Talking to an old timer about the Pentax Spotmatic got me thinking

I was at a shop in Portland last week and this 70 year old guy walked me through how he used to calibrate the light meter on those old all-mechanical Pentax bodies without any electronics. Made me wonder if we've lost something by having all these computerized repair tools for cameras from the 70s.

3 comments

3 Comments

drew96516d ago

100 dollars for a battery that works for one day on that old Spotmatic?

elizabethn5612d ago

guy I had a buddy who bought a "vintage correct" mercury battery for his Spotmatic and yeah it was like 80 bucks and died after three days of shooting. He was so mad he drove an hour to the nearest camera shop just to complain about it. The guy at the counter told him it was probably old stock that had been sitting on a shelf for thirty years and was already half dead when he put it in. My friend ended up just using a cheap adapter with a modern silver oxide battery and he says it's been working fine for months now. He still grumbles about that wasted 80 bucks every time we go shooting though.

the_logan15d ago

Man @drew965 are you sure you're not just running some weird modern battery in there or something? What kind of battery we talking about exactly?