I had a barn sale find yesterday. They had a box of older cameras and one of the cameras was a Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic F (s/n 4668834), full of dirt, but with SMC Takumar 1:1.8/55 lens (s/n 6566345) Though the camera appears to be broken, and I didn't want to spend any money on more cameras (with 4 Pentax bodies, 1 Sears body that uses K mount, two Canon, three Minolta and one Praktica MF bodies), I couldn't resist the temptation to spend this Lincoln on it for two reasons.
First, it was something I really wanted as a small child. When I had nothing else to do, I would walk about a mile to Pointe Camera Shop (TUxedo 5-7418 - long defunct) to but a roll of 126, look at better cameras, and take brochures. I started saving birthday money and a little money I would get for things like moving dirt of tables, hoping to buy a Spotmatic II. I had saved about $60, when I went to Pointe and found that the Spotmatic II had been replaced by the Spotmatic F - costing $100 more. The price of an SLR was going up faster than I could save for it.
Second, as I have Pentax K mount bodies, and have a screwmount adapter I bought when I bought my first ZX-7, I will, after 40 years, finally be able to shoot through classic SMC-Takumar glass (too bad there is no Kodachrome anymore).
Fortunately, there was a skylight filter over the lens - so the lens is ABSOLUTELY PRISTINE.
The body appears to be broken. Specifically, the mirror stays in the "up" position, so that (usually) nothing appears in the finder. The mirror is not stuck to the shock bumper, as with the mirror up, I can easily pull the mirror into viewing position, but the mirror defaults to the up position with spring action. Oddly, in hundreds of clicks, there were three times that the mirror finished correctly in the down position, and I was able to focus through the finder - but each time the following click ended with the mirror stuck in "up". I looked all other the body for a mirror lock switch, but could not find one (this forum's guide to the SP F says there isn't any).
The shutter works at every speed, including 1 second, but seems just a little sluggish. The hot shoe works for X sync, but the FP sync contact is a short (as a finger of mine found out the hard way when I stuck an AG1B info a BC flash - ouch!)
Theoretically, I still can take a picture with this camera - only I have to blindly aim the camera in the general direction of the subject and hope it is covered
So is there any "trick" to getting the mirror to work properly with this body? Should I try to repair it somehow? (I have nothing to lose).