Nostalgic Camera Review Pentax Spotmatic

 

Introduction  In the late 1960's and through the 1970's all my photos were made with a Pentax Spotmatic  SLR film camera. For much of that time I had only one lens, a Takumar 50 mm f1.7.  There was no such thing as a zoom lens for consumer cameras.

That was the heyday of street photography, an activity all but banned in these anxious times.  I made some of my all time favourite photos with that camera. You can see a few of them with this article.

Why review an (almost) 50 year old camera ?  This blog is about camera ergonomics.  Some modern cameras which I have used are dreadful kludges, with truly awful ergonomics. Others are not bad at all. I thought it might be interesting to compare the old with the new to get some sense of progress (or lack of it) in camera design over the last 50 years or so.

 

Description and Features  The Spotmatic is (you can still buy an old one on eBay) a mechanical single lens reflex camera which takes 35 mm perforated film in preloaded cassettes. Image size is 24 x 36 mm. Lenses are interchangeable, using the 42 mm screw mount which was popular with several makers in the 1970's. The really big deal which the Spotmatic brought to consumer photography in 1964  was Through the Lens Metering.  At first this required the lens aperture to be stopped down, which made metering a deliberative business. Open aperture metering arrived with the Spotmatic SP-F in 1973. Batteries are required for the exposure meter but everything else works manually. Despite the name, the meter is of center weighted averaging type, not a spot meter, although I believe an early prototype may have featured spot metering.

The camera body and lenses are very compact. Body dimensions are Width 143 mm, Height 92 mm, Depth 49 mm. The box volume is 645 cc. No current model "full frame" DSLR comes anywhere near this compact size. In fact no DSLR using the APS-C sensor size, which is less than half the area of 24 x 36 "full frame", is as small as the Spotmatic. Even the recently released Canon EOS 100D has a box volume of 735 cc.

You can still buy new cameras like the Spotmatic. For instance the FM10 is still in Nikon's current catalogue. This is an all manual camera made by Cosina for Nikon, having a list of specifications and features almost identical to the Spotmatic.

 

Image Quality  Most of the Takumar lenses were of excellent quality. Like many others, I mostly used Kodak TRI-X film, which gave decent resolution and  good sharpness. The film had excellent dynamic range and exposure latitude, which it needed, as exposure metering was not as accurate as one gets from a modern camera. Overall I like the appearance of prints made from my Spotmatic negatives.  They lack the absolute resolution of modern cameras, but have good tonal gradation and are plenty sharp enough for most purposes.

Performance  With no autofocus, no motor drive and no auto exposure system, you might be excused for expecting the Spotmatic to perform poorly.  But that is not the case. With a good understanding of the principles of camera operation and plenty of practice, the experienced user can in fact extract very good performance from this camera. One learned to preset focus and exposure when moving into a situation.  I would commonly use an understanding of hyperfocal distance to pre set focus distance and aperture.  With these presets, shot to shot times were determined by the speed with which one could operate the film wind lever. I found one shot every two seconds to be quite realistic.

 

Setup Phase  There being nothing remotely resembling a menu, Setup consists of reading the instruction manual and getting plenty of practice using the device.

Prepare Phase   This involves loading film and setting the film speed.  In many situations it would also involve presetting focus distance, aperture and shutter speed. These settings would normally be considered part of Capture Phasewith a modern camera. But they take a little longer with the Spotmatic.  This in turn means more anticipation is needed  so when the "decisive moment" appears, one only has to press the shutter button.

 

Holding  The Spotmatic and many cameras like it have the "no handle" design which actually works decently well because there is no monitor (or anything else) taking up space on the back of the camera. This means the right thumb can be angled across the back, allowing the index finger to fall naturally onto the shutter button.

Viewing  The camera has a proper glass pentaprism and decent viewfinder optics giving a clear view of the subject.

 

Operating   The keyword here is simplicity. Focus is controlled by turning a ring on the lens with the left hand.  Aperture is changed with another ring on the lens barrel, also using the left hand. Shutter speed is changed via a dial on the top plate. To do this the right thumb and index finger have to move up a little from their basic positions, which disrupts grip with the right hand while shutter speed is being adjusted.  The exposure meter is activated and lens stopped down by pushing a little lever on the upper left (as viewed by the user) side of the lens mount. Film wind on to the next frame is achieved by swinging the rewind crank using the right thumb. 

