In late 2022, in the wake of Leitz restarting production of its classic M6 rangefinder, Ricoh Imaging dropped a cautious hint.
The Japanese camera maker and optics giant was considering a return to film camera production. Any new camera that appeared – and Ricoh Imaging was careful to say this was a big if – would appear under the famous brand name it had acquired in 2011: Pentax.
This, of course, caused quite a stir. Pentax was – alongside Canon, Minolta, Nikon and Olympus – one of the Big Five Japanese camera producers during the latter half of the 20th Century. Unlike Canon and Nikon, it pretty much ignored the professional market to concentrate on enthusiasts and amateurs. Their Spotmatic line of SLRs were capable and affordable; their range of compact cameras in the 1980s and 90s included models for pretty much every budget.
Pentax produced its last film camera in the mid-2000s (the film version of the *ist SLR), just as digital was tipping the entire photography world on its head. Like every other camera maker which survived the shift, it pivoted to digital.
The new Pentax Film Camera Project was set up to investigate whether there was a market for a new film camera, and the findings were that a new compact camera would be the most popular choice. Even throughout 2023, Pentax remained somewhat coy, hinting that a new camera was not a done deal, but that if one was to appear, it would have to evoke some of the “joy” of taking photographs on an analogue camera. In that regard, Pentax designer Takeo Suzuki (aka TKO) said the camera would have a manual wind-on.
The half-frame portrait format is perfect for viewing on a mobile phone
By the end of 2023, something very interesting was happening. The Pentax team started talking about some of the half-frame models its parent Ricoh had made make in the golden age of film cameras – models like the Ricoh Auto Half. Pentax never made a half-frame camera. So this seemed like an odd choice. But was it? The Kodak-branded Ektar H35 was a huge success when it launched in 2022, allowing cash-strapped young photographers to take twice as many shots on their increasingly expensive rolls of film.
And the dimensions of a half-frame shot – 24mm high and 17mm across – have another benefit in the digital age. The half-frame portrait format is perfect for viewing on a mobile phone. And as film processing lab owners will tell you, many young converts to film are experiencing this analogue medium via their phone screens.
Read more: Ricoh Imaging launches the Pentax 17, the first Pentax-branded film camera in 20 years
In February, the Pentax team finally lifted the lid on the new camera, confirming what many had been suspecting for a few months: the new compact camera would indeed be a half-frame model – and with zone focus.
Ricoh Imaging confirmed the camera would be released some time in 2024 but didn’t give any more detail on when that might be. In May, the Pentax Film Project social accounts ran a short video which featured the sound of a camera wind-on and the number 17.
The Pentax 17
A little while, I got a message on Instagram from one of the Pentax Film Camera Project team, asking if I wanted to review the new film camera, the launch of which was “imminent”. Signing the non-disclosure agreement confirmed that the new camera was indeed called the “Pentax 17” (17, of course, being one of the dimensions of the shots you can take on it.)
The camera arrived in early June, along with a Pentax trucker cap and a promotional tote bag, which the cat has since decided it likes sleeping on. The Pentax 17 box is pretty no-nonsense – no retro graphics on the outside playing up the nostalgia for analogue tech. But when you open the box and lift up the camera’s manual, there’s a little message that should gladden the heart of film shooters: “It’s Time for Film!”
The Pentax 17 box is as follows:
- Pentax 17 camera
- Instruction manual is several languages
- Wrist strap
- One CR-2 battery
The camera
Which is where we come to the camera. Any ideas of what this camera might look like before I opened the box were… completely wide of the mark. The Pentax 17 looks like a cross between a Cosina-made Voigtlander Bessa rangefinder and one of the later Pentax Espio compact cameras. It also looks nothing like any other model I’ve used in 25-odd years collecting and shooting film cameras.
Its plastic frame is gunmetal grey, with a black leather-effect vinyl covering on the front and a prominent plastic handgrip for your right hand. On the back the camera’s back door has a diamond-shaped etching outside the film reminder insert.
The Pentax 17 has a small integral flash on the right hand side (when viewing the camera from the front). The top plate is rather more crowded, with all of the controls needed to set film speed, exposure compensation and shooting mode, as well as winding on the camera and shooting.
On the bottom plate is the rewind button which needs to be pressed in when rewinding the film, a tripod socket and a plate which shows the camera is manufactured in Vietnam.
The camera is surprisingly light, especially given its size (it’s about as wide as an Olympus OM SLR). With battery loaded, the Pentax 17 tips the scales at just over 300g.
