When I left my parents home to go study
photography in 1973, I took with me a Honeywell Pentax
Spotmatic II that
I had purchased for myself, a Fisheye
Takumar that I had purchased, and a
SMCT 135 f/3.5 that my mother had
given me for my birthday.
Later that year, I left the school
darkroom to make a run over to the store for some supplies. In my
haste I left my camera under the enlarger along with my Gossen Super
Pilot meter. When I returned, they had gone missing. It was
a harsh lesson in caring for my stuff that left me camera-less in the
middle of school.
My co-worker, Ken Frasier, made me an
offer I could not refuse - he had two mamiya-sekor DTL cameras - a
500 DTL
and a 1000, and a trove of gear that he agreed to sell me for $300.
It was a very generous offer which I quickly snapped up. It saved
me and allowed me to sample some different equipment. I found the
DTL's to be less graceful than the Pentax but liked the spot meter
feature. I discovered that my SMC lens didn't fit without removing
the index lug from the rear of the lens. I carefully extracted the
lug and saved it for many years when I was to reinsert it so I could use
the lens on a Spotmatic F.
On Christmas eve of that second year at
photography school a fellow came into the store near closing time with a
broken camera body. It was a Pentax Spotmatic II with black body.
The take-up spool clutch was broken. He hoped to have it fixed on
the spot so he could take pictures for Christmas. Of course that
was not possible but instead I offered to do a trade with him. I
ended up with the Spotmatic body and he ended up with the mamiya-sekor
and a Vivitar 28mm f/2.5 that had come with the gear Ken sold me.
I fished a rubber band into the take-up spool of the Spotmatic and shot
with it that way for many years until I sent the camera for some other
service and had the spool fixed at the same time. I still have
that Spotmatic. I
purchased this rather worn DTL to take the place of this type camera in
my life.
