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I have a 1973 vintage Asahi / Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic II. 35mm single lens reflex camera that I bought at the MCAS Iwakuni exchange about 1973.  I think i gave $178.00 for it, a princely sum at that time.

 

Over the years I have owned four of these wonderful cameras before this one, and dozens of lenses and other accessories.  Haven't used this one in years. It still works like new, but film is hard to find and expensive.  I have seem (somewhere) a company that makes replacement backs for film cameras which convert them to digitals.  Can't find it anywhere.

 

 

Any help will be appreciated.

 

(I have Nikon digital camera which is an ergonomic disaster and nearly impossible to use.  Not looking for a cheap piece of plastic crap.)

 

Thank you.

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Howdy,

Ive heard that some colleges have art classes that need the 35mm cameras.

If you give up on that conversion idea consider donating to a college or

other school.

there might even be some sort of tax credit???

The goodwill guys wont even take vcr tapes.

Best

CR

 

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Some 20 years ago or so there was a company the made a SLR conversion but can't remember the company.
I have seen this but know nothing about it.
https://petapixel.com/2020/04/13/the-im-back-35-lets-you-add-a-digital-sensor-to-your-old-film-camera/

 

Gave up looking for such a thing when my Canon AE1 and all lens, flash and filters got stolen.

 

 

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The only digital backI have seen commercially available is for the Hasseblad and it is not a 35mm.  I use to have several 35mm's and a large selection of lenses.  Unfortunately the camera market has taken a really big hit the past few years.  The image quality of the smart phones is getting quite good.  All my very expensive old gear is now basically worthless.  When I travel overseas I take a little Canon with a one inch sensor and built in zoom lense.  Fits in my pocket and is lightweight.

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2 hours ago, blazeafar SASS # 6750 said:

Some 20 years ago or so there was a company the made a SLR conversion but can't remember the company.
I have seen this but know nothing about it.
https://petapixel.com/2020/04/13/the-im-back-35-lets-you-add-a-digital-sensor-to-your-old-film-camera/

 

Gave up looking for such a thing when my Canon AE1 and all lens, flash and filters got stolen.

 

 

And that's even my camera.  Thanks, it's a place to start.

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Santa brought me a camera 2 years ago....

I love it.

Yes, it is low end...but it matches my skill level.

It is a Kodak Pixpro...

There are tons of settings I have yet to use (okay, okay...yet to figure out)

Below is a link to photos from Grand Canyon...we stopped overnight to decompress from last WR.

 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/NMqXi4WPrNFG6ujV9

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Film has been available for some time... and at $17 for two rolls is comparable to the cost "back when."

 

Kodak Ultramax

 

Fujifilm

 

There are numerous on-line places you can send film to for developing... heck, even CVS still offers it - just no longer one-hour in-house service.

 

CVS

 

By the way... I don't think the digital converter is available any more.  :(

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Howdy

Kodak pixpro you dont say. lotta different models...which is yours????????

Decent photos.

I wonder if I gots any o dat dare stimululiss money left????

Best

CR

Canon S100 looks interesing too. I stumbled onto an article for it.

Cheap prices but looks like a real camera. pocket camera that is.

S100 goes cheep on ebay.  Maybe get a couple at those prices.

My old digital cameras were all auto and that can be a pain.

S100 could be fun and looks out of date so maybe no one steals it....?

20 years ago it would have been stunning.

it has a tripod socket.....oooooooh.

Mongo like.

 

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47 minutes ago, Chili Ron said:

Howdy

Kodak pixpro you dont say. lotta different models...which is yours????????

Decent photos.

I wonder if I gots any o dat dare stimululiss money left????

Best

CR

Canon S100 looks interesing too. I stumbled onto an article for it.

Cheap prices but looks like a real camera. pocket camera that is.

S100 goes cheep on ebay.  Maybe get a couple at those prices.

My old digital cameras were all auto and that can be a pain.

S100 could be fun and looks out of date so maybe no one steals it....?

20 years ago it would have been stunning.

it has a tripod socket.....oooooooh.

