Pentax ME review

By Aaron Gold

“You just call on me, brother, when you need a hand… I’m right up the road, I’ll share your load.” – Bill Withers, ‘Lean On Me’

“Computers are servomechanisms,” says a 1976 brochure for the Pentax ME. “That is, they are machines designed to serve man. [Sorry, ladies – AG.] By freeing him from consuming countless hours in performing trivial calculations, they enable man to spend his time concentrating on the important matters at hand. As a user of an Asahi Pentax ME, you will not have to waste time making calculations or matching needles. You are free to concentrate on the image and shoot spontaneously, leaving the determination of exposure to the infinitely faster and more accurate micro-computer built into your ME.”

In other words, automatic exposure is better than manual exposure. That was a hard sell in the 1970s, just as it is today. Then as now, a lot of photographers felt that automatic mode was a crutch for amateurs, wimps, and subversives, and that real photographers set their exposure manually.

My big, fat, guilty secret

Well, Kosmo komrades, I have a confession to make: as a 30-plus-year film veteran, one who spent years shooting with an all-manual Pentax KX, these days I do most of my photography (film and digital) in aperture-priority mode. The way I see it, ap-priority isn’t all that different from manual shooting. I’m still in full control of my exposure settings, because changing one parameter changes the other. I’m just letting the camera twiddle one of the dials, that’s all.

Yeah, it’s thin – and that’s why I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I pick up my ME, Pentax’s first automatic-only SLR. I can’t help but thinking: what if a fellow film-camera geek sees me and thinks I don’t know how to shoot manual?

I would love to excise that little voice from my head, because the Pentax ME is a delight in so many ways – a classic camera that looks, feels and sounds fantastic. If you have enough self-esteem to turn your camera’s shutter dial to “A”, I think you might find the Pentax ME as agreeable as I do.

Let’s get small

The M-series (which started out as the auto-only ME and the all-manual MX, the latter voted by Kosmo Foto readers as Pentax’s best-ever camera) was a response to Olympus’ miniaturised OM-series SLRs. Compared to contemporary SLRs like the Canon AE-1, Minolta SRTs, and Pentax Ks, these cameras were (and are) tiny and light: The ME body weighs just over a pound (460g), about two-thirds the weight of a traditional SLR. Cameras wouldn’t get this light again until the plastic-obsessed 1990s.

Some people complain the Ms are too small for their large hands, but I think they’re just trying to get the fact that they have large hands into the conversation. (We know what you’re really trying to tell us.)

The ME’s tiny size is a great advantage: It doesn’t take up much space in your camera bag, and it’ll even fit into a decent-size jacket pocket. Years back, I had an MG – a 1981 successor to the ME –and I started slipping it into my camera bag as a backup for my KX. More and more, however, I found myself using the MG as my primary camera. Like the ME, it was easy to swing around, and it let me get a lot of spur-of-the-second grab shots I would have missed as I fumbled to set exposure on the KX.

Funny, you don’t look like an automatic camera

Styling-wise, the ME is a classic: Black and silver (all-black was an extra-cost option), with textured leather where your hands go and all the controls where you’d expect to find them – except shutter-speed selection, which resides in the ME’s electronic circuitry. In place of a shutter dial, the ME has an early example of a mode dial, with four positions: L (shutter lock), Auto, 1/100 (sync speed), and B(ulb). Without batteries – 1.5v LR44 button cells – the ME fires only at 1/100 or Bulb. The ring around the rewind crank doubles as the film speed setting (12 to 1600 ASA) and exposure compensation dial.

The shutter release is nicely weighted and the winder pull has a lovely mechanical feel. Though the Seiko MFC vertical-travel metal-leaf shutter is electronically timed, the mechanism operates with a muted and sonically satisfying ka-CLACK, soft enough for stealth street photography but loud enough that you’ll know you’re using a real camera.

Feature-wise, the Pentax ME is clearly aimed below the high end of the amateur market. It has a self-timer and provision for a motor drive, but no depth-of-field preview or mirror lock-up. The latter can be an issue if you’re shooting with long lenses; though the mirror is reasonably well damped, the ME’s light weight means it’s more prone to vibration.

The ME has a couple surprise-and-delight features, like a shutter-cocked (heh) indicator (an orange dot between the winder and mode dial) and a little window with red lines that wiggle when the film is moving, a great hedge against mis-loading. That said, I’m not sure that’s even possible, as the ME has Pentax’s “Magic Needles” loading system. The take-up reel is made of closely-spaced white pins, and loading is a matter or jamming the end of the leader between any two of them. It’s almost impossible to misload, and makes it easy to get an extra two or three shots on every roll.

The classic shooting experience, automated

The ME’s viewfinder is big and relatively simple. Along with the focusing aids – split-ring surrounded by a microprism collar, pretty standard stuff – there’s a list of shutter speeds running down the left edge of the screen. You set the aperture and a red LED dot lights up to indicate the corresponding shutter speed selected by the camera. LEDs at the top and bottom of the scale indicate over- or under-exposure.

