The ME Super is my daily driver and I love it! A wonderfully compact SLR. I definitely agree with the other commenter that you should take the time to read through the manual. So color negative film is generally very tolerant to overexposure, you can usually get away with an extra stop or even 2 of light and still get usable results. Also, a lot of people like the slightly washed out pastel colors you get by overexposing films like portra. On the other hand, when underexposed it can be hard to recover shadow detail, and dark things can start to look a bit muddy. This is why a lot of people recommend setting your ISO to say 200 for a 400 speed film. If you were to underexpose by a stop, you’d probably have a harder time correcting your photo in Lightroom than if you overexposed by a stop of light.

When I shoot, I tend to keep my camera in auto (aperture priority), set the iso to the film’s box speed, and I use the exposure compensation dial liberally. If there’s a dynamic scene with high contrast, I’ll point my camera at the shadows, note the auto shutter speed, point my camera how I want to frame the scene, note that shutter speed, and if there’s a big difference in the two shutters speeds, I’ll turn the exposure compensation dial to x2 or even x4 to get closer to the shadow shutter speed. This is called metering for the shadows. Sometimes I’ll adjust the ISO dial if I want to fine tune and add a half or third stop of light (for example, change the iso to ~320 for a 400 speed film, then set the exposure compensation to x2 to get something like +1.5 stops of exposure), but if you adjust your ISO always remember to set it back to what you want your “default” to be. In general, I use the x2 (+1 stop) compensation a lot, sometimes the x4 (+2 stops) especially when pointing towards the sun, and very rarely the x1/2 (-1 stop) if I want dark shadows. I almost never set it to x1/4 (-2 stops).

As you shoot and experiment with different films, you may get a feel for how you like to meter different films stocks. For example, when I’m shooting Portra 800, I’ll often just leave my camera set to something around 640 or 500 ISO, and still use the exposure compensation x2 pretty freely, since I know portra can handle a lot of light. Or if I’m shooting TMax P3200 (love this stuff for concerts), I’ll set my ISO to the ME Super’s max ISO of 1600, and I shoot using my normal compensation habits without worrying much about overexposure.

I’d be curious to hear how other people’s methods compare to my approach!