Blast from the Past - Ashai Pentax Spotmatic SP in the Hertfordshire countryside

[GrahamS]

This is a thread I started on NelsonFoto Forums on 7-5-2006 in the 'Classics" forum:

Thanks to a very good friend, I can now boast to have an Ashai Pentax Spotmatic SP in my classic camera collection. It is a camera that was purchased new by it's original owner in 1967 and who carried it with him every day for half of his life. It was retired due to the convenience of digital imaging, and came to me well used but in very good condition, apart from a sticky mirror and the two highest shutter speeds both running at 1/1000th.

The mirror problem was cured by a clean and lube of the mirror release latch mechanism, and while the camera was on the operating table, I decided to fit it with a new set of clothes to cheer it up. The material I have used is synthetic, and is all that I had to hand that was thin enough for the profile of the camera back. I may change it at a later date for real hide. I have not adjusted the shutter speeds as I do not have a reliable method of calibration yet.

The camera was fitted with a 50mm f1.4 Super Takumar that showed a slight yellowing, but which has now cleared after copious doses of UV radiation thanks to our abnormally dry, hot summer this year. I was also blessed with the gift of a 200mm f5.6 Tele-Takumar and a 28mm f3.5 Super Takumar. I already had a 35mm f3.5 SMC Takumar and a 105mm f2.8 Auto-Takumar therefore my lens collection is well represented. The meter battery is still the Wein cell fitted by my friend - I will fit a more appropriate substitute for the original mercury battery, but the meter is spot-on now. I was surprised at how relatively slow the meter is to react to changing light compared to mu Olympus OM1. Maybe it has something to do with the battery capacity, because the Wein cell is very tiny and has a plastic collar to hold it centered.

One Sunday recently, my Best Beloved and I took a drive into our local Hertfordshire countryside and I took the Spotmatic along, loaded with a roll of Kodak Gold 200 colour neg. There are many small villages interspersed with working farms in our county. The villages are mostly the original labourer's accomodation of the large farming estates, and are now occupied by London commuters who wear pin-stripe suits and not blue dungarees. The houses are usually on 99 year leasehold. One of the villages, Westmill, has a little tea shoppe that serves a fabulous real English "Cream Tea" which consists of a pot of real leaf tea of choice (I like Earl Grey) accompanied by a freshly baked warm scone with Devonshire butter, strawberry jam and Cornish clotted cream. The butter melts into the scone and the jam is applied copiously, topped with a large dollop of cream so that there is no possible way to avoid getting cream and jam all over one's face.

Here are some of the shots of the day, including two taken in our front garden. The sky was totally white with a high overcast most of the day, not nice for good photographs, but I went for it anyway!

REPLIES:

Edthened -
Och Graham, this is a lovely set of pics, beautiful colours and great scenery including re wife 8)

Edwin
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Old 07-06-2006
nelsonfoto nelsonfoto is offline
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Images as lovely as any could be. Nice kit you got there, wetting myself looking at all that screwmount joy! Such lenses!

You make good use of them.

C.
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Old 07-06-2006
JRJacobs JRJacobs is offline
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Great shots and wonderful kit. I love the look of Pentax glass. That 1.4 is a real gem.
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Old 07-06-2006
Captain Slack Captain Slack is offline

Join Date: May 2006
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Great shots!! Definitely need to run some color film thru my Spottie now!

BTW, Aki Asahi sells leather kits for the Spotmatic:

http://www.aki-asahi.com/store/
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Old 07-06-2006
Ben Ben is offline

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Outstanding Graham! Beautiful colors and real nice camera/lenses. Great job on the scans too.
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Old 07-06-2006
Wayne Wayne is offline
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Glorious shots Graham, my faves being "RIP" and "Wheat". Beautiful colour in your garden too!
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Old 07-06-2006
Graham Serretta Graham Serretta is online now

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Thank you all for your words of praise, I really get a kick out of your enjoyment. The Spotmatic is a great classic, and deserves greater aclaim than we actually give it. The lenses are superb, if a little warm in colour balance compared to CZJ or Pentacon lenses of the same era. It's a fun camera to use - so slick that it seems like cheating to call it a classic.
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Old 07-06-2006
sandeha sandeha is offline
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Real class - shots and gear.
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Old 07-06-2006
connealy connealy is offline
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What a great looking kit; those Takumars seem ideally suited to those fine textures and historic subjects. My Spotmatic has had one minor tune-up in 35 years - amazing camera.

[Dennis Gallus]

Graham,

What a great idea going back to the past! Am I wrong, or were people more enthusiastic about interacting on photo sites back then? I remember the great posts on Photo.net (classic camera forum). And that led Craig Nelson to start Nelsonfoto, to attract a more gentile class of photographer than some of the curmudgeons on Pnet. Nelsonfoto was a huge success. Those were the good old days. Comments on threads would go on for days.

Keep up the great posts, I enjoyed your three today immensely.

Best,
D

[GrahamS]

Dennis, I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about the good old days. I think that the success of NFF (and PNet) back then was partly due to the fact that camera phones had not yet made everyone and his brother and his kid sister into a photographer, facebook and Twitter and Instagram had not been given to the masses and, in the case of NFF, membership was by invitation only, or at least strictly vetted by Craig, who was the only adjudicator. To be a member of NFF was almost something that one could enter on one's CV. We weren't snobs, but there was no rifraf among us, which was the reason Craig founded NFF in the first place. Mike Elek has done us proud here, but we need more exposure. I contribute to two other photo forums: Talk Photography: https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/
and Cambridge In Colour: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/forums/
Both have much higher activity than we do here, which proves that there is still great enthusiasm and interest in photo forums.