This is a good a place as any to tell you my one major complaint about the ME: all the LEDs are red. On the ME’s successors, the MG and ME Super, the LEDs were color-coded: Green for speeds of 1/60 and above, yellow for 1/30 and below, and red for over- or under-exposure. That made it easy to tell at a glance if your shot was a go. In the ME, you have to pay closer attention to the numbers.

Actually, I lied to you in the previous paragraph. The ME’s LEDs don’t indicate the actual shutter speed; rather, they indicate the closest shutter speed – because what is not always known about electronically timed shutters is that they are stepless, meaning they aren’t limited to the speeds listed on the (missing) shutter dial. If the ME’s computer brain determines that 1/273rd of a second is ideal for your exposure, that’s what you’ll get. So the ME can actually expose more precisely than a manual camera (and I’ve got the slides to prove it).

Another ME advantage: it uses a gallium arsenide photo diode (GPD) for its meter. GPDs are quicker to respond and less sensitive to infrared light than the more-common silicone photo diodes (SPDs), and Pentax generally reserved them for its higher-end cameras. (Later automatic M-series cameras would use SPDs, while the ME Super used GPDs.)

The ME uses the Pentax K-mount, meaning there’s a huge library of lenses both from Pentax and third-party manufacturers. For those unfamiliar, besides being used for that ubiquitous student camera, the K1000, the K-mount was employed by several third-party camera manufacturers. Unlike Nikon’s F-mount, where lenses might fit but won’t necessarily function (and, in some combinations, can break the camera), the K mount really is universal, and newer “KA” lenses, which allow automation of the aperture, work on older Ks just fine.

Older MEs will generally come with the popular Pentax-M 50mm f/1.7 lens, and you might find a newer example with the slightly-lighter f/2 version. Pair an ME with Pentax’s 40mm f/2.8 “pancake” lens and you’ve got a genuinely pocketable SLR.

Could the perfect camera be… automatic?

If it sounds like I’m pitching the ME as the perfect camera, well, maybe I am. Jim Grey, whose camera reviews I enjoy immensely, has cited the ME as his favorite walk-around body. Okay, given the choice I’d rather have an MG or an ME Super, which have the multi-colour meter display and, for the Super, a manual override (which, admittedly, I rarely use). But my ME Super went on the fritz some time ago, and I haven’t gotten around to having it repaired – and frankly, the ME and I are getting along just fine.

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Another advantage to the ME is that it’s very reasonably priced; you can still find working examples in the US$50-75 range, Erick Hendrickson of Pentaxs.com, considered by many in the Pentax community to be the go-to Pentax repair person in the US, still has the ME on his menu, and at $65 it’s the least-expensive Pentax to have him service.

Mine belonged to my grandfather and came to me via my uncle; I sent it to Eric for an overhaul, and using it feels like snapping away with a brand-new 1976 camera, except I’m not holding a Marlboro in one hand and the keys to my AMC Gremlin in the other. (Er, for the record, Grandpa was a non-smoker who drove a Cadillac.)

Would I recommend the Pentax ME? You bet I would. The question is: would you want to shoot with one? Can your ego stand using an automatic-only camera? It’s one thing to use a camera with an automatic mode; you can tell yourself that you can switch to manual any time. Not so with an automatic-only ME.

Not that the ME removes all thought from the process; you still need to think about what the meter is seeing and know when to twist that EC dial to alter your exposure. Still, I think that old brochure is right: with the Pentax ME, a man (or a woman!) can concentrate on the image and shoot spontaneously, and leave the shutter-dial-twiddling to the ME’s infinitely more precise computer.

Embrace the servomechanism, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the Pentax ME just as much as I do.

Pentax ME verdict

FOR: Light weight, accurate autoexposure system, excellent lens availability

AGAINST: Meter LEDs not colour-coded, friends might tease you for not shooting manual

VERDICT: A light-weight, accurate camera that shares the workload with you.

Pentax ME specifications 

Year of introduction: 1976

Exposure modes: Aperture-priority automatic

Focus: Manual

Film advance: Manual

Lens mount: Pentax K-mount

Shutter: Electronic, metal-blade, vertical travel

Shutter speed range: 1/1000 – 8s

Flash sync speed: 1/100

Film speed range: 12 – 1600 ASA

Meter: TTL, open aperture, center weighted, GPD

Meter display: LED shutter-speed display

Viewfinder info: Shutter speed

Focusing aids: Horizontal split-screen with microprism collar

Exposure compensation: Yes, +/- 2 stops

Battery: LR-44 alkaline (2)

Flash connection: Hot shoe

Built-in flash: No

Self-timer: Yes

DOF preview: No

Mirror lock-up: No

Motor drive: Available

Data back: Not available

Weight (body only): 460g

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