a Pentax K1000, but too much of its details do not match what I seem to remember. I've googled and googled and not found anything that quite fits, so I'm hoping someone here recognizes some of the more significant details that seem likely to me to be accurately remembered.
First of all this would have been somewhere between 1977 and 1979, in the US (though it could have been an overseas model the teacher brought back). I wouldn't expect to loan 5th graders a particularly expensive or new camera.
It was the classic silver and black design. Manual only, with a match-needle exposure meter. I seem to remember the needles being on the left (though this is a point I could be mis-remembering) of the viewfinder, with one straight (reflecting the light meter, that would move as the light changed) and one with a circle on the end (that would move as you adjusted the aperture). There were no numeric labels or LEDs in the viewfinder.
I remember it had a metal shutter (I was worried I'd messed it up at one point). And that's about it for details.
If anyone has any recollection of those specific features I'd appreciate some pointers - I can go look up manuals and see how familiar things look.