[Leica] Re: Leica & Pentax

[Joe Brugger <jbrugger@teleport.com>]

LUGgers:
  My Spotmatic Fs are nice and well-built. Paid for themselves many times over,
but:
 Lens quality across the line was inconsistent, ranging from excellent to
better-than-Vivitar. The barrels seem indestructible. My 85/1.8 is marvelous
and my 28/3.5 was never more than adequate. All of them benefitted from
stopping down to 5.6 or 8. The 300/4 is great at 5.6, etc. Have no idea what
the K-mounts are like because I eventually needed motors that worked. The Spot
Fs are still on the shelf.
 What sent me to an M2 (bought at Malone's in Dayton OH in the mid-70s for less
than $500, with a Summicron) was the need to photograph quietly, at slow
shutter speeds, without distracting people. So, a Spotmatic 
was all the camera I needed about 70% of the time. The M2 with a 50 was all I
needed about half of the time. 

Joe






At 06:54 PM 1/20/00 -0800, you wrote: 

>
> Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 11:44:59 -0800
> From: Bill Lawlor <wvl@marinternet.com>
> Subject: [Leica] Re:Curtains-repair & Spotmatics OT
>
>
> Mike-re "The M of SLRs". I have owned a half dozen of the different 
> incarnations of the Pentax Spotmatic. The best was the F model that 
> allowed metering on an open aperature with the appropriate lenses and 
> took a more available Hg battery. I found edge sharpness of the Super 
> Takumar lenses inferior to Canon and Nikon, and of course Leica 
> products of the same vintage. Recently I got a Canon AT-1 which is a 
> manual A series body with the match needle metering of the 
> Spotmatics. I prefer the needle metering over LEDs because you know 
> where you are + or - at all times and it seems more natural to crank 
> in exposure compensation for the subject when the meter is working 
> all the time. I think it was on this list somebody said a Spotmatic 
> was all the camera people would need.
>
> Bill Lawlor
> - --