There are a few common faults with the ME Super but the worst of them is the electrical fault that seems to be its biggest downfall. The best vintange macro lens I have owned, the 90mm Vivitar, was made with a variety of camera mounts. Unfortunately, it will be tough to find a copy that’s got a Pentax K mount. Speaking of batteries, the ME Super takes two LR44 batteries, which are still cheap and readily available today, so you don’t have to worry about the camera becoming obsolete any time soon. There is no dedicated double-exposure feature. As with most of the Pentax SLRs you have to press the rewind-button and then hold the rewind-crank while turning the wind lever. As a young guy I had many crazy ideas for double-exposures, therefore I found this issue quite cumbersome The Pentax literature claims these buttons to solve the “fumbling nature” of the dials of the day. Perhaps the person who wrote the literature had otherwise been using a Pentax MX with its difficult to turn shutter dial…? For my money, I prefer a dial, but really the Pentax ME Super system works fairly well. As history would prove though, dials and wheels are a lot more favourable than little buttons for changing shutter speed.

The Super Program was first Pentax with Program and Tv auto exposure and it also had TTL flash control, but even with the added electronics and mechanics the camera body is just about as compact as the original Pentax ME. The differences in field of view between the lenses. 40mm seems quite a bit wider than 50mm, look at the powerline and sky to see how big of a difference there is. The shots are not interchangeable by any means. The disparity between 50mm and 55mm, while still noticeable, is not as significant. I am pretty sure you could pass off the 55mm shot as a 50mm lens and no one would notice without something to compare it to. The ME Super’s Electrical fault is a big problem because the shutter and mirror are electric which means the whole camera can become useless with one fault. This fault seems to be characterised by not shooting when you press the shooting button, sometimes the camera does shoot and then the winder won’t catch over and over again. It renders it useless and it’s not easy to fix, this is why i suggest spending a little more on your camera to ensure that you save yourself the hassle.

This small size is something I really appreciate now too. It is slightly smaller than the Pentax MX, or at least it’s slightly narrower whilst also being ever so slightly taller. Neither dimensional difference amounts to much, and in the hand you wouldn’t really notice, but proportionally speaking it looks more right than the MX somehow, which I think looks a little wide/squat. I really like the viewfinder on this camera. The split prism makes it so easy to get things in focus and the displays help me nail the exposure every time. I’ve also found that the pair of buttons used for adjusting exposure time is much easier to use compared to a dial. On my other film SLRs equipped with dials, I usually have to pull the camera away from my face to do this. With the Pentax Super Program, it’s only a few taps away, no need to recompose or miss a shot.

A, F, FA or D FA Series (with aperture ring): Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual modes.Not the best option, the SMC Pentax-M 28mm f/2.8, is still a good choice. The truth is, many people might not actually consider it a wide angle lens. However, it is substantially less expensive than any wider option. The ME Super may seem confusing to use at first, but after a few pointers, you’ll understand how to shoot with this nifty little camera! Features. It has an ‘auto’ mode, but you have to set the aperture on the lens, and the camera adjusts the shutter speed, which shows up in the viewfinder. You can use ‘bulb’ or ‘M’ and ‘125x’ for all manual use. With no batteries or dead batteries you can keep on shooting, however, the camera defaults to a shutter speed of 1/125 so you’ll need to compensate via aperture for correctly exposed pictures. You can also use ‘bulb’ mode without batteries, but obviously you’ll need a support for the camera. Big and bright ground glass 0.95x viewfinder makes it easy to compose and focus. Macro lens choices for the Pentax ME Super suffer from supply problems. The supply of Pentax K mount options is small, which increases prices higher than you will pay for equivalent Canon FD mount or Nikon F mount options. SMC Pentax 100mm f/4 Macro SMC Pentax 100mm f/4 Macro

As long as a lens has a physical aperture ring, it will be compatible with Pentax film cameras. Keep in mind, it isn’t a smart idea to waste money on expensive features that can not be used by the camera. An exception would be if you already use a Pentax DSLR. C’est une prouesse d’architecture dont les plans et dessins figurent en bonne place dans le premier volume des « Plus Excellents Bastiments de France » de Jacques Androuet du Cerceau publié en 1576.Functionally speaking, no one’s going to argue against the ME’s status as an ‘entry-level’ machine. There’s no denying that it was designed with the amateur shooter in mind. That said, it’s pretty damn capable, as its exceptional viewfinder and semi-automatic nature attest.

This is an entirely fair article, and it’s unfortunate that the deal-breaker is (pretty much) the only shortcoming of the ME Super. Funnily enough I was recently thinking about buying another one as I’ve accumulated some nice K-mount lenses recently and bought an MX instead which I like very much but find a lot harder work than the ME Super. My fingers know every nuance of every control on the ME Super without having to engage my brain beyond what I’m trying to take a picture of. The bottom of the Pentax Super Program is equipped to accept a power winder, which enables the camera to shoot at a whopping 3.5 FPS. there’s also a button to release the film for rewinding, a standard tripod mount, and the cover for two A76 (or similar) batteries. Whilst making comparisons to the MX, it’s fair to say that viewfinder is nearly as impressive too. The MX viewfinder is stunning, so anything that’s “nearly as impressive” has to be a good thing. The Pentax ME Super viewfinder has a slightly lower magnification of .95x compared to the .97x of the MX. In practice, both seem very big and bright, and my success rate with the ME Super didn’t seem to suffer by comparison.As stated above, the camera is only dead batteries (or no batteries) manual at ‘125x’ or bulb mode, so it isn’t a true manual camera for the ‘all mechanical’ crowd, but it does have full manual mode with the cheap button batteries installed. It also works very well in ‘auto’ mode, however, I’d add about +1 exposure compensation for print film, some of the samples above are slightly under-exposed.