Smoke fills the crisp morning summer air. The thundering sounds of steam locomotion shake the ground. The clanking and creaking of railroad cars rolling up to the depot. The light clacking of my camera capturing moments. I had decided to pack my Pentax KX, a Tamron 24mm f/2.5, a Pentax-M 50mm f/2, and a Tamron 28–200mm f/3.8–5.6 XR zoom.
This wouldn’t be review of camera body or lens, there are plenty written. What I’ll share is my personal story of how I come to this set. One more aspect why I’m writing this is that when I was considering the Pentax 50mm f/1.2 lens I found there to be a lack of proper film photos within shared results. So what to expect from it? For those who will be exploring the idea of buying this same glass, hopefully, this piece of writing might be useful.
I just had to come to this particular “corner“; a combination of lens and camera body, that most of film Pentaxians should confess they think about.
About a year ago, I had the idea of running film through a couple of borrowed 110 cameras and possibly writing up a review. This seems to have ended up as a mini odyssey around the world of subminiature photography, taking in such notable cameras as the Canon 110 ED, Minox 110S, Rollei A110 and a selection of 16 mm cameras. Recommendations from commenters on previous articles led me to the Pentax Auto 110. It isn’t a bad place to have ended up.
When a couple years ago my daughter was given a film camera by her partner’s uncle it was passed to me to check out before she used it. I didn’t know what to expect but it turned out to be a Pentax Program A. The dust on the gadget bag it came in suggested that it had slumbered under a bed or at the bottom of a wardrobe for some time so I suspected that the first thing it would need would be new light seals. I was not wrong, they were the usual gooey mess and the mirror damper had almost completely disintegrated. That aside, my first impression was that it was vaguely akin to my Minolta XD7. Same size, same black finish wearing at the rub points on the edges, even the same amount of dust in the pentaprism.
My relationship with the Pentax ME Super has been quite short. I initially thought it might just about supplant the MX, but after finding it increasingly frustrating throughout only shooting a roll and a half, I’ve decided I have no intention of shooting it again.
