MiNT Camera has released another update on the development of its new 35mm compact camera, including more details on the camera’s shutter.
The update is the third update posted on the camera project’s blog this year, after MiNT unveiled the camera in September last year.
MiNT’s Gary Ho said in the update: “I knew it was going to be extremely challenging when I first started this project. We know how to make instant cameras, but would we be able to pull off a film camera? Here’s what I found out so far:
“Biggest challenges (film camera): Size constraints and high expectations for build and image quality.
“Biggest challenges (instant camera): Perfecting the film processing unit, which is a very arduous task.”
He said one major difference between the 35mm camera and their earlier instant cameras was the tolerance of 35mm film, with instant film needing much more accurate exposure.
He added; “The precise shutter unit that we recently developed in our latest project (TL70 Plus) has proven to be very useful in this project.”
Ho said the Kong Kong-based team had gone to an earlier instant camera, Polaroid’s SX-70, for inspiration.
“One idea we borrowed from the SX-70 was combining the shutter and aperture to reduce the camera’s size. This has never been achieved before in a film camera. At first, I was sceptical, but after testing the camera with different aperture sizes, the results were impressive!!”
Short demonstration videos of the shutter/aperture in action have been posted on YouTube and can be seen on the update.
Ho added that the team had already taken some “stunning photos” with the camera and that these would be shared in a future post.
MiNT’s project was unveiled before Ricoh, the owners of Pentax, also said they were beginning a film-related project that could lead to future film camera designs.
In an interview published last month, Pentax product planner and designer Takeo Suzuki was planning to release a “manual-winding” compact 35mm camera.
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.
Isn’t combining the shutter and aperture exactly what the Pentax Auto 110 did?