Mongo like.

 

This one!!:wub:

It has a lot of functions I have not read up on.

The above photos were auto...and in Zoom (pretty clear for zoom, except the one of catching Little Colorado in the v space)

I like using the scene option...takes 3 quick shots.

Caught a doe on the side of the road, going 65 mph in the truck!!!

Not a bad camera.

I did not ask Santa the cost...and didn't see the charge...so Santa must have done some leatherwork I did not know about!

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Just now, Singin' Sue 71615 said:

This one!!:wub:

It has a lot of functions I have not read up on.

The above photos were auto...and in Zoom (pretty clear for zoom, except the one of catching Little Colorado in the v space)

I like using the scene option...takes 3 quick shots.

Caught a doe on the side of the road, going 65 mph in the truck!!!

Not a bad camera.

I did not ask Santa the cost...and didn't see the charge...so Santa must have done some leatherwork I did not know about!

 

20210711_192209.jpg

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20210711_192307.jpg

20210711_192318.jpg

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35mm film is far from dead. many professionals are dropping digital cameras and going back to using film. As Hardpan pointed out lots of places to get film processed. Just can't get it done in an hour any more. 

 

I remember the digital converters. Problem with them was that they had terrible resolution. I could buy a really cheap fixed focus digital camera for way less than the digital converter for my SLR and the cheapie digital would produce higher quality pictures. 

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I kept a Pentax K1000 and a few lenses.  Great film camera but it is an antique by today standards.  Every once and a while I will shoot some film, but the price is not cheap.  Kodachrome was wonderful in its era.....

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I'd settle for finding a digital body that took all my old Minolta bayonet mount lenses.  I still have the Minolta 101, even converted the battery system once upon a time.

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You can get B&W film pretty cheap, Google Kentmere 35mm film.  I use the 100 speed almost exclusively.  B&W is very easy to develop at home, I use a formula called Caffenol, which is instant coffee, vitamin C, and washing soda. I still use a commercial fixer, but supposedly sodium hypochlorite ( swimming pool chemical) works as a fixer.  Attached photo was taken with a Canon AE-1, Kentmere 100 film, and processed in Caffenol.

 

1D8C74BA-2AC6-4A75-952E-5F0B67DABFE9.jpeg

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7 hours ago, Hashknife Cowboy said:

I kept a Pentax K1000 and a few lenses.  Great film camera but it is an antique by today standards.  Every once and a while I will shoot some film, but the price is not cheap.  Kodachrome was wonderful in its era.....

Kodachrome and Ektachrome High Speed 220  were as good as I ever used.

 

I used to develop them myself and mount them in slide frames from Special Services photo shop.

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On 7/11/2021 at 12:47 PM, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

I think that any back that would do such a thing would have to be for a camera that existed in volume, a Canon or Nikon, not an Asahi/Honeywell.

 

But given that electronic interfaces are so complicated even that is unlikely.

Mo, the Asahi / Honeywell PENTAX was high volume seller, at least everywhere I was.  It was as good as the others with less physical weight and about 2/3 or 3/4 the cost.  The only down side was they gave up on screw base lenses a long time after everyone else went to bayonet bases.  I bought an adapter for that for something like seven dollars at the exchange. 

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Forty Rod the digital backs I looked at for 35mm and the 4x5 cameras were stupid expensive and the sensors, at the time, were very small.  Bought an Olympus digital SLR with 2 lenses for less than the digital conversion.  There was also a company making a digital "film" cartridge that just dropped into your camera, not sure what became of them but again IIRC the cmos sensor was small.

 

The Pentax Spotmatic series, regardless whether they were marked Ashai or Honeywell was one of the most popular 35MM SLRs on the market for a long time.  They were a step down from the top of the line Nikon/Nikomatt/Canon models of the day but were super cameras none the less.  The screw mount lenses drove me nuts but EVERYBODY made stuff for them.  My Dad made sure I knew that cross threading the lens was possible and expensive.  The last one in his inventory had a bulk film back to handle 100+ exposure rolls of film and a full motor-drive system.  He rigged it up to shoot aerial photos straight down from the Cesna 172 and bolted it it to the landing gear im a homemade protective housing.

