Pentax ME Super

Pentax built the ME in 1976 as the small camera in a crowd of bricks, an aperture-priority body with no manual mode at all, just a shutter the meter chose for you. Photographers loved how it fit the hand and hated that they could not override it. So in 1980 Pentax answered with the ME Super, and the fix was clever. Instead of bolting a speed dial back on, they put two buttons on the top plate, up and down, and let you click through the shutter range while an LED scale lit the speed in the finder. Nobody else was doing manual mode that way.

It is small, and that small size is most of the reason to own one. It weighs about as much as a paperback, takes the entire Pentax K lineup, and rides on a strap all day without nagging your neck. The finder is bright for the class, with a split-prism center and a microprism collar, quick to focus in decent light. Down the left side runs a column of LEDs showing the metered speed in aperture-priority and the speed you have dialed in manual. The center-weighted meter is honest and fast, and after a roll you trust it.

Loading is the usual K-mount routine. Hinged back, drop the cassette, hook the leader, wind. The shutter is a vertical metal focal-plane unit that runs from four seconds to about 1/2000, with flash sync at 1/125, and it fires with a tight electronic clack instead of the mechanical thunk of an older Spotmatic. That speed and sync were genuinely competitive in 1980, putting the ME Super up against the Olympus OM and the Nikon FE for the same buyer.

Here is the catch every ME Super owner learns. Pull the batteries and the meter goes dark, the LED scale quits, and the up/down stepping stops working, because the auto and manual speeds are all electronically timed. You are not stranded, though. The mode selector has a 125X position that fires a mechanical 1/125 with no power at all, and Bulb works mechanically too, so a flat pair of cells leaves you with one daylight speed and a long exposure rather than a paperweight. The other long-term gripe is the top-plate buttons. The contacts under those tiny pads get crusty with age, and a body that will not change speeds is usually a cleaning job, not a real fault, though it scares people off at the table.

Today the ME Super is the thinking student's first camera and a serious street body for anyone who travels light. It trades at a friendly price, well under the Nikon FE and FM crowd it competes with, and the K mount means glass is cheap and everywhere. The one real metering trap is backlight. Center-weighted averaging will silhouette a face against a bright window every time, so for a tricky high-contrast scene, take a spot reading off the shadow with Zone Light Meter, place it where you want it, and set that exposure in manual. The body holds it without argument, and that is the ME Super doing exactly what the ME could not.