Honeywell Pentax ES
During my sophomore year in high school I bought my first 35mm camera. While I have had cameras prior to this, this was my first camera that was not a hand me down. Unless I am mistaken, this was the first Honeywell Pentax ES sold by Henry Louis Camera in Iowa City, Iowa which appears might still be in business.
I was messing around on eBay a month or so ago and saw an extremely clean, non-working Pentax ES for a nifty price. I figured I could relive a little bit of my youth and bought it to go on the shelf with my other Collectable cameras. Playing with it, I discovered that occasionally the mirror would return and it could be fired again. Most of the time the mirror would stay in the up position. I did a little reading online and discovered this is a real common problem that is generally fixed with a well placed tiny drop of oil. One of the pages describing the fix is here.
After the "oil drop" repair, using some high end watch oil the mirror has been returning as it should every time. I put a fresh battery in the housing and it then seemed like the electronics were functional. I shopped around online and found an extremely clean 55mm f/1.8 lens. It was cheap enough that if the camera did not work, at least I would have a complete example of the camera. My original ES had the faster 50mm lens. When the lens arrived I was astonished to see that the metering and shutter appear to work. Shutter speeds changed with different lighting and seemed correct. I loaded it with a roll of film...