Wasn’t sure which forum to post this, so since I’m a Nikon person, I decided to post here. Feel free to move it if there is a better forum.
Does anyone know what a Honeywell Pretax is, or is there such a camera? Not sure it’s spelled right. I Googled it, and came up with stuff of Honeywell and corporate taxes. The reason I’m asking is that an old friend just mentioned it in an email as something she inherited years ago along with 3 lenses. Then again, maybe she was going from memory, and it’s really a Pentax, but that wasn’t made by Honeywell, was it?
Looks like you are right, and that’s what I figured, but Honeywell wasn’t mentioned till near the bottom of that page. A Pentax Spotmatic was my first SLR in the late 60's. My main interest was shooting rock concerts in San Francisco, but in 1971 or ‘72 I switched to a Minolta SRT101 because it had the wide open metering system. With the Spotmatic, it got darker in the viewfinder as you stopped down. That wasn’t ideal in a dark concert hall. The Spotmatic was a great camera. High tech in those days.
I learned photography the first time with a Pentax and a Spotmatic F back in the early 70s. I stll have the F although the meter has died. Now I'm learning all over again.
It's a genuine Pentax, built by Asahi Optical Company (Pentax) in Japan. IIRC Honeywell was the distributer of the Spotmatic series in the USA for many years, and many (all?) Spotmatics imported into the USA during that era were badged "Honeywell Pentax" as opposed to "Asahi Pentax" for the rest of the world.
With Spotmatic F collectors at least, the Asahi badged cameras tend to sell for better prices than the Honeywell badged cameras, particularly black bodies.
mikerfns has it right. My dad brought me back a Asahi Pentax Spotmatic back around 1965/6? with the 50 mm lens. On a later business trip about a year later, I had him bring back the 135 & 200 mm lens. I still have them in my collection, having added Canon A-1, Mamiya 645, Nikon F5 and Nikon D1x systems in the mean time. Honywell was the U.S. version.
mikerfns wrote:
It's a genuine Pentax, built by Asahi Optical Company (Pentax) in Japan. IIRC Honeywell was the distributer of the Spotmatic series in the USA for many years, and many (all?) Spotmatics imported into the USA during that era were badged "Honeywell Pentax" as opposed to "Asahi Pentax" for the rest of the world.
I still have (and use) my Pentax equipment. I bought my first one in 1966, from a fellow G.I. at Ft. Monmouth. It was a H1a, and it still runs like a top. I also have two Spotmatics and annother H1a, and enough glass to wiegh down a pack mule, (which is why I bought Pentax in the first place; you needed to Man Mountain Dean to carry Canon, Nikon or Bessler).
Mine is not for sale; - The needle sharp photos are really addictive.
Gave one away ( camera and 3 lenses) in the freebee thread a month or so ago. Its a Pentax plain and simple. A rose is a rose no matter what other name you put above it.
