Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP-1000 review

It's been about one year and one month since my last (and first)

camera review in this phlog[1], so we're certainly due for another!

Earlier this year my wife and I spent a weekend in Stockholm, mostly

to visit a friend of ours who is studying in Sweden. On Sunday

morning we stumbled upon a nice big fleamarket and spent some time

picking over the stuff there, which is one of my favourite things to

do.

There are always old cameras at any decent fleamarket and I usually

check them out by so far I've been extremely good about not buying

any. This is due to a combination of always being wary about buying a

camera whose working condition is unclear in a situation where there's

no possibility of a return, and also just because, somehow, I've been

remarkably strong willed so far about not buying photography stuff I

don't really need just because I like it. But on this trip I

faltered.

I've always thought that Asahi's Spotmatic cameras were especially

handsome. That might sound odd since, until you get quite close, just

about all 60s and 70s SLRs look just about exactly the same and it's

hard to imagine one being much better looking than another. But once

you do get up close their are all sorts of small design details

which a camera its own particular feel (for whatever reason, I am

very readily seduced by the typography on a lot of old Japanese

cameras. The company name on the front of the pentaprism is almost

always in a really lovely font!), and the Spotmatic really pulls off a

great look. So when I saw a Spotmatic sitting on one buyer's table,

surrounded by less interesting things, I ventured a closer look.

Aside from the lightmeter (and who needs that?![2]) the Spotmatic is

entirely mechanical, which means in some sense there is not too much

to go wrong with them. After confirming that the shutter fired (and

the slow speeds sounded approximately correct) and the mirror moved, I

tentatively asked the buyer how much they wanted. I expected them to

ask more than I was willing to pay on a whim, and was really surprised

when they asked for 150 SEK - about 15 EUR. Of course, I didn't

actually have any Swedish krona on me, because cash is almost entirely

superfluous in 21st century Scandinavia, but happily my friend had

exactly 150 SEK on her, so she gave me the cash for the Spotmatic

and I bought her coffee and beer for the rest of the day until we were

even.

Earlier this week I finally got my first roll of film from the camera

developed and scanned. I didn't try too hard with it, not knowing

whether the light seals were intact, or whether some other non-obvious

problem with the body might spoil things. As it turned out, the

camera works just fine, and the only bad shots were due to me still

finding my feet estimating exposures manually. So, here's a review of

the camera based on a single roll (here's one of my favourite shots[3]

from it).

Asahi released a couple of Spotmatic models over the several decades

long lifespan of the brand - mine is the Spotmatic SP-1000. This is

one of the "budget" models designed to be less featureful and a little

cheaper than the "true" Spotmatic, but the only feature it's missing

compared to the original Spotmatic is the self timer. I can count the

number of times I've used a self timer on any of my cameras on a

single hand, so for me this is just as good as a proper Spotty. I'll

be comparing it throughout this review to the Canon AE-1, the only

35mm SLR with which I have extensive experience.

Obviously, there's quite a bit of a technological difference between

the two, given the roughly 10 years separating their designs. The

AE-1 has an electronically-controlled shutter, with shutter-priority

autoexposure and open-aperture TTL metering. The SP-1000 has a

mechanical shutter and fully manual exposure with stopped-down TTL

metering. The AE-1 also has a self-timer, for what little it's worth.

Aside from that, there is not too much difference. Both cameras

feature horizontal cloth shutters with maximum speeds of 1/1000

(hence the SP-1000's model number - there was an even more budget

version called the SP-500 which only went to 1/500), both have a DOF

preview feature (which the SP-1000 requires for metering) and neither

have mirror lock-up nor any other advanced features. Pretty well any

photo you could take on one you could take on the other, so the real

difference comes down to look and feel, lens range and user interface

and ergonomics.

I think the Spotmatic certainly wins with regard to look and feel.

The look I think I attribute mostly to the gently curved corners of

the top plate, which look nicer to me than the much more angular AE-1.

The feel I put down mostly to the Spotmatic being 100% metal and

glass. While it doesn't look it at first glance, the AE-1's body is

actually plastic, specifically ABS. In fact, if I remember rightly,

it may have been the first SLR with a plastic body. Of course

nowadays this sounds like a bad thing, but I guess in '76 plastic may

still have had a little bit of its "space age" appeal. The Spotmatic

is the heavier camera because of this, unsurprisingly, but not by as

much as I'd have expected. With battery but without lens or film, the

Spotmatic is 601g compared to about 580g or 590g for the AE-1: my AE-1

has a neck strap on it which I was too lazy to remove and which I

could only very unscientifically correct for the weight of by trying

to hold it up off the scales, but not so up that it was bearing any

weight of the camera. The difference is basically negligible. I have

lightweight plsatic-bodied "nFD" lenses for my Canon, which makes it

feel a little lighter with a lens on than the Spotmatic, but I'd still

describe the Spotmatic as "having a reassuring heft" before I'd call

it "heavy". That might just be sentimentality, though.

