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Pentax ME

Do you like simplicity? Simplicity that means just having the tool in your hand work when and how you want it to? Simplicity like having a tool designed for one purpose? Simplicity in design that eliminates the extraneous parts of a tool and lets you express yourself? That kind of simplicity is rare, but it's present in the Pentax ME.

Like so many Japanese imports from the mid-1970s, the Pentax ME was a small, well-designed work-horse. It is an aperture priority based camera with an electronic shutter and an extremely accurate meter meaning that you can decide on your depth of field, focus, and let the camera do the rest of the work. And even though this camera is small physically, it has one of the biggest and brightest viewfinders you'll ever see with 92% viewfinder coverage and 0.95 magnification. Those are the kinds of specifications that make modern digital cameras jealous.

If you have a collection of Pentax cameras or just some Pentax K-Mount lenses in search of a good body, it'd be easy to overlook the ME, but you simply shouldn't. Simplicity is its own reward.

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A Father's Pentax ME

A brief camera history, shared by our very own Lab Manager, and all around gentleman, David Paulin:

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"I inherited my father’s Pentax ME a few months after I started⁠ patronizing Blue Moon; before then, I was only using my Holga. The Pentax came with the tapestry strap it’s worn since it got packed away in the late 80's. It still had its embossed plastic labels with my dad’s name and social security number on the bottom, as well as our last name, written on the back door with a white paint marker - his first camera had been stolen. When I got the camera, it wasn’t functional. Blue Moon sent it out for a CLA and, of course, it came back as good as new. I was so excited to get it back and make some my-first-photo-class style images. I’m forever grateful for its aperture priority mode. It really helped me to ease into the basics of photography. It seems like such a perfect beginner camera: it’s compact and light weight, it’s viewfinder is big and bright, with 3 ways to check focus (split-image, micro-prism and ground glass), and⁠ it's meter has proven to be accurate. The SMC-M 50mm f/1.7 I inherited with the camera has delivered some beautifully sharp images. As my camera collection has grown, the Pentax sees less action than it used to. I took it out recently, to give it some exercise, and I found it reassuringly familiar and easy to use. I've always appreciated the feeling of making images with the same camera my father used to photograph his young family. I'll put a few more rolls through it, in the coming months, before i put it back on the shelf."

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Pentax ME

One of our staff makes heavy use of a Pentax ME Super. Another longtime staff member is partial to their Pentax MX. The Pentax ME, meanwhile, is both the older and simpler sibling; it can often be a little overlooked in the comparison.⁠

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The Pentax ME was introduced in 1977 and was the first in a family of super compact SLR cameras, that would include the aforementioned ME Super and MX, as well as the MV. It is thought that Pentax was responding to the direction Olympus had gone in with their compact OM-1 and OM-2 cameras. If that's the case, they actually one-upped Olympus, in terms of size, as the ME is a bit smaller and lighter than either an OM-1 or an OM-2. In fact, the ME remains one of the smaller 35mm SLR cameras ever made.⁠

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Size isn't the only thing the ME has going for it. It is a simpler camera, intended to work off of aperture priority, making it perfect for those that want a quick, straight-forward camera that is just focus and fire. While the ME has no manual shutter speed selection, one tip is to use the exposure compensation dial, which runs +2 to -2, to manually override the selected shutter speed into another of your choosing. Speaking of that shutter, while the ME shutter is battery dependent, it will continue to work in both Bulb and the Flash Sync speed of 1/100. Considering that the batteries are estimated to last about 10,000 shots (275 rolls if you are curious on the math) shutter power ought not to be a common problem.⁠

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The last bit we'll mention about the ME is its finder. Like the Olympus OM-1, the ME has a big finder for its small body. That finder also has a split prism, surrounded by a micro prism ring, surrounded by a matte screen. Three different ways of estimating focus in one screen. That finder also has .97x magnification (...and the Leica M3 gets props for having only a .91x finder), so it is nearly life-size. Put a stellar 50mm lens on this camera, like this f/1.4, and you have a really capable, fast, joy-to-look-through-the-finder camera that is easy to take everywhere. ⁠

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Yes, this camera was overdue for some love from us.⁠

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