Ricoh Imaging haven’t officially confirmed that a compact film camera is nearing completion, but they’re certainly doing a good impression of a company intent on launching a new product.
Since the prospect of a Pentax-branded compact film camera was first floated at the end of 2022, Ricoh Imaging (which owns the Pentax brand), we’ve been given some tantalising details of what the camera might feature, without ever being told it is definitely going ahead.
But in an article published in Japanese magazine Barfout! in December (which Kosmo Foto reported on last week) Pentax unveiled some further insight into the camera, which appears to now be at a prototype stage. The feature saw Pentax’s product development manager Makoto Iikawa and product planner Takeo Suzuki meet model and actress Riko to talk about the new camera.
No images of the prototype camera brought along to the interview made it into the article, but the interview raised one interesting question: could the new camera be a half-frame rather than a full-frame 35mm camera?
Iikawa and Suzuki brought along another camera with them to the interview – a Ricoh Auto Half. The Auto Half was a stylish series of metal half-frame compacts made by Ricoh from the early 1960s into the 1970s.
Iikawa said to Riko: “Normally, when you shoot, you get a full-size, horizontal image, but with this camera, you shoot at half the size of 35mm film, so you can arrange two pictures in one frame.”
Riko was then given the camera to shoot, and some of her images were included in the finished article. She was visibly enthused: “I can combine them in so many ways.”
Why was a more than 50-year-old half-frame camera being brought along to an interview about a 21st-Century compact camera? Ricoh Imaging’s drip-feeding of information so far has mentioned several things – the intended camera would have manual film advance and would be 35mm – but that information has never included confirmation that any camera would be full-frame 35mm.
So why might Ricoh Imaging punt for half-frame over full frame? Here are a few thoughts…
Rising film prices
The Covid pandemic and its resulting strain on logistics had a dramatic effect on film prices. The era of cheap colour film is now pretty much over, and photographers with strict budgets are having to be a bit more considered about what they shoot. Half frame, of course, gives you twice as many images as you get shooting full frame – essentially halving the price of any roll of film.
The Ektar effect
Not the Kodak film, but the Kodak-branded Reto Project Ektar H35 and H35N cameras. The H35 was first released in 2022 and an improved H35N model – featuring a part-glass lens – followed in 2023. The H35N retails for about twice as much as the full-frame simple cameras being rebranded by various companies but that doesn’t seem to have a negative effect – they are selling like hot cakes.
Web use, not print
One of the drawbacks of half-frame camera was that the fact the smaller negative meant enlargements could only be so big before grain started to become noticeable. Most film photographers aren’t printing out their photos anymore, however. Scanning for web use (72dpi) instead of print resolution (300dpi) means the enlargement effect won’t be as noticeable.
An adaptable body?
In October last year, a representative from Ricoh Imaging Europe said in an interview with a French website that two film cameras would be released in 2024; this was quickly denied by Ricoh Imaging’s HQ in Japan. But it raises one question – could Ricoh Imaging be considering a half-frame model followed by a full-frame camera in due course? Back in the day, half-frame cameras were usually smaller than their full-frame brethren, but there’s nothing to stop a camera manufacturer keeping the same body and just changing the lens and internals. That certainly makes sense in terms of cost.
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.
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Minor point of order… “Scanning for web use (72dpi) instead of print resolution (300dpi) means the enlargement effect won’t be as noticeable.” These numbers are nonsense, and shouldn’t be restated, for fear of confusing people. The notion that web images are displayed using 72 pixels for every inch of the screen is ancient nonsense. Similarly, nobody should be scanning images at 72 ppi just because it’s for web use. It’s much more helpful to simply think of images in absolute dimensions. The simple fact is, the comparatively smaller size that a web image gets displayed at will indeed conceal deficiencies… Read more »