The lens
The lens is a pancake-style 25/3.5 HD Pentax Lens with a filter size of 40.5 (just like the Olympus Trip 35) and a rotating ring which moves the focus through the various zones. The distance zones are marked with pictograms on the top of the lens (and viewable when looking though the viewfinder).
The Pentax 17’s zones are as following:
- Flower (25cms/0.82ft)
- Knife and fork (50cm/1.5ft)
- Portrait (1.2m/4ft)
- Two people (1.7m/5.6ft)
- Three people (3m/5.6ft)
- Mountain (infinity)
I’ll mention again the pancake-style nature of the lens – it’s almost ridiculously shallow, extending out from the camera by only around 6mm, which is about as deep as its accompanying lens cap.
The lens has an angle of view of 61° according to Ricoh Imaging.
The company’s detailed specs for the Pentax 17 say that the camera has three elements arranged in three groups. Lens fetishists, don’t sneer – the Triplet formula (three elements) has resulted in many a classic lens.
Pentax 17 controls
The top plate of the Pentax 17 is crowded with controls. The designers seem to have made use of almost every single scrap of space.
One the left-hand side is the combined ISO dial and rewind knob. (Lifting the rewind knob up also opens the back of the camera.) The Pentax 17 meters from ISO 50 up to 3200; a pretty useful range, allowing you to shoot everything from Fujifilm’s Velvia 50 slide film to Ilford Photo’s Delta 3200. The ISO is changed by pressing a little black button on the right of the ISO dial and moving it around. Metering covers EV 2.5 to 16.5. Accurate metering is obviously crucial to this camera because both the shutter speed and aperture are dependent on it.
To the right is the exposure compensation dial. This is an interesting feature to include on a camera like this, which seems to be unashamedly aimed at a market new to film and intent on sharing their film shots on apps like Instagram. The dial offers exposure compensation from +2 down to -2 stops.
Next to this is the Pentax 17’s viewfinder, which is black and looks a little like an accessory viewfinder that you might use on an early Leica rangefinder (I wonder if this is the inspiration?). Beside this is the control dial for the Pentax 17’s shooting modes, of which there are seven:
- Auto mode
- Program mode (with flash)
- Slow-speed programme mode (with flash)
- Bulb mode
- Bokeh mode (maximum aperture priority)
- Slow-speed mode (no flash)
- Program mode (no flash)
These shooting modes are separated between flash modes and non-flash modes by the Auto mode. The shutter speeds range from a fastest speed of 1/350 to four seconds plus B.
The shutter button is raised well above the surrounding controls and sits in an assembly which has a locking mechanism to prevent shots being taken by accident. There’s no threading for a cable release, which is interesting given that the camera has both a tripod mount and a Bulb mode, though it turns out there is an optional cable switch which can be purchased separately.
The traditional film-winding arm – yep, TKO wasn’t joking – sits tight up against the shutter button assembly and comes into operation with an extremely satisfying click. This being a half-frame camera, the travel between frames is pretty short. The frame counter is located right next to the winding arm. If you load a roll of 36-frame film, you’re not going to reach the end of the roll until the frame counter says 72.
Viewfinder
To those who’ve not shot a half-frame camera before, the Pentax 17’s viewfinder is going to feel somewhat constrained. It has white lines to show the actual framing you’ll see on the film, with parallax compensation for close-up shots. The pictograms for the different zones show up very bright and well-defined in the bottom of the viewfinder – it’s difficult to miss them. Pentax did a great job in making this as easy to view as possible. Zone focusing isn’t as old-fashioned as it seems – the zone-focus LOMO LC-A did a good job in helping revitalise film photography in the 2000s – but a decade or two is a long time when it comes to technology.
On the right hand of the viewfinder are a pair of lights. Unlike pretty much every other camera I’ve used, these are orange and blue instead of red and green (so plus point for originality). The lights convey several messages:
At camera start-up:
- Dead battery – blue light and orange light blinking quickly
- Lens cap still on – blue light blinking quickly
Shutter pressed halfway
- Dead battery – blue light and orange light blinking quickly
- Exposure warning – blue light blinking quickly
- Close focus chosen – blue light blinking slowly
During flash-mode shooting
- Flash charging – orange light blinking slowly
- Flash charged – orange light on
Like me, you might find this takes a little bit of getting used to, though I can’t fault Pentax for wanting to try something a little different. You’re not going to see those blue and orange lights on another camera anytime soon.
