Pentax Spotmatic
Kodachrome - Hong Kong
Pentax Spotmatic 1962
History
This particular camera belonged to my late uncle Bill. He encouraged me to follow my interest in photography as a young boy and even lent this camera to me when I was about 14 years old which was just mind blowing for me at the time. The camera was left to me when he died along with a Pentax S3, his assorted Takumar lenses and a Gossen Lunar Pro light meter.
The Spotmatic is still in great working order after all these years and is a good, practical example to look for if you want a light weight, easy to use and well featured analog camera with great optics. The accompanying video will take you through the Spotmatic’s features, operation of controls and lenses and we will also look at a couple of accessories that might be of interest as well.
For a quick overview of the camera without the video, please read on below. The gallery contains some images shot with this camera in the past and we will add to this as I build up the blog contents over time to show how usable this camera is even today.
Spotmatic Top Controls
The top view shows controls from left to right as follows.
The film rewind knob
This is a dual function control.
The circular black knob is pulled up to open the camera back to access the film for loading and unloading.
The silver lever in the centre flips up and requires the operator to push in a button on the bottom plate of the camera to enable manual rewind of a film.
Surrounding the rewind lever is a rotating dial that acts as a visual reminder to indicate if the camera is empty or contains Black and White or Colour film (daylight or tungsten balanced).
The Shutter Speed control
This is another dual control
The outer silver ring can be pulled up and rotated to select the iso setting for the in-built light meter. The user can select from 20 to 1600 iso.
The shutter speed settings are set by rotating the knob without lifting the ring. The camera supports bulb and speed settings from 1 sec to 1/1000th sec with flash sync at 1/60th sec (x setting).
Shutter release
This is just a straight push. For those used to more modern cameras there is no auto focus activation with a half push.
The centre of the release is threaded for a standard shutter release cable. Immediately to the right of the shutter release is a small round indicator. This changes to a red circle when the shutter is cocked and ready to fire.
Film advance lever
This is a single action lever which makes it fast and easy to use. The small window set into the dial shows the current frame number. The counter resets to -2 when the back is opened. When loading a new film the lever is advanced and the shutter fired until the dial reads zero. To make the first image it is then advanced to frame number 1 and the camera is ready to fire.
Spotmatic Front Controls
Self Timer
This lever rotates anticlockwise 180 to reveal a small button underneath the top of the lever. The correct operation is to compose the photo and set the exposure with the camera ready to fire. The user then winds the self timer and presses the small button. The lever rotates back to its home position and fires the shutter.
Light Meter Switch
This is pushed up to activate the internal light meter. When you switch this on it automatically closes the lens aperture so it is useful to focus first or else the viewfinder may be too dark to see clearly. The light meter needle is visible in the viewfinder.
Flash Sync sockets
The top socket is for Focal Plane (FP) sync which was commonly used with flash bulbs. The bottom one is the more commonly used one for X sync at 1/60th Sec and is used with electronic flash. The camera does not have a hot shoe on the top of the pentaprism. A generic accessory shoe is available but any flash used needs to have a connecting cable to suit the “pc” type connectors in the camera front.
Pentax Lenses
The Pentax Spotmatic has a thread mount lens system. The lenses we have to shoot with are Super Takumar auto diaphragm lenses - 50mm f1.4 and 135mm f3.5. There are also a couple of older auto-Takumar lenses - 35mm f3.5 and 135mm f3.5. The auto-Takumar lenses feature an aperture control at the back of the lens. After taking a photo the lever must be operated to re-open the lens diaphragm.
All lenses feature a focus distance scale in feet and metres and a depth of field or focus scale of selected aperture settings. The apertures can be set to either automatic or manual on the Super Takumars.
Pentax Light Meter
In its day the penta-prism and through the lens light meter design were revolutionary. The Spotmatic has a light meter viewable within the view finder and requires a battery to be installed under the cover in the bottom of the camera. I find these days that whilst an L44 button battery can be used it is easier and more accurate for me at least to use my external Sekonic L508 meter. In use the Spotmatic will close the aperture to your chosen value automatically. The meter needle is then centred in the finder by altering the aperture and shutter speed settings. Correct readings from the light meter depend on setting the film speed in the ASA (ISO) dial within the shutter speed control ring on the top of the camera. The best way to use the internal meter is to ensure you have accurate focus first, then push the meter switch up to turn on the meter and stop down the aperture which may darken the viewfinder considerably. Finally vary the shutter speed or aperture to centre the meter needle in the viewfinder. Since the meter sensors average the whole viewfinder I found in practice that it was fairly reliable and accurate at assessing exposure so long was you compensated for extremes in contrasty situations.
“The best camera is the one that’s with you”
— Chase Jarvis