I like good surprises. And I received one last week. While in SE Camera Carrboro I found out that the store manager, Chris, had set aside a camera for me to see because he thought I would be interested. And he was right. Chris is a sort of Photographer Whisperer it would seem. He made the same call regarding Matthew and a camera strap and he was on the money that time as well as he gravitated towards it the moment he saw it. In my case, I have a built-in warm spot for Pentax since my Dad had one he bought new and first taught me how to shoot on as a child. As you will see by another post I have in queue I will always keep an ME Super around as I have bought 3 in the last week alone. More on that later. In addition Chris was also instrumental in my recent purchase of a Pentax K-1. Add to that a strange draw to Pentax medium format film and digital cameras that he was not aware of and it paints a picture of a sucker for any Pentax. Mind you I am ultimately brand agnostic and either own or have owned countless brands. Task at hand and all that. Too late to make a long story short so allow me to present the recently gifted Pentax SF10:
A piece of K Mount AF, AE, auto advance, pop up flash with a cheeky hidden hotshoe on the right soldier. It is goofy and I love it. As Pentaxes are ridiculously lens compatible first order of business was tearing the 100mm WR macro off of the K-1 I had on my shoulder and immediately placing it on the SF10. Insert battery, find pop up flash release (cackle like lunatic), load with film and fire off shots before I can even get out of the shop. May be their master plan because they can rest assured I will be spending the street price for the body in film development in short order. Even has multishot advance, but why I would want to burn through 24-36 exposures in a moment is beyond me. Looks better with the era correct Pentax SMC-A 50mm f/1.7 on it. Some notes and samples from the first roll through below.
- Light leak. I do not care. It was a free camera so let’s call this character. May get it looked at, but oddly I miss the light leaks my Minolta X-700 had before a high-quality servicing and new back by Alex at SE Camera.
- AF on this camera is excellent. That is all.
- Exposure is what it is. There is no tampering with ISO or exposure level other than an exposure lock button on the back oddly labeled ‘ML’ (makes more sense on this level of camera than it meaning mirror lockup as I first thought). Fortunately, it is spot on from what I can tell so far.
- Exposure ring on lens works well just like my K-1. In fact, all lenses work from my oldest to newest. Quite funny to see a Tamron 70-200m f/2.8 on this thing.
- While I never heard of this camera before last week I would definitely buy one at the going rate after seeing the first roll.
- Speaking of the first roll here is a link to the full roll and here are some samples…
Eric L. Woods 
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