Shooting the Pentax 17
First the bad news… June is usually a fantastic month to be out shooting film in the UK, but this June has been something of a washout – when it hasn’t been raining, the overcast skies have had all the warmth and contrast of early December.
Still, Japanese camera companies don’t work their product releases around long-term forecasts in the UK. The Pentax 17 arrived with no less than five rolls of film – two rolls of 24-shot Ilford Photo HP5 and a three-pack of Kodak UltraMax 400. The HP5, it turned out, was just the ticket for London’s wintry June.
Loading the Pentax 17 is nice and easy – the film engages painlessly with the camera’s film advance. What is a surprise is how many times you have to wind on before the number “1” appears in the frame counter. Welcome to half-frame club.
When I first started shooting the camera, I was taken by the strange little noise the Pentax 17 makes before the shutter clicks; the lens rocks back and forth before shooting with what sounds like a tiny croak. The shutter click itself is almost rangefinder quiet – a discrete snap. There’s no slapping mirror or motor-driven film advance.
You can see results from one of the first rolls of HP5 I shot below in Blackheath and Greenwich Park. These films were developed and scanned by Bayeux in London, a professional lab I use for a lot of my film processing. In order to see as much detail from the lens as possible, I chose to have these scanned as single images rather than 35mm frames with two images. These scans are all standard size, and I cropped them to the same dimensions I would for a normal frame of 35mm film.
The dull light wasn’t ideal, but to my eyes the Pentax has produced crisp shots with pleasing sharpness. I boosted contrast slightly in Photoshop Elements to give a little more contrast, but nothing drastic.
I’ve highlighted a few images I particularly like below:
You can see in the enlarged version of this image the effect of that smaller image on the negative. There is definitely much more grain than I would expect to see in a conventional 35mm shot, but the results are comparable to the better half-frame cameras I’ve used in the past. Half-frame cameras were never expected to shoot images that would be blown up to A3 size, after all.
Again, this shot is grainy, but the exposure is accurate and there’s a nice range of tones across the frame. Only where the terrace meets an internal corridor (where the light is much lower) do the shadows block up.
A nice amount of detail in the man’s lighter clothing, and you can still clearly see detail in his face, shaded under the brim oh his hat. The railing in the top floor on the house in the background can be seen in the enlarged image. I am confident that had I brought down the highlight levels a little more you’d see more.
Next up: colour. The muted light would normally be a waste of colour film, but I wanted to see how the Pentax 17’s lens rendered colour film, and Kodak Alaris consumer film in particular.
For a 400-ISO film, Kodak Alaris’s UltraMax has pretty refined grain. The pictures I shot on it in murky June sunshine certainly look less grainy than those snapped on HP5. Those moments when the sunshine went up a few notches show the Pentax’s lens has lovely colour rendition, like in the pic below.
Given a bit more time – and, frankly, some sunnier weather – I’d have put several more rolls through the Pentax 17. Having to keep the camera under wraps stopped me from bringing it along to various photography meet-ups, so I wasn’t really able to test the camera’s flash, nor use the “Bokeh” setting for some half-frame portraits. I’d also like to see how its lens – which really does feel like it follows in the footsteps of the Espio compacts – renders finer-grained colour films (including slide). I’d really like to see what I get from a roll of Kodak P3200, flash off, on a late-night wander around London’s Soho.
The Pentax 17 feels unlike any other contemporary camera, an idiosyncratic mash up of the lo-fi and the 21st-Century. The half-frame format forced me to “shoot different”, which is always refreshing. The camera is light and easy to use, once you get your head around the various shooting modes. Auto mode seemed fine for this initial review, but that flexibility makes this a camera I would want to return to.
Is the Pentax 17 the camera I expected Ricoh Imaging to come out with? No, but it’s good to be surprised sometimes. What’s more, I like what the Pentax 17 represents. It’s the return of an iconic camera brand to film camera production after two decades. Ricoh Imaging has shown what would have once been unthinkable is possible. Who else will take up the challenge.
I also get the feeling the Pentax 17 is the start of a journey rather than the culmination of one. That body, larger than any classic half-frame camera I’ve used before, will be relatively easy to repurpose for a full-frame camera. Could a “Pentax 35” be far behind?
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.
I’d rather have a Pentax K1 Mark 3 – There are thousands of cheap second hand film cameras readily available from ebay and charity shops to scratch that film itch.
I appreciate what Pentax have done, but feels as though this is a vanity/ego project and the time and resources I suspect that’s been put into it by a small team of engineers, could have been better spent