A stroll with

A stroll with a Pentax ME

June 25, 2019

2445

I got this for free through my father, I didn’t know anything about the ME when I got it. But at the first look I found somethings I liked about it even before I made my first photo with it.

First there is a place, I don’t really know the English word for it, but it’s a spot on the back of the camera where you can insert the end of your film cardboard box, so you always know what film you have in the camera. It’s a simple little thing, but it makes a huge difference, if you ask me.

The other things are the viewfinder, I have never seen such a bright and clear viewfinder, on an SLR before, it might be because I always buy my cameras on flea markets and in thrift stores, and they might not come from the best conditions. But anyway it is a pure joy to look through. And then there is the size of the camera, it’s actually rather small, which in this case is a good thing.

It’s a semi-automatic camera, you control the aperture – and ISO – the camera sets the right shutter speed. Which I like a lot, it’s actually the way I mostly shot with my digital cameras.
There is one way you can affect the shutter speed manually, and that’s by chancing a dial where you can either go 1 or 2 stops up or down, indicated with 2x # 4x for up and 1/2x # 1/4x for down, which is a funny way of doing it, normally it would just be +1 & +2 and -1 & -2. This dial is also a weak point of the camera, because is a bit to easy to turn that dial, on my first film I accidentally change it to 4×, which “made” my 200 ISO an 800 ISO film, and it took me a few shots before I found out. I would have been nice with some kind of lock on it.

I quickly found out that the winder can get stuck, I only had one film though it when the winder stuck, luckily on the last frame of the roll, but still it sucked. And it sucked even more when I got the film back from the lab and saw that the hit rate was a lot higher than it normally is on a roll of film. It might have been a coincident but I don’t think so.
I tried to fix it my self – it should be an easy fix – but I only broke the camera even more. Who said handyman? 🙂
Luckily the camera is – still – rather cheap, so I just got me another one.