 

If you want to shoot black and white with the Pentax you can always use the Ilford XP2 film, its a black and white film that gets processed in your local drugstore setup for color prints.

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Howdy,

If anyone decides to buy a neglected digital camera off of ebay

or anywhere...be sure of what is included.

Cables or other hardware, owner manual? In english?

Wires to recharge rechargable dedicated batteries??

Using a smartphone to take pix is nice and you might forget

all the little reasons those cameras got stuck in a closet.

Best

CR

 

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On 7/11/2021 at 11:01 AM, Larsen E. Pettifogger, SASS #32933 said:

All my very expensive old gear is now basically worthless.

Indeed.
4x5 Sinar, 4x5 Crown Graphics (several), interchangeable lenses, Nikon FM3s, lenses, C330 (multiple), all lenses, RZ67, lenses, backs, prism, and Nikonos.
I no longer shoot commercially, so they are safe queens.  And enough film in the freezer for the next 200 years.

I had to give away my mother's Beseler 23 enlarger... nobody wanted it.
My 4x5 and cold head have been in storage for over 30 years now.  Hate to give it away.
All the lenses are packed in air tight containers with silica gel to prevent mold eating the lens coatings.

[ edit ]
I was waaay late getting into the digital game, because I knew how fast it was going to progress.
A client paid me to buy a Nikon D200 (state of the art at that time) for their wedding.
I told 'em... much better to shoot 6x7cm film and have the lab make digital copies... but no. 

I shot hell out of the D200, then went to the D810, and finally to the D850 which is my last ride.
D850 is the first digital I am truly satisfied with the image quality.
I feed it Sigma ART lenses for maximum resolution.

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One of the most fun cameras I had was a "Baby Rolleiflex" that a buddy gave me about fifty years ago.  I ultimately passed it on to another friend when 127 film became difficult to find.

 

But it was a TON o' fun...!  ^_^

 

                                                   Rollei: Rolleiflex 4x4 Baby grey Price Guide: estimate a camera value

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I still use my faithful old Minolta SLR. Whenever I spot a couple rolls of film I will grab them.

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10 hours ago, Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967 said:

One of the most fun cameras I had was a "Baby Rolleiflex" that a buddy gave me about fifty years ago.  I ultimately passed it on to another friend when 127 film became difficult to find.

 

But it was a TON o' fun...!  ^_^

 

                                                   Rollei: Rolleiflex 4x4 Baby grey Price Guide: estimate a camera value

Had one of those, too.  Great for portraits, not so good for action shots.

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I bought a Canon A-1 from the PX in Nuernberg circi 1979. Still have it. Still works. I used film up to oh, about 2003 or four or something even though I had to go digital at work for making classroom presentations. I didn't get a digital SLR until 2011. Oh. LOL.

 

Thanks to a camera guy who has recently closed up for a well earned retirement, I've several different SLR's. All film. And digital. They are all my favorites! However.

 

The Pentax Spotmatic is a classic and so is the K1000. There are still places that repair film cameras and develop film. Not as easy as it once was but not a deal breaker.

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On 7/11/2021 at 9:36 AM, Forty Rod SASS 3935 said:

I have a 1973 vintage Asahi / Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic II. 35mm single lens reflex camera that I bought at the MCAS Iwakuni exchange about 1973.  I think i gave $178.00 for it, a princely sum at that time.

 

Over the years I have owned four of these wonderful cameras before this one, and dozens of lenses and other accessories.  Haven't used this one in years. It still works like new, but film is hard to find and expensive.  I have seem (somewhere) a company that makes replacement backs for film cameras which convert them to digitals.  Can't find it anywhere.

 

 

Any help will be appreciated.

 

(I have Nikon digital camera which is an ergonomic disaster and nearly impossible to use.  Not looking for a cheap piece of plastic crap.)

 

Thank you.

