Home»Miscellaneous»Asahi Pentax Spotmatic F

Browsing through an antique shop in downtown Oviedo the other day, I spied this fully manual M42 screw mount Pentax Spotmatic F (1973-1976) poking out from a old looking leatherette camera bag. The Spotmatic F was the pinnacle of the manual Spotmatic cameras that came before it, namely the Spotmatic and Spotmatic II/IIa. The F included all the features from the II, and added metering without having to stop down the aperture (open aperture metering). But I really wasn't interested in the body - what caught my eye was the lens. Attached to the body was an SMC Takumar 50/1.4.

Having recently purchased a mirrorless camera (EOS M) capable of using old manual lenses with adapters, I've been reading up on old (relatively cheap) manual lenses that I could use. Last christmas, I came back with my brother's old Canon FD 50/1.8 and my dad's Nikkor 50/2. Very nice and highly regarded lenses themselves, but this was a Tak 1.4!

The Takumar 50/1.4 has come up several times in my research as one of the great 50s. Typical descriptions include "built like a tank", "produces tack sharp images", "lovely colors and creamy bokeh". Needless to say I was excited to find this treasure - and walked out having paid a mere 50 bucks for the whole kit (camera, lens, bag, camera case, and cheapo vivitar flash). Good copies of this lens alone go for $80-$100 on ebay. Hot Damn!!! Now I get to see what all the fuss is about for myself.

After returning home, I inspected my loot more slowly and carefully. The body was a bit dirty with caked on dust and grit, and the lens had certainly seen better days. I initially thought the lens cloudiness was just 40 years of surface dust and fingerprint smudges. But after peeking through the glass in proper light I quickly realized this wasn't just surface grime. FUNGUS! Fungus had invaded several of the internal lens elements. crap.

To say I was disappointed is an understatement. In my excitement and haste at the store... I neglected to do a thorough inspection and look for this common problem of old vintage lenses. So my steal of a deal was now looking more like a big waste of money.

With nothing to lose, I took to Youtube to look for teardown/repair videos. Who knows, maybe I could salvage it? After a few failed searches, I stumbled across a couple of tutorials... they weren't for this exact lens, and they weren't exactly great tuts - but it was enough to get me going.

Long story short, I managed to muddle my way through nearly a complete teardown to get to all of the glass elements. Almost all of them had some degree of fungus growth. A ton of lens cleaner, cotton swabs, Pec-Pads, and TLC later... and I had the glass elements as clean as could be and the lens reassembled. All told it was about 5 hrs(!) of tedious labor, but it was worth it. The lens is now fungus free, and looks great!

Now I just have to wait for my M42 to EF-M mount adapter to arrive from Amazon... and I'll finally be able to see for myself how wonderful (or not) this Takumar really is.

To pass the time until the adapter arrives, I cleaned up the body and the exterior of the lens pretty good. Other than a few tiny spots of rust and minor scratches here and there, the body is in great condition. And that brings me to the photos in this gallery...