[Foto] Ha mar Spotmatic...

[Bodnar Robert]

Ha bírjátok az angolt, ezt ma kaptam a Spotmatic listán, egy Ted White nevű
emberkétől, nagyon megtetszett:

"Today in my photo class at Cochise College it was camera day.  Most
students have AF Canons or Minoltas that can be set at either AF or
MF.  Mf is a class requirement.

The lecture - if one could call it that - was about the two ways one
can control light hitting the film.  (Not an easy task).  First I
brought in a Speed Graphic, a TLR Rollei, and a Yashica Electro 35
GSN.  We talked about how they worked.  We talked about parallax on
the Rollei and the Yashica.  I could see a few eyes glazing over.

Then I pulled one of my spotties out of a bag.  I unscrewed the lens
("You have to 'unscrew' it?") and passed it around, asking them to
press the pin and see the aperture stop down.  You could see them
getting interested.  No gold contact points here.  Then I showed them
how the plate pressed against the pin when the shutter was released.

They picked up on the mechanics right away.  Then I showed them (by
having them look through the viewfinder as they activated the meter
switch) how that worked.  One student said that she had "no clue" how
her EOS worked, but she "understood" the spottie.  "I didn't like it
when it got dim, though," said another.

Another student, a 16 year old high school senior (high school
students can take college classes if they have a high GP average),
said, "What a cool camera, it feels so solid compared to this, this,
plastic camera I've got.  Where can I buy a Spotmatic."  When I told
them how old my spottie was (#125XXXX), and when they quit making
them, there occurred a period of dead silence.

An old man (in his seventies) kept hefting both his Minolta Maxxum 5
and the Spotmatic, weighing each, as one does, one camera in each
hand, finally handed the spottie back to me.  "Now that's a real
camera," he said.

I feel like an anachronism."