The Pentax Super ME is a beautiful little camera, introduced in 1979, superseding the old Pentax ME. It’s an extremely compact camera, with aperture priority and manual mode, making it a great camera for beginners, or a cheap alternative to adding to your collection.
Coming from the family of the Pentax K mount, you are spoilt for choice with Pentax’s trademark razor-sharp lenses. Having bought my camera from a nice little charity shop for £20, I had this camera in the drawer somewhere, until I finally took it out for a spin during the summer in London to test the 50mm SMC f/1.4 lens.
I took it to Bloomsbury where I saw a group of “medicine for people, not profit” protestors, who immediately caught my attention. I loved their colourful outfits and banners, I wasted no time in taking their picture! What I love about this camera is the large viewfinder, with a 0.95x magnification for a 50mm lens – great for those with glasses, and for cultivating composition techniques.
On my walk outside from the park, I saw a gentleman who greeted me with a thumbs up! This gave me a great opportunity to test the 1.4 aperture on the Pentax lens. I thought it did a pretty good job! Although a big disclaimer, you are better off sticking with the aperture priority mode, it’s a very fiddly camera when switching between manual and auto.
I couldn’t just take a picture of this gentleman and walk off, so I decided to get this man a hot chocolate and some food, which he gratefully accepted, which led me on to experimenting with the camera indoors and found a steely-eyed dog I just had to take a photo of, because why not? (Does anyone know the breed of this dog?. I thought the camera held up pretty well indoors! And the bokeh this time was just what I was looking for.
After a long sweltering day, and having gone through most of my rolls, it was time to go home, but before I went inside, I just had to take a picture of the wonderful steps at Granary Square, it was just nice to see people out and about again, after a year of being indoors, people were doing what humans were born to do, socialise! Thanks to the epic viewfinder, I managed to get a great shot of the famous granary square steps in Kings Cross, London, which sits right opposite a big screen with showings of the football and late-night movies. With frame left, I decided to treat myself with ice cream, and get a picture in the meantime!
Overall, I loved using this camera, it’s a joy to use. The lightweightedness makes it such an added bonus, it feels almost like a point and shoots camera that you can carry anywhere on your travels. It’s not perfect, it does not have a depth of field preview, auto exposure lock and aperture indicator in the finder. But for the price, you will pay, and with the lens choice available, shooting with this camera is a great experience!
~ Kush
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