Good morning, Lowell;
It may be a bit late now for your question. If we look at it, it seems to me that you are here now. You have joined. To be quite honest, I do not remember ever seeing anyone being challenged and required to produce information and/or photographs of their membership qualifying equipment, accompanied by the implied (or even stated) warning that failure to do so would result in their expulsion from the group.
I can say that in a related group here on APUG, the requirements for membership range from possessing the equipment, or having owned the equipment in the past, to wanting to own that equipment, and on to having at least an interest in the equipment. I think that you are OK. Welcome to the group.
And, there are a couple of other groups that might interest you. They include the M42 Lenses group, and the Asahi-Pentax K-mount Camera group. They are related to this group. I do want to point out that there is a common thread among these groups, which is the Asahi-Pentax TAKUMAR lenses; there are a few models of those lenses which can be described as "legendary." While I do have some TAKUMAR lenses, most of my lenses in the M42 mount are either made by other companies, or are universal lenses with interchangeable lens mounts, such as the Vivitar, Soligor, Spiratone, Bower, Pheonix, Pro-Optic, and other makers' lenses using the "T-mount" lens adapters, the Vivitar and Soligor lenses using the TX mounts, and the Tamron lenses using the T-mount, Tamron Auto Mount, Adapt-A-Matic, Adaptall and Adaptall-2 lens mounts. By that way, the "T" in T-mount actually stands for "Taisei," from the Taisei Optical Equipment Manufacturing Company in Japan, the original name for Tamron, and goes back to 1957. Also, please note that the "T-mount" is not the same as the M42 mount, although they are the same diameter, but the threads are different, and they are not interchangeable.
Finally, there are also other cameras that used the M42 and the Pentax K-mount, such as the Sears Tower brand cameras and the Vivitar camera bodies that used both the M42 and the K-mount lenses. And, when we think about it, even the Zeiss Ikon Contax-S from 1949 would fit into this category. It was the first production camera to use the M42 lens mount.
You also asked about film scanning experiences. Yes, I do scan film also. There are two film scanners here; a Minolta Scan-Dual for 35mm film and slides, and a Nikon CoolScan LS-9000ED(u) that can scan from 16mm to 6x9 120 roll film negatives. It does take a noticeably long time period for the Nikon to do a 6x9 negative scan. I do admit that it took me a while to find a Nikon FH-689GR 120 negative holder with the ANR glass in it. There are also some flat bed scanners here that can scan film, but the dedicated film scanners do a better job of producing a useable digital image file.
Again, welcome to the group. Sorry about the current pricing for -- and limited availability of -- film. Having a daylight loader and buying your film in 100 foot (30 Meter) long rolls and "rolling your own" does help reduce that part of the operating costs of indulging our liking for older photographic equipment and processes.
Enjoy;
Ralph
Latte Land, Washington
