As a follow up to getting an Olympus OM2n a few months back, I finally managed to bag one of my all time past favourite cameras on eBay - a Pentax Super A. A follow-up to the extremely successful ME Super, the Super A was high tech wonder in its day. With the updated PKA mount lenses you had a choice of program, aperture or shutter priority and it featured new fangled LCD displays and TTL flash. Build quality feels excellent but still in a beautifully compact form factor. It was enough to win it European Camera of the Year on its launch 30 years ago.
Pentax Super A next to the OM-D EM5
This last weekend the British summer decided to turn up. After a bit of a late start, I took the opportunity to throw my camera bag in the car, get the roof down and head west across Wales. I sacrificed a few MFT lenses to fit in the Super A with a 50mm F1.7 PK lens and a roll of Velvia 50. One of my OMD batteries was dead but the spare said it was full which I thought would be fine.
After a very pleasant drive through back roads and over the Denbigh Moors, I headed towards Bodnant Gardens. This is a national trust property with rather lovely gardens which cascade down the hillside in a loverly combination of formal and informal arrangements. Due to an unexpected detour due to a running event it was already 3:30pm when I arrived - just 90 minutes before closing. This proved less of a problem than I had expected as I found out that my OMD had flat out lied to me about its battery - with flat being the operative word. I stuck the macro lens on it and had to eek out the power as much as possible. So the main duties fell to the Pentax and its 36 exposures.
Just the one lens meant a lot of zooming with my feet but it also means trying to find a bit of extra creativity. Shooting with an old school focussing screen is a bit of a joy. The EVF in the OMD is good and it has its advantages but it looks flat and electronic against the big full frame pentaprism. One challenge was having to judge depth of field again. Luckily the Super A has a DoF preview but this really darkens the image so there is still a degree of guesswork involved. I will probably lose a few frames to shake as I have got so used to the OMDs stabilisation. I tend to be too optimistic with shutter speeds these days. At ISO 50 Velvia is a slow film, especially with the OMD only starting at 2 stops faster.
It was a hot day but there was a fair bit of breeze around to stir the flora. This was a challenge for the macro shots with such a limited time. The upside of lateness was that the visitors were beginning to thin out. I don’t really like folks in my landscape shots. If they are prepared to combine doing something interesting whilst failing to notice me - that’s OK. That is one place the OMD does score. Its a bit more discreet in operation. The thunking mirror of the Pentax is a joyously mechanical sound but subtle it ain’t. Sometimes its OK for folks to stand somewhere that lends a sense of scale. What they more typically do is to come into the edge of the shot just as I press the shutter in inappropriately coloured clothing.
I used to shoot Kodachrome 64, so waiting for slides was always a drawback. These days the demand for E6 processing is too low for the local labs to turn it round quickly. So I must wait a couple of days to see if my new Super A does more than just feel nice to shoot with.
You can see the pictures I took with the 60mm f2.8 macro here and the slides from the Pentax here
Update
I have added the slides but whilst I am happy with them I am not to thrilled with my scanner's attempts at digitising them. The main problem is they are never sharp. Whilst I am prepared to accept my manual focussing skills maybe be a little rusty, something should be sharp. If it was the lens then even my aging eyes should notice something in the finder. Also frustrating is the loss of dynamic range, with the shadows getting very crushed particularly. Colour rendition is OK but they don't have the punch I see on the lightbox.