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In Praise of Old Flames
May 19th, 2008
When I was about 14 or 15 I wanted a new camera desperately. Christmas was coming and I was hoping for a shiny new Pentax. A Super ME as I recall, but it’s been a while. Instead my mother found me a bag of dusty old gear left to a colleague when her father died. Indirectly I inherited a battered leather bag, a gigantic Linhoff tripod that caught my fingers when I closed it and a very manual Pentax Spotmatic with a 55/1.8 lens. The one I now own, shown above, is an SPII, my original body was an SP – similar but no hotshoe. I look back now and laugh at how much I wanted a hotshoe on my camera. That would have been LUXURY!
What I got, without knowing it, was one of the best cameras of the century. A solid, bomb-proof camera that took the ludicrously abundant M42 mount lenses available cheap, cheap at used stores everywhere. It had what was claimed to be the world’s first TTL metering -a simple needle that, when centered, indicated proper exposure. The first one hit the market in 1964, so by the time it landed in my hands it was already well-used for twenty years, and woefully obsolete. What did I care, it still made photographs and that’s all I wanted – to order things within the discipline of the frame.
So simple was this camera that I recall my shutter jumping the rails while I was shooting hummingbirds in Ontario, and I field repaired it with my Swiss Army knife ( I also recall being so initially upset that my mother had to give me schnapps to calm me down. I was young, apparently didn’t handle things well, but have used the “I’m upset, please bring me a scotch” approach successfully many times since.)
I spent hours with this camera knee deep in mud shooting ducks with a 400/5.6 lens and a 2x extender on it. I recall the viewfinder being awefully dark with this rig! And I had to shoot pretty fast film. But at age 16 I had one of the most extensive collections of blurry Blue Wing Teals in Canada.
My Spotmatic was good to me. I can still pick up this camera and operate it instinctively, like we’d never been separated by the new technology and my eventual need for something newer and shinier. This camera taught me to love the craft of framing an image, without the technology clamoring for my attention. This camera was my gateway drug. It led to darkrooms and more cameras and bigger lenses – it’s where this whole thing started for me, and for that, I will always love her and be grateful that I had the chance to learn this craft without the camera I thought I wanted
Awh the nostaligic memories. Mine was the mighty Zenit E with screw mount lenses. I had a great time with that camera. The quality looked good enough to me, I also had a great collection of blurry under/over exposed images. It opened up my imagiation and got me seeing the world around me. At first all I took were landscapes, not a person in sight! I moved on to the Nikon FE and more cool lenses. Eventually I only shot people in the landscape in my portrait business and have just moved up to the pinnacle 1DS Mrk3. A couple of more lenses and I should be done:). I am getting back into the landscape images now, great therapy. I really enjoy shooting for myself instead of for a living. The portraits are my favorite still, I get such a rush. The best thing I ever got to do was to thank my grade 8 teacher that introduced me to a darkroom many years ago. He has been able to see the growth of my business here where we both still live. That was really fun.
Wow, David. My first camera was a hand-me-down from my dad – the same Pentax Spotmatic – an F model. My dad must have gotten it through work because it is actually branded “Honeywell” instead of Asahi on the front, with the Honeywell H in place of the symbol on the top. That camera also led to darkrooms and other cameras and a love of photography. I just pulled out the old Spotmatic, and although I knew the meter no longer worked, it looks like the kids played with it a little roughly – the fabric shutter curtain is ripped off its track and the mirror is stuck up. Bummer. I was thinking of throwing a roll in it for old times.
Thanks for bringing back the memories. You’re absolutely right – there was something primal about using a very simple manual camera like that without the distractions of the technology.
This makes me smile. Mine was a K1000, and I still have it and love it. It taught me how to make an image and be in control of an exposure myself instead of having a camera that did it for me, and I wouldn’t understand digital photography half as well as I do had it not been for my Pentax, bomb-proof tank
Mine was a Canonet rangefinder my dad gave me then later his cast off Canon Ftb. I still wish I had the match needle metering of that old work horse. Sigh.
That is such a sexy photo of that camera.
[...] looking for something to be good at, some way to express myself, my mother gave me two great gifts. The first was the Pentax Spotmatic, and not the camera I thought I wanted/needed to begin my illustrious journey in imaging. The [...]