Originally posted by Lord Lucan I never realised that the MEF was sought after. Is it simply as a collector's rarity?
I am not aware of any great collector demand for MEF's. However, it is a personal interest at least for one - me.
Originally posted by Lord Lucan Technically, it was a dead end; I have never handled one but Danilo Cecchi is pretty disparaging about them in his book on vintage Pentax cameras; he says that the focussing was slow, and that : "At the end of its brief and unsuccessful career the Pentax MEF was sold off at a lower price than the ME Super".
It definitely was not a marketing success, although it was quite an engineering achievement. Its AF (using just one AF lens made for it - the AF 35-70/2.8, which optically was an excellent lens, BTW) was slow, certainly by later standards -- however, AF was slow on all of the early AF systems, whether they were in-camera or in-lens systems. And it is indeed true that, in the end, Pentax dumped the MEF's without the dwdixated AF lenses on the big mail order dealers, who ended up selling MEF's with 50mm lenses for bargain prices (which is maybe why one can find so many MEF's on eBay with M 50 or A 50 lenses attached).. Too bad.
Originally posted by Lord Lucan Nevertheless, I believe it could do anything a ME Super could do (on which the design was obviously based), plus assisted focussing with any manual K-mount lens.
Quite true. And it is indeed fun to use its focus assist (i.e., focus confirmation) functionality oon al sorts of K-mount lenses.
Originally posted by Lord Lucan Was there anything other than the MEF body and its special 35-70mm zoom lens? An ever-ready case perhaps?
Well, for the main items, I have a still-NIB chrome MEF, two (rare) black MEF's (mint condition), and a couple more old chrome MEF's (to serve as donor "parts bodies", just in case), and a couple of the AF 35-70/2.8 lenses in excellent condition. For some of the accessories, I have MEF eveready cases (both ones for small lenses and "big funny shaped ones" for the big AF 35-70/2.8 lenses), and dedicated lens cases that fit the oddly shaped AF 35-70/2.8 lenses, [And, Pentax did make MEF-specific cases -- while it is possible to "force-fit" an MEF body into a generic M-body case, the MEF is actually a little taller than an ME Super, hence the MEF-specific cases.]
Oh, and I have a few examples of some of the various Ricoh, Vivitar, and Tamron primitive built-in AF lenses, too.