Pentax Spotmatic
Beginning Again
The good folks at Gogo Camera (of Hakata) organise a camera fair once or twice a year here in Fukuoka. I bought my Pentax SP (‘Spotmatic’) at Gogo’s spring fair in 2002. They warned me it was untested and unrestored; but smiled, and said I’d enjoy making my own mistakes with it. And so I have.

There’s something new to discover with every new camera – new, of course, in a relative sense. Having rekindled an interest in photography with my Fujica, I began again with the SP: learning about the camera at first; but all camera work is more to do with learning about light. There is a lot of light in the world, and a lot of learning to do.
ABOVE: The manual for the Pentax SPF – a Spotmatic with a flash shoe. Luckily for me, this reprint of the original manual appeared as a special insert in Capa’s Camera Get! magazine in April 2002: just before I bought my SP. The original publication date is July, 1973.

Technical Details

The Pentax SP was manufactured between 1964 and 1974. It was one of the first cameras to incorporate a through-the-lens light meter, and a lucky few of these meters still function today. A few, but not many: mine is dead, and my research suggests that most other people’s are, too. A functioning meter will add to the value of an SP on the collector’s market, but it isn’t really necessary: the other features are mechanical, not electronic; and one should use a hand-held meter anyway. The SP weighs just under nine hundred grams, and makes marvellous noises: its shutter has a most authoritative voice.
Manuals and technical discussions of this and other Pentax cameras are fairly easy to find. It certainly helps to be in Japan: there is a wealth of information available on the SP in Japanese.

The SP and its extended family use the ‘M42’ or ‘universal’ screw mount: an idea championed by Pentax to introduce one universal standard for lens mounts. A very good idea it was, too; and it didn’t last much past the 1960s. That said, there are a great many cameras, lenses, and accessories on the market that support the M42 mount. Tamron – makers of very good, not very expensive lenses – still make an M42 adapter for their ‘Adaptall’ lens system. I was lucky to blunder into the Pentax system: I’ve been able to build up a useful kit without too much trouble and expense.

The Darkroom

It has to be said: the only real way to learn about photography is to do it all yourself. For black and white photography in particular, it makes no sense – as art or economy – to order film processing or prints from a lab. The exception is, of course, if the lab is better at processing or printing than you are: a situation we’re all in at the beginning, but which we should work to correct as quickly as possible.
I introduce the darkroom here because I use my SP mainly for black and white work. Despite my strong words about skill and practice, I can’t say I’ve come very far in the past year. I’ve heard it said that one should make a pile of prints equal to one’s own height every year in order to properly practice printing. I’m not much higher than my ankles at the moment.

Light, Shadow, Form

The series below follows an irregular path from the kitchen out into the garden, with images collected over two days in July, 2003. My objective was to study how the light creates shapes and volumes – between and within objects I see every day.
I am always surprised by the change in thinking that comes about when I try to name an image. Why should one bother with names and titles at all? In this case, I chose titles to help draw my own attention to what I was seeing in the photographs; to question myself, as well: why did I chose to make these images?

Morning Light and Shadow
Sunday, 10 August 2003

In this case, the title and the series developed at the same time. Morning light in the kitchen in late summer: this was both the context and the idea behind these images.
Many simple things attract the eye, and the camera records one’s impressions in surprising ways. The technical construction of the image should not be a surprise – but I cannot claim to be free of technical surprises. Sometimes I’m pleased to discover what the unexpected reveals; more often I learn new mistakes to avoid. Fully manual equipment allows one plenty of opportunity to learn from mistakes. I can imagine more efficient ways to learn about light, but I wouldn’t want to try any of them.

Date posted: 2004-09-30