Pentax ES II review

The Pentax ES II was the last generation of one of photography’s classic lines; the Pentax Spotmatic.  Few cameras before or since can match the simple elegance of this screw-mount workhorse; tough and reliable, it gave professional reliability within the grasp of the amateur enthusiast. And its lenses – Pentax’s range of Takumars – were truly world class.

In 1971, the Electro Spotmatic bought Pentax’s classic into the space age; using a new range of specially modified lenses, it allowed aperture-priority shooting with a stepless, electronically controlled shutter. The admittedly  troublesome Electro Spotmatic was replaced by the more robust Pentax ES, and two years later, in 1973, by the ES II, which added a slightly different layout and metering up to ISO 3200.

The ES II was only manufactured for two years – by the middle of the decade Pentax had embraced the bayonet mount, which was quicker to change than the old screw mounts. But this last gasp of the Spotmatic is a cracking camera; if I had to shoot on one camera for the rest of my life, this would be it. And it’s only by meeting a photographer who took one of music’s most iconic pictures with one that I ended up buying one.

The ES II was not a camera used by Vietnam-era war photographers, like the Nikon F. Nor did the great street photographers give up their Leicas to take their iconic street photographs. The ES II was aimed at hobbyists, albeit those that took their photography seriously.

What makes the ES II so nice to shoot with? Despite the electronic heart beating in its metal shell, it’s a pretty simple camera. There’s only a handful of shutter speeds which can be used in manual mode, but flick the shutter dial to A and a whole range of speeds become available – if the camera decides the correct speed for the aperture chosen is 1/509^th of a second, that’s what it uses. These abilities are only unlocked with the SMC range of Takumar lenses, the ones which have the special tab on the rear of the lens which allows the camera’s auto-exposure system to read the lens aperture. The camera will use pretty much all of the vast arsenal of M42 lenses, but you’ll lose the auto-exposure, auto-aperture qualities. But if you have the SMC lenses fitted, it’s a case of setting the aperture and snapping away – something which makes the ES II particularly good for street shooting.

The ES II might not have been the staple of the mid-1970s pro photographer, but there is one iconic photograph taken on it. Pennie Smith is a British music photographer renowned for her work as a staff snapper at the NME in the 1970s. As punk hit, she went on the road with The Clash and caught the iconic image of Clash bassist Paul Simenon smashing his bass – on an ES II. The pic, personally picked off the contact sheet by Clash frontman Joe Strummer, went on to become the cover of the band’s 1980 album London Calling.

Read more reviews:

• Voigtlander Bessaflex TM: The 21st-Century M42 SLR
• Chinon CE Memotron: Automatic Evolution
• Minolta SR-T 100X: A no-frills 70s shooter

In 2007, shooting the Manic Street Preachers at a concert at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire, I realised I wasn’t the only photographer in the pit using  film – next to me was Pennie Smith herself, shooting the band on an ES II that looked like it had seen the sharp end of several war zones. The cheerful Smith made the bashed-up Pentax look like the best damn camera I’d ever seen. The next week I bought two off eBay, and ever since it’s been a rare day when one hasn’t been in the camera bag.

The only downside with the ES II their ability to chew through batteries; if you’re storing one for any length of time, it makes sense to take the batteries out. Or, if you’re heading out for more than a week or two and plan on shooting a lot with the ES II, make sure there’s a few packs of spare batteries. Unlike a lot of 70s-era cameras, which used mercury batteries, the Pentax uses the kind of button cells you can find in most corner stores. That’s another factor which makes it really useable 40 years after it was made.

Since my run in with Smith I’ve bought a couple more ES IIs – spare bodies that don’t work are particularly useful for spare parts. Though I try to use as many of my cameras as possible on trips abroad or weekend shooting, I’ll still usually have an ES II to hand – they’re easy and instinctive to use, and the Pentax’s Takumars are simply superb.

I’ve taken ES IIs on trips to Slovenia and Istanbul, Dublin and New York, and used them to take pics of several bands over the last few years. I hope Smith approves.

Check out my Flickr set taken on the ES II, and my blog post about shooting socialist R&B band Thee Faction on the ES II.

Read more on the ES II:
Review on Mike Eckman
Review by Jim Grey
Review on The Resurrected Camera
Review on Chemical Cameras

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Stephen Dowling

Founder and editor at Kosmo Foto

I’m Kosmo Foto’s founder and editor.

I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).

I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.

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