All my cameras, 15 – Pentax ME Super

This was the second camera I owned, after the piece of junk Praktica that I had as a teenager. I bought this in my twenties when I still knew nothing about photography. In those days (late 1980s in Sydney) there were lots of camera shops that had large selections of second hand cameras for sale, mostly on consignment I suppose. I got this on the recommendation of a salesman in the shop as I had no idea what was a good camera or not. I used this for about ten years as my only camera, including four years at art school. Then I started to get random light leaks in my photos and a camera repair place said it was a shutter problem that wasn’t worth repairing. So I set it aside and moved to a Canon EOS 5 film camera. I couldn’t sell the Pentax with that problem so just put it in a cupboard and forgot about it. I’m now thinking that I should test it with film and see what results I get, or perhaps show it to my current camera repair person for his opinion. If the body is no good I could sell the lens. Or I could buy another Pentax body, but I already have too many cameras. The rise of digital and online sales platforms meant that starting from about 2005 it was easy and relatively cheap to buy cameras that I could never afford in the old days, so I went from being someone who only ever owned one camera at a time to someone who had dozens.

The ME Super was an excellent camera, the only thing I didn’t like about it were the two small buttons that were used to change shutter speeds. I would much prefer a traditional dial, and always thought the buttons were a design gimmick flaw. Having said that, once I got used to them they were practical enough. The lens quality was also excellent. I shot a lot of slide film in those days and I’m still impressed by the image quality when I look through them.