I learned to shoot a 35 in high school circa 1977.....on a Spotmatic. Loved it so much I bought a K-1000 soon as I could afford it. Later added an ME Super. Later still bought a Pentax 6x7 medium format (120 or 220 roll film). Sadly all pretty much obsolete now.  I ran into a guy in a camera store (tells you how long ago that was) that REALLY wanted my 6x7 outfit. He had one that was stolen. They were still worth quite a pile, and I couldn't stand to sell it. Sure wish I had. Like others who have a lot of once expensive gear, about all you can do is cry in your beer. Worth pennies on the dollar compared to what it was once worth. Be like trying to sell the Sony Betamax that cost $1000 back in the day. Just the way it is.

JHC :(

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3 hours ago, Capt. James H. Callahan said:

I learned to shoot a 35 in high school circa 1977.....on a Spotmatic. Loved it so much I bought a K-1000 soon as I could afford it. Later added an ME Super. Later still bought a Pentax 6x7 medium format (120 or 220 roll film). Sadly all pretty much obsolete now.  I ran into a guy in a camera store (tells you how long ago that was) that REALLY wanted my 6x7 outfit. He had one that was stolen. They were still worth quite a pile, and I couldn't stand to sell it. Sure wish I had. Like others who have a lot of once expensive gear, about all you can do is cry in your beer. Worth pennies on the dollar compared to what it was once worth. Be like trying to sell the Sony Betamax that cost $1000 back in the day. Just the way it is.

JHC :(

I bought my first Spotmatic from a civilian camera shop on Okinawa in 1966.  It came with a 50mm lens and I added a 100 to 250 zoom lens, filters, a bag and some other stuff.  By the time we left Okinawa I had three Spotmatic bodies, a 2X and 3X extenders, a 200 to 400 zoom, a 28mm fisheye lens and more accessories.  My favorite accessory was a Super Strobonar flash gun.  I had also bought and sold the Rolliflex twin lens reflex and a used Hasselblad  300 which I sold almost overnight and got a Japanese 2 1/4 square camera which did as much as the Hasselblad and cost about 1/6 as much.  I also had a Minox B 16mm "spy" camera a bit larger than a Zippo lighter.  I took the Minox to 'Nam with me and left the rest with my family in Utah and bought a Tower 35mm rangefinder camera from Sears before I left.

 

When I got out of the Army I fell on some hard times and ended up selling everything but the last Spotmatic and the little Tower.  A few years later we recovered and I bought a whole lab set up and got back to developing my own film.

 

As time went by so did all the photo gear except the Spotmatic with the original 50mm lens and the Strobonar flash.    The flash gave out just after  we moved here in 2014.  For the last seven years I have been using a  Nikon Coolpix digital which is alright, but I just can't bring myself to get rid of the Pentax.

 

At on time between the Army and the Marine Corps I played with the idea of becoming a professional photographer, even set up a company called Four Winds Photography.....another dead dream to add to my graveyard of almost good ideas.

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9 hours ago, Forty Rod SASS 3935 said:

...and a used Hasselblad  300 which I sold almost overnight and got a Japanese 2 1/4 square camera which did as much as the Hasselblad and cost about 1/6 as much.

 

Indeed.

I bought a new Hasselblad 500C from Brooks Camera in San Francisco.
I was doing wedding work at the time, and wanted interchangeable film magazines.

In a quiet church, that 500C shutter sounded like somebody slamming two bricks together.
I had no house to mortgage, so I couldn't buy any more dentist-priced lenses for it.

I sold it off in favor of a Mamiya C330 twin-lens with interchangeable lenses.
This is a leaf shutter, no mirror slap and dead quiet in church.
A spare body (with film) cost far less than a single 500C film magazine.

Decades later, I was gifted an entire RZ67 system, magazines and lenses.
It's a great studio camera, but the C330 is a *far* better wedding camera.
It is was 6x7cm instead of 6x6.. it would have been pure heaven.

