You could, if you wanted to, spent £2,000 on a compact 35mm film camera. There are plenty of sellers with Contax T3s charging just that for Kyocera’s swansong premium film compact.
Too much? How about £1,500 for an equally overhyped Contax T2? Or £750 for a Nikon 35Ti?
You could be forgiven for thinking that to get your hands on a decent autofocus 35mm compact camera, you need to be shelling out this kind of money. But that’s only if you’re dead set on shooting on a cult camera that was already in short supply before the Instagram hype started moving up a few gears.
Turn your gaze away from the top-tier cameras of the 1990s and the 2000s, and the price tag looks a little more affordable. Especially when you look at one of Pentax’s undersung gems from the decade of ‘Miami Vice’ and ‘Knight Rider’, the PC35AF-M.
While the PC35AF-M won’t win many awards for refined good looks or miniaturisation (good look fitting this camera in your trouser pocket), its bulky frame hides a very well-specified camera. It has a five-element 35/2.8 lens, hidden behind a cover opened with a pleasing snap from the bright red button. It can handle films from ISO 100 to 1000 (or 25 to 1600 for DX-coded film) and has a manually activated flash as well as backlight compensation!
You can also see more on the Pentax PC35AF-M in this round-up of affordable 1980s compact cameras from earlier this year.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
