Overall Condition 8.5/10

all functions working,

working light meter,

lens and finder are clean and clear, almost no dust in finder.

(Includes 3 month warranty)

Pentax Spotmatic SP 

The original 1964 Spotmatic was one of the first SLRs on the market to offer a through-the-lens (TTL) exposure metering system. The camera was presented as a prototype at photokina 1960, and was originally designed to use spot metering. Shortly before production Asahi decided that spot metering would be too difficult to use, and so the metering system was altered to use center-weighted average metering. The change took place too close to production to change the name, and so Spotmatic stuck. The camera had a mechanical shutter with speed range from 1000 to 1 and Bulb. The lightmeter is activated by a lever on the side of the camera, which also stopped down the lens. Mercury battery (1.35 V Mallory RM640) was used to power the light metering system; however due to the way the circuit is designed, silver oxide batteries can be used instead.

Specifications 

• Type: SLR body
• Manufacturer: Asahi Optical Co.
• Year of launch: 1964
• Films: 35mm, speeds up to 1600 ASA
• Viewfinder: pentaprism eye-level viewfinder
• Lens Mount: Pentax/Praktica screwmount (M42)
• Shutter: Focal plane shutter, speeds 1 - 1/1000 second, flash sync 1/60 second
• Metering: CdS TTL metering (stopped-down manual match-needle metering system) EV 1.7 ~ 18 (ISO 100) ASA range 20-1600 (on original Spotmatic)

Super Takumar 50mm 1.4

Pentax’s answer to the question of Zeiss, the prototype Spotmatic, debuted at Photokina in 1960 with the production camera finally hitting the market in 1964. The standard lens fitted to most Spotmatics was Pentax’s new, Zeiss-killing eight-element 50mm F/1.4. This was the bleeding edge of photographic engineering, and the photographic press was unanimous in declaring a new king fifty had arrived.

Advanced though it was, the lens seems quite humble by today’s standards. Though its construction is complex it has shortcomings – on its original contemporary machines, it can only be used in conjunction with an in-body light meter when stopped-down. Under bright conditions the lens sometimes suffers from flare issues and odd color fringing. It’s heavy, especially when we fit it to a mirrorless camera via the usual metal adapters.

What we think

This fully mechanical body with working light meter is a dream for a beginner who actually wants to learn all about exposures and metering, this camera has no limits its all up to you to learn and push your photography skills and have a lot of fun in the mean time.

also being a M42 screw mount body this allows you to have access to have a lot of native lens' as this was the standard SLR lens mount for most camera manufactures at the time.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentax_Spotmatic

https://www.casualphotophile.com/2017/07/28/pentax-super-takumar-50mm-f1-4-m42-mount-lens-review/