Probably the biggest difference in usability between the two cameras

is that the Canon has a split screen focussing aid while the Asahi has

a microprism. I have to say I prefer the Canon's split screen, but

this could simply be a matter of perferring what I'm used to. The

Asahi is by no means difficult to focus. In terms of ergonomics, both

cameras are pretty similarly layed out. I think it's easier to adjust

the shutter speed on the Canon while you have the viewfinder up to

your eye than on the Asahi, but again doing it on the Asahi is not

exactly difficult. The top plate of the Spotmatic has a little window

to the shutter release which displays a red indicator when the shutter

is cocked. At first I thought this was kind of neat and a (small!)

advantage of the Spotmatic over the Canon. But to some extent any

advantage is cancelled out by the Spotmatic's lack of a shutter lock.

Because the Canon has such a lock, I've developed the habit of

immediately winding on after I take each photo, and then carrying the

camera around "cocked and locked". Because this is a reflex action

for me, I did it with the Spotmatic too more often than not, and

wasted two exposures when the shutter fired while the camera was in my

bag. I complained about this exact same thing in my Yashica ME-35

review[1]. It's becoming clear to me that shutter locks are

relatively rare and the Canon has taught me a bad habit; I shouldn't

wind on until I'm ready to shoot. Of course, if you use the Spotmatic

this way, the shutter status indicator becomes pretty useless. Well,

I suppose it's pretty useless also if you always carry it cocked.

It's really only of any use if you are inconsistent and forgetful, so

it hardly counts for much.

In terms of the available range of lenses, things are very different.

The AE-1 uses Canon's FD mount, which means the range of really good

lenses is basically limited to Canon's own offerings - not that the

Canon FD lenses are in any way bad. But the Spotmatic uses the

"universal" M42 mount, which means that in addition to Asahi's own

famous Super Takumar lenses, you can pick up stuff from a huge range

of other manufacturers, including other respectable "big names" from

Japan (like Mamiya, Yashica and Ricoh) and Germany (like Carl Zeiss)

but also lots of cheap, fun and unusual stuff from smaller companies

or old Soviet factories. M42 is basically a big playground, which is

really kind of fun. Oh, sadly my camera didn't come with a Super Tak

but with a cheap and cheerful East German wide-angle, the Meyer-Optik

Görlitz Orestegon 29mm/f2.8.

On the whole, I guess the AE-1 has lots of small edges over the

SP-1000 in terms of usability, but they're small things and they don't

add up to much. For a lot of people, the small subjectively nicer

look and feel of the Spotmatic, combined with its reduced reliance on

batteries, might be enough to cancel those things out. They're both

nice cameras and deserve their status as classics.

I have to admit that when I got my photos back and confirmed the

Spotmatic was working, my first thought was "Great, now I can buy a

Super Takumar lens!". But on second thought, I'm became unsure as to

whether I should bother. I like the Spotmatic a lot, but I like the

Canon a lot too and, importantly, I've already invested in a kit of 3

FD lenses for it which all work nicely. I can't make any rational

argument for why I need a second SLR which is objectively less capable

than the one I already have. I could almost certainly sell it for

more than I paid for it...

But these things are never totally rational decisions. In the past

few days I've been reading up on Asahi's history. I really enjoy

studying what I think of as "industrial history". It's a lot of fun

to learn about all the camera models a particular firm released, to

understand what order they came out in, when new features appeared,

and to place them all in the context of the wider marketplace at the

time. I've kind of fixated on the idea of not just buying a Super Tak

lens for my Spotmatic, but also hunting down an earlier Pentax, from

before the Spotmatic line - maybe a Pentax SV? These have no

lightmeter whatsoever, and are basically the most primitive or

minimalistic camera which still recognisably belongs to the developed

35mm SLR category. I'm kind of giddy at the idea of a nice big bright

viewfinder with absolutely nothing in it to get in the way of

composition. Canon did release an SLR like this, the FP - and while

it was designed for the ealier FL lens series, my FD lenses would

mount on it and work no problem, because the FD and FL designs are

quite compatible. So this would be the most economically rational way

for me to explore the world of very bare bones SLRs. But Canon FPs

seem pretty darn rare, whereas early Pentaxes are not hard to find on

eBay. If I bought an early Pentax with no metering (selling my

SP-1000 afterward to slightly recoup the cost), and one day followed

up on my very long-standing plan to upgrade my AE-1 to an A-1, then

I'd end up with two SLRs which I could at least say represented the

something like the least and most advanced ends of the manual focus

technology spectrum. That's my new inner "justification" for future

purchases, anyway. :)

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/photos-yashica-35-ME-review.txt

[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/look-ma-no-lightmeter.txt

[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/I/~solderpunk/photos/tecsun-in-the-wild.jpg