Not so with the ME Super. It almost always gives me good exposures and healthy-looking negatives. I want a manual camera with an automatic mode, but the ME Super feels more like an automatic camera with a manual mode. The ME Super, on the other hand, feels like its manual mode was an afterthought.
Would I recommend the ME Super? You bet I would. The ME Super has a good-but-not-great reputation for reliability, with jammed shutters easy to fix and problematic winders not so easy apparently being the most common complaints. For now, though, the search for that perfect Pentax camera continues. All your donations really help.
My first ever SLR bought with my own money. Still love it as a design package. Never gelled with it. Currently using a plastic fantastic MZ Pentax never made that exact camera..
Currently set to Index. Currently set to Follow. Sign in. Forgot your password? About Pentax ME Super. Compatible with two lens styles. Accurate image composition and focusing. Easy viewing of exposure settings. Continuous shooting without power. Stylish vintage-style camera body. Each interval represents a 15 day period. There is no guarantee that items will always be listed at a price within the provided range. Compare Similar Models. Camera Type. Lens Mount.
Autoexposure Modes. Maximum Shutter Speed. But the Pentax ME super became one of the cameras that I tinkered with the most. It had a battery grip that made it look really cool, but without the grip it had the advantage of being really quite small. This small size is something I really appreciate now too. The Pentax ME Super viewfinder has a slightly lower magnification of. Instead it is controlled by a switch around the shutter button that selects the mode, and a couple of little buttons.
The modes are all fairly self explanatory otherwise. When in auto mode the shutter speed indicator in the viewfinder shows you the speed the camera will shoot at.
In the manual mode, the two little buttons select the shutter speeds with indicators in the viewfinder telling you if your chosen speed is going to over or underexpose — when neither is lit, you have correct exposure.
Perhaps the person who wrote the literature had otherwise been using a Pentax MX with its difficult to turn shutter dial…? As history would prove though, dials and wheels are a lot more favourable than little buttons for changing shutter speed.
On the other shoulder of the camera is the combined exposure compensation and exposure index selection dial. Lift and rotate for speeds between 12 and ISO. Which was, of course, a big part of my attraction to it. The lens then stops down at the moment the shutter is fired.
Nothing unusual for an SLR of this era. But, as well as working like this, the aperture priority mode still works when using older M42 screw mount lenses with an adapter or lenses like the Meyer mm Trioplan and Lydith I have recently been playing with.
Unfortunately, only manual stop down or lenses with a manual stop down switch can be used, and they can only be used in manual stop down mode. In simple terms, with a manually stopping down lens attached, when you adjust the aperture and the view through the finder gets darker, the meter in the camera responds accordingly and therefore the camera will automatically shoot at an appropriate shutter speed.
Unfortunately whilst all this sounds great, there is one thing missing for the way I like to shoot auto exposure cameras. In my world, the big benefit of auto exposure is how much it speeds up the process of metering.
But, for it to work for me, I need to have the means to quickly override it. In simple terms, if not happy with the reading a camera is giving, either because of a backlit scene, or something in the scene is throwing the meter out — or even if my gut instinct just goes against what the camera is saying — I like to point the camera at something that gives me a reading that feels more right, lock it in, reframe and then shoot.
Some people would say this only works with spot metered cameras, but I get good results using cameras with a centre weighted meter too.
The alternative is to switch the camera back to manual or use exposure compensation. Unfortunately the option to switch to manual exposure is just a little too fiddly on the Pentax ME Super.
I was happy shooting it in manual mode, but switching between manual and auto just felt too fiddly. I must admit, I could probably make the exposure compensation option work. The dial is a little difficult to turn, especially with cold hands, but it would probably be at least a bit easier in the warmer months.
And I realised this almost as soon as I started using it. The first time I used it in anger was when testing the Meyer mm. A slightly extreme situation, but nonetheless, to take this I had to switch to manual, take a reading off the trees with the sun out of the frame, re-frame and shoot. The problem became even more clear when finishing the roll shooting with a 20mm Pentax-M lens. With such a wide field of view, even with the few shots I took, I found the centre of the frame — and therefore the area the camera was metering from — was pointing at the sky and thus throwing the exposure out.
Again, I overcame this by switching to manual, but it felt far to clunky having to do so. Letting the meter to its own thing here resulted in under exposure — despite much of the tree being in the centre. I found the camera was choosing all sorts of weird and wonderful shutter speeds in auto mode, so I decided to shoot it on manual mode. The funny thing was, that negative experience with the Meyer lens crept into my psyche when shooting with the 50mm too.
I wanted to take a photo of some trees that were heavily backlit. Having moments before set the Pentax ME Super back to auto, I had to fiddle with the tiny white button to switch to manual, faff about getting a meter reading I was happy with… … half way through doing this, I gave up. I was done. When I got home, I unloaded the film half way through and loaded it into the MX. It is what it is though. The answer is of course not to struggle. Ultimately, taking my personal preferences out of the equation, this camera has a great deal going for it.
How much the value of the Pentax ME Super has been going up in recent years is testament to these facts! For more articles on 35mmc about the subject matter discussed here, please click one of the following tag links:.
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