Pentax ME Super

Back to a Pentax, in part, this was the camera that took me back to film.

It was 2003, my mother-in-law had this camera, which belonged to her late husband, and asked me to put it in working order.

I cleaned it, changed the light seals, inserted a fresh battery, a film roll, and took it with me on a holiday week on my father's family farm, Quinta do Souto in Briteiros, Guimarães.

When the pictures came back, I was thrilled with the results: 

These were not the kind of pictures that I was getting with the digital cameras, which have been using for six years.

I have been shooting digital since 1997 with a Fuji DS7 then a DS300, MX700 (1998), MX2700 (1999), MX2900Z (2000) FX4900Z (2001), S602Z (2003), S9500 /2005), as a Fujifilm employee, at that time, it was easy to make those upgrades and truth be told, like most of the people I was convinced that film photography was done.

Looking at my digital camera's chronology, you can realize that the experience with the Pentax ME Super didn't make me immediately abandon the digital, but left me thinking, why wasn't I able to get those results on digital? Once and a while, I looked at those pictures, and older ones and brooded about it.

The fact is that those cameras were all the bridge type, with tiny sensors and zoom lenses of limited maximum aperture.

But digital was so easy, getting out, taking some pictures, on arriving home inserting the memory card in the computer card reader and voilà: pictures ready to use. 

Then in the summer of 2008, my dear late friend Alberto “Berto” Pinto showed me his last purchase, a Nikon D40, I really trusted his opinion on this matter. He lent it to me for a few days, I was surrendered, and bought me one.

It looked bright, my future as a digital photographer, although, I was still brooding, something was still missing.

Anyway, I was thrilled with my new camera and wanted to know everything about it, turned to the net and found Ken Rockwell's site, his review of my new camera couldn't be more positive, the ideal camera to someone interested in making great pictures on a budget.

I found his site really entertaining, started reading other articles and I couldn't believe it when I read that those digital cameras are extremely easy, lots of fun, but the beautiful pictures of American wastelands with their abandoned properties and cars, in astonishing colours and detail, weren't taken with any digital cameras but film ones most medium or large format, on Velvia slide film.

Are you kidding? Now I had a DSLR, everything looked on track, comes this guy opening my eyes, showing me that the correct way was to film.

It was when I took a step back to start moving forward. 

I knew that my father had some old cameras that might check some of the boxes. I asked him to lend them to me, but he didn't, he gave them. A Kodak Vest Pocket Autographic, for 127 roll film and an ICA Minimum Palmos, the user of 9x12 cm plates.

I had once used the ICA on a shooting session of my friend/master Luís Ferreira Alves, he had a Linhof of the same size. That, and watching Luís shoot with his Pentax 67 was the sum of my experience with any film format larger than 135. So, I assumed that the Vest Pocket was a 120 camera and, went to buy a roll of it in the also already gone Sempre-ID, on arriving home realized it wasn't a fit.

I went investigating, found the correct film, and ordered some Efke R100 online.

While waiting for them to arrive grabbed a Canon P from my father-in-law's estate, loaded an HP5, and went to test it. On arriving went digging for my old Paterson tank, developed the film, and really enjoyed the results, scanned in the Epson Perfection 1660 photo I had at that time.

My order of 127 rolls arrived, and I went for a holiday to Santiago de Compostela, shot two rolls with the Vest Pocket, and was amazed by the results. How could a camera almost centenary, with a single element meniscus lens and two shutter speeds perform that way?

I needed to go deeper, searched on eBay, and found a Zeiss Ikon Nettar, 120 6x6 cm, I loved it, next a Yashica mat-124, even better.

I was unable to stop, started rummaging flea markets, specially Vandoma market, in Fontaínhas, here in Porto. 

I registered on Flickr where I found lots of support from people afflicted by the same, and GAS, Gear Acquisition Syndrome, set in. For good reasons, at that time one bought cameras for a song, there were occasions when I paid a lot more for postage than for the camera itself, and I have quite a few that were given by friends and relatives.

Things went on, today I have over nine hundred. Although I had pruned vastly my collection when I targeted it at Nikon, German, and ex-East Block cameras, with an important Kodak section and another one dedicated to the ones that, although not fitting those parameters, by reasons of aesthetics, quirkiness, rarity, or technical details have their place.

It's about them that I will write in future articles.

Stay tuned!