Toyota's New TV Commercial Stars the Pentax Spotmatic

I work in retail automotive, managing the marketing for a company that owns a number of luxury car dealerships, so I pay attention to car ads. Recently, Toyota debuted a very well done television commercial just in time for Christmas featuring the Pentax Spotmatic.

In the commercial, a woman has received a box from her grandmother containing a number of old photographs and the camera she took them with; the Spotmatic. As the commercial continues, the woman embarks on a journey to duplicate the same scenes her grandmother photographed, even developing her photographs in a bathroom darkroom.

You can see the commercial here.

Interestingly enough, just about the time I saw the Toyota commercial, I received a very nice copy of the same camera from a collector friend of mine. He wrote and told me that he had a nearly mint early SP and offered it at a very attractive price. The temptation was too much and I bought it. The camera is cosmetically nearly perfect, the shutter sounds good and strong and surprisingly, the meter is active and very accurate when I compare it to my handheld Sekonic Twin-Mate.

Over the course of my 14-year journey back into film photography, cameras come and go…but it seems there’s always a Spotmatic in my camera bag. Hmmm.