The thought of a retro DLSR is appealing, getting rid of the LCD, albeit not too practical would make it rather retro and would also help to keep cost, size & battery consumption down. Also, the point of this being an ideal 'student camera' sounds convincing. I suppose this could be a RAW + MF only job as well. The latter would make the viewfinder brighter as no light would need to be diverted to the AF sensor (=eliminated, as would be the body AF motor). This should be K-mount with aperture set on the ring for maximal 'retro'
. I suppose it would be possible to make an M42 adapter which would depress the auto-pin for exposure, especially assuming that the body does not control aperture (the CWA meter could be stop down / activated with a button press
). [edit: This concept would allow drastically simplfied electronics with a low power processor with minimal memory which would allow extended battery life / small (discardable = no charger) battery = cheap, BOM-wise
. ]