The Ricoh 500 ME was the the last hurrah for the fantastic Ricoh 500 series, produced around the early 80s and finally discontinued in 1984 the 500 ME was, at the time, another small compact rangefinder camera of the type that was so popular during the late 70's and early 80's. Designed for the serious amateur who wanted control and image quality but didn't want to run to the cost of the then, still very expensive SLR.
Konica, Olympus and Ricoh where the 3 big players in this market, and upon its original release the 500 ME held its own but was never as popular as some of the other brands.
Unusually for cameras of this type, the Ricoh sported and option for Multiple Exposure (hence ME) as well as a matched flash gun and clockwork powered motor wind!
We have been a fan of these great little cameras for years and own several variants of the 500 series, but as time has advanced people have realised just how good these cameras are and they now have something of a cult following.
The 40mm f2.8 Rikenon lens is remarkably sharp and when coupled with the ability to manually control the exposure, and a fast high speed of 500th of a second, this camera is more than capable of producing fantastic results.
Ricoh also produced the 800 EES around the same time, this camera is now quite rare, mostly due to its original expense, the body and internals are very similar to the 500 series and the camera was very nearly the same size, been only a few millimetres larger.
The camera was produced in small numbers for a niche market who wanted a higher top speed, all other features from the 500 series remained the same, but as the name suggests the top speed was changed to produce a blistering 800th of a second. Perfect for sports and action shots.
If you want to relive the glory days of the early 80's then this is one of the best cameras to capture "day to day" images.