I recently purchased a shiny and new Pentax ES [Electro-Spotmatic] II camera.

The latest-and-greatest from Pentax in 1973, I had been looking for something that would allow me to use the beautiful screw-mount lenses in the collection, but with onboard metering. None of the Spotmatics on the shelf have operating meters.

It’s always a risk, and I chose to take it: the listing promised that the meter reacts to light, but did not indicate that it had been film tested. After having loaded the four LR44/A357 batteries it requires, I found this to be the case: the needle reacted as I would expect and the shutter mirror sounded like they were following along.

So on Saturday morning, Kathleen and I decided that our little adventure would be to visit The Turning Point, a used vinyl/cassette/CD/DVD/BluRay shop on Cooper at Bank. We’ve both been inching closer to being the sort of person who purchase physical media again and wanted to take a look at what was on offer.

It turns out a whole lot, and we came home with a nice little haul.

While on this little adventurelette, the new camera performed admirably.

At least until it didn’t.

It turns out that while the meter seems to be accurate, the communication between the meter and the shutter isn’t always reliable. So on three of the roll’s 24 frames, the shutter remained open much longer than it should have. A more in-depth search online shows that this is a common problem with the ES II where the meter works.

I’ve seen this before:

I have to use one of my Nikkormat ELs in manual because, while the meter works well, somewhere between it and the shutter, that calculation doesn’t get through and the shutter just stays open. At least the ES II had the good sense to show me on the test roll. The EL chose to reveal this problem while Kathleen and I were on vacation in Halifax!

It’s definitely times like this that I wish I understood 50-year-old electronics better and were skilled with a soldering iron.

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