The most intuitive shooter was my Pentax 6x7, i.e. a giant 35mm type.
I had lots of excellent lenses with that one... wonderful Pentax glass.
Flash sync was horrid, and it was also very noisy in church.. but the image quality... ahh...
I sold it off when it became a wedding safe queen.

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You're right about the noisy Hasselblad.  I had forgotten that, but I only had that camera for a month or so.  I was never very impressed with it for a dozen reasons.  I bought it because it was so highly rated, probably by people wanting it for a status symbol.  am a status symbol, and don't need that competition.  :P

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9 hours ago, Forty Rod SASS 3935 said:

I bought my first Spotmatic from a civilian camera shop on Okinawa in 1966.  It came with a 50mm lens and I added a 100 to 250 zoom lens, filters, a bag and some other stuff.  By the time we left Okinawa I had three Spotmatic bodies, a 2X and 3X extenders, a 200 to 400 zoom, a 28mm fisheye lens and more accessories.  My favorite accessory was a Super Strobonar flash gun.  I had also bought and sold the Rolliflex twin lens reflex and a used Hasselblad  300 which I sold almost overnight and got a Japanese 2 1/4 square camera which did as much as the Hasselblad and cost about 1/6 as much.  I also had a Minox B 16mm "spy" camera a bit larger than a Zippo lighter.  I took the Minox to 'Nam with me and left the rest with my family in Utah and bought a Tower 35mm rangefinder camera from Sears before I left.

 

When I got out of the Army I fell on some hard times and ended up selling everything but the last Spotmatic and the little Tower.  A few years later we recovered and I bought a whole lab set up and got back to developing my own film.

 

As time went by so did all the photo gear except the Spotmatic with the original 50mm lens and the Strobonar flash.    The flash gave out just after  we moved here in 2014.  For the last seven years I have been using a  Nikon Coolpix digital which is alright, but I just can't bring myself to get rid of the Pentax.

 

At on time between the Army and the Marine Corps I played with the idea of becoming a professional photographer, even set up a company called Four Winds Photography.....another dead dream to add to my graveyard of almost good ideas.

I'm shooting a Coolpix, and love it for the most part. Wish it had a manual mode, and in bright light I HATE the display, can't see it sometimes. I looked at something similar when I bought it that also had a viewfinder, but the viewfinder was crap, so ended up with the Nikon. Toyed with a Nikon or Pentax SLR but the price scared me off and and they looked WAAAAAY too complicated. I'm a KISS kinda guy, one reason I love the K-1000. All the automatic stuff is all well and good, but sometimes want manual control. Also wish the Coolpix had a cable release for the shutter for shooting on a tripod.

JHC

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34 minutes ago, bgavin said:

Indeed.

I bought a new Hasselblad 500C from Brooks Camera in San Francisco.
I was doing wedding work at the time, and wanted interchangeable film magazines.

In a quiet church, that 500C shutter sounded like somebody slamming two bricks together.
I had no house to mortgage, so I couldn't buy any more dentist-priced lenses for it.

I sold it off in favor of a Mamiya C330 twin-lens with interchangeable lenses.
This is a leaf shutter, no mirror slap and dead quiet in church.
A spare body (with film) cost far less than a single 500C film magazine.

Decades later, I was gifted an entire RZ67 system, magazines and lenses.
It's a great studio camera, but the C330 is a *far* better wedding camera.
It is was 6x7cm instead of 6x6.. it would have been pure heaven.

The most intuitive shooter was my Pentax 6x7, i.e. a giant 35mm type.
I had lots of excellent lenses with that one... wonderful Pentax glass.
Flash sync was horrid, and it was also very noisy in church.. but the image quality... ahh...
I sold it off when it became a wedding safe queen.

I never had any problem with the sync on my 6x7. Always wanted a thru the lens light meter, mine has none at all. IIRC you could get a prism with one, but they were typical medium format $$$$ so I never bought one. Like you said, the pics are awesome. I have a slightly wide angle lens and a portrait lens. I bought mine used at a camera store, a professional photographer traded it in and I got a sweet deal or could never have afforded it.

JHC

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