Does anyone know much about the production of the 250 shot backs? I know that they were made for Spotmatics and KX/MX/LX, but who actually manufactured them?
The reason I ask is that I had a rush of blood on ebay and bought a couple of the MX cartridges, which were said to be identical to the LX cartridges. The thing is that they also look very similar to the Nikon MZ-1 cartridges (for the F2, F3 etc), and the Canon cartridges and the Topcon cartridges. I haven't found a picture of the spotmatic cartridges, or the olympus, contax, minolta, miranda ones. The Nikon loader looks a little different to the Pentax one, but the Minolta one looks identical to the Nikon one. Call me suspicious, but it looks a lot like some enterprising manufacturer designed a 250 shot system that they sold to virtually all of the Japanese manufacturers, who then adapted it to their own cameras. The first one to appear on an SLR (Leica had a 250 shot RF pre-war I think) was for the Nikon F. But this is different to the one introduced for the F2 in the seventies, which as far as I can tell is when the other systems started to appear. Nikon also had a 750 shot back and Minolta has a 100 shot back. nikon http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonf2/filmbacks/in dex.htm#MF-1 http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonf3ver2/databack /mf4/index1.htm canon http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/canonf1/html/bulkfil mback/index.htm topcon http://topconcollection.home.att.net/page8.html Minolta http://jwhub.xtdnet.nl/mug/mf-accessories.html Miranda http://www.mirandacamera.com/_collectibles/_rare/rare.htm Getting back to Pentax things, after buying the cartridges and then passing up an LX 250 shot back for $99 (because I don't have an LX) I did a bit of searching and found an MX back in Canada, which hopefully is on its way to me now. That was a bit more costly than the LX back (at CAN$195) but comes with three cartridges. So now all I need is the loader and somewhere that will process the film. B&H list the Nikon loader for US$290 and the Pentax loader for US$239, while the Nikon cartridges are $55, the Olympus ones $65 and the Pentax ones $109 ea - an interesting spread of prices if it is all basically the same stuff. Second hand the cartridges seem to be around US$30 ea, although my two from ebay were only $22.50. BTW, if anyone wants a Spotmatic 250 back badly, Pacific Rim Camera http://www.pacificrimcamera.com/ has one - 27281 ASAHI BULK FILM BACK FOR SPOTMATIC MOTOR DRIVE, W/ CASSETTES, MAY BE MISSING A SMALL KNOB, EX+ $250.00 Paul Ewins Melbourne, Australia - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
