Real ale is supposed to be served at room temperature AFAIK, as opposed to the bottled stuff which is served cold. I have heard tales of ale being warmed for people who worked outside in winter though!

Beer originally became popular as it was the only way to guarantee that you were drinking something clean. The brewing process acted as a very effective sterilising procedure in an era when the only people who could rely on clean drinking water were those living near enough to springs.

They can do that, but it's probably a sign that the camera needs a proper service. Whatever caused it to jam in the first place probably will happen again.

I once had an MG which would fire reliably for 36 shots (without film, it was sold as broken so I was testing whether my attempt to fix it had worked), but if you put it aside for a day and then tried again it would invariably jam! That one ended up donating parts to a working but scruffy MG and a rare chrome MV1 with a missing winder lever.

I've now acquired a jammed but tidy ME for a tenner, going to try lighter fluid (widely recommended as a cleaning product for camera mechanisms) and see if I can get it to play again. I quite fancy tracking down one of those belt clips Pentax made for the ME, if I can get it working.

The main thing to watch for with older cameras (assuming that they do actually work) is the light seals and mirror bumper foam turning into horrible sticky goo which trashes the focussing screen and makes a horrible mess. You can buy kits to replace it for under £10 including delivery from the USA, I've replaced the foam on all of my film bodies this way.

The screwdriver method is certainly less painful to the hands!

The "give it a thump" method is however useful if it jams on frame 23 of a film, as you should be able to rescue the previous frames if you can get the shutter closed and then rewind it.

Note that because the previous owner forced the winder there will be other bent/broken parts inside, so just clearing the jam will not return it to working order.

I'd settle for an original K series 85mm f1.8, knowing what other K lenses are like it wouldn't give much away to an A* in image quality!

Whatever you do, don't force it!

There is a website detailing the most common cause of this problem, or if you don't fancy trying to sort it you have two options:

Buy another ME Super, they are usually very cheap without a lens (as people mostly want them for the 50mm prime they generally came with)

Get in touch with a servicing/repair place and ask for a quote to give your camera a full service.

The latter will almost certainly be more expensive, but you'll have a camera that's ready for the next twenty years and it'll be your camera with all the attached memories, rather than any old ME Super.

If he forced the wind on lever when the camera was jammed then something will be broken inside. The mirror lock-up is probably a symptom of the original jam - quite often it's caused by the upper shutter blades not dropping properly, when this happens the mirror doesn't drop as it's rigged to do so when the shutter closes. At the same time the wind on mechanism will be locked. You can try stripping it down, or just use the camera for parts as I did with a broken MG. That camera donated its focussing screen to an otherwise mint MG with a cracked one along with its viewfinder, and its wind on lever to a rare chrome MV1 which is now a very presentable example.

You can sometimes clear this jam by smacking the base of the camera against the palm of your hand, but it will come back. There is a site detailing the common causes of ME/ME Super jams, I think it generally comes back near the top of the results if you Google "Pentax ME Jammed".

The spoon and fork are what happen when you have some nifty halogen downlighters above the kitchen worktop and think "hmm, good place for close-ups of small items..."

I'll be able to comment on performance after another 26 shots, but in purely tactile terms I have to say I prefer my MX. The SFX is a monster of a camera, bigger than my K-m or even my original '70s KM. To me, using film is an excuse to use those wonderful mechanical bodies with manual focus and at least some intervention being required to ensure a decent result.

The 2CR5 grip was the standard part supplied with the SFX/SFXn, Pentax offered two optional alternative grips: one for AAs and one giving a remote battery pack which also took AAs. Presumably the latter was intended to allow you to keep the batteries warm for cold weather shooting.

You can see the difference here - the AA grip is more angular and sticks out further. Due to the SF series being heavy, chunky cameras it doesn't make much difference to the weight or handling!

[IMG]http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x21/Kingofthemountains/IMGP2252.jpg[/IMG]

I think a 35mm would be an ideal cheap prime on APS-C sensors, as it'll give more or less the same field of view as 50mm on film. I don't even see it harming the marketing if they made a 35mm lens with similar image quality to the old M 28mm f3.5 for around the £100 mark as it'd hook people into both Pentax and prime lenses.