All these actions are simple, direct and specific.  They just take a little longer to perform than the equivalent actions with a well designed modern electronic camera. This could be considered a disadvantage but with practice the camera is actually quite easy to use and quick to operate. The art of anticipation is an essential operating requirement.

Metering is perhaps the least endearing  part of this camera's operation.  It involves stopping down the lens then changing aperture and/or shutter speed  to move a needle (visible in the viewfinder) up or down. The process is a bit slow and in my experience the results not as accurate as a modern camera.

Review Phase  This involves finishing a roll of film, rewinding it into the cassette, developing the film then making prints. There is of course, no chance to review photos immediately after capture.

What did I yearn for  in the years I was using the Spotmatic ? Mostly I wanted to be able to change film speed in mid roll.  Some other capabilities came to mind at the time. Faster, more reliable exposure metering was one. Another was for some kind of film resistant to airport X Rays. That's about it, really. I never wished and still don't care much for the great majority of features found on modern cameras.

 

Auto Exposure  Auto Exposure arrangements on modern cameras are a marked improvement on the clunky system employed by the Spotmatic.  Exposure is calculated then Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO set in the millisecond between half and full press of the shutter button.  Now we have Exposure Modes, with P,A,S and M available on a Main Mode Dial. We have one (or two, or three)  control dials for immediate adjustment to Aperture and Shutter Speed.  

These features greatly streamline exposure metering and setting of primary exposure parameters.  The curious thing is that some makers of recent model cameras do not seem to understand the ergonomic benefits of these technologies.  For instance most Sony NEX cameras have no Mode Dial, including the top of the range NEX7.  Fujifilm's (FujiFilm ???) X100/100s, X-Pro1 and  X-E1 have no Mode Dial and retain the same basic control layout for Aperture and Shutter Speed as that found in the Spotmatic and film era Leica M cameras. I struggle to comprehend why camera makers fit their products with an odd or antiquated user interface which prevents the user from fully enjoying the benefits of the  modern technology which they posess.

Autofocus  Any camera maker which failed to develop AF in the late 1980's and early 1990's was doomed to failure. For the snapshooter, AF is an imperative technology. However, for the expert user I think the  benefits of AF have been somewhat oversold.  I used manual focus cameras of one kind or another for 55 years and rarely in that time felt a pressing need for autofocus. However since the advent of autofocus I  have many times been frustrated and disappointed by the failure of a camera's AF to focus correctly or by the way AF reduced my options to preset focus manually by scale.

Ability to set active AF/MF area anywhere in the frame   This is something mirrorless cameras can do well and I regard it as a really useful feature.

Change ISO anytime  This is so obviously useful, no more need be said.

Video  Most cameras now do competent video. Some are capable of broadcast quality motion picture output.

Image preview/review  The benefits of image review immediately after making the exposure are obvious. However modern EVF's also allow a preview of the image which is about to be captured, with display of the effect of exposure compensation, white balance, etc.

Configurability I include this as a benefit but it could equally be seen as a curse. Modern cameras are so complex and have so many features and options that they must be user configurable. There is no option to avoid the options, so to speak.

 

Simplicity  Like innocence, once lost, simplicity cannot be regained.  Modern cameras have literally billions of possible combinations of menu items and user interface options. They are drowning in a welter of complexity.  The Spotmatic has  five user interface modules controlling camera operation, each with just one function.  This spartan interface is enough to get the job done.

Compact size, body and lenses   The Spotmatic is smaller than any DSLR on the market today, even those with the smaller than half frame APS-C sensor size. The lenses are also compact with no need for autofocus function.

Ability to pre set focus distance and aperture by depth of field scale  Some modern lenses especially primes for the 43 mm diagonal "full frame" imager size do have this facility. But most lenses these days are varifocals which by nature cannot use a focus distance scale. Even primes often lack a distance scale.

So, are modern cameras better than old ones like the Pentax Spotmatic ?   In my view, they are better in some ways, not so good in other ways. The Spotmatic and cameras like it, engage the user in a way which the modern electronic camera cannot match.  The Spotmatic does nothing automatically. In order to use the camera effectively one must learn about the principles of photography, understand the relationships between film speed, aperture, shutter speed, camera movement and depth of focus. The user must practice anticipating photo opportunities, preparing the camera ahead of time as the environment alters, anticipating subject behaviour and working the controls efficiently.

Could a digital version of the Spotmatic be viable ?  Technically, I guess it could be made but it would tick so few of the marketing boxes which camera makers and possibly buyers seem to regard as essential these days that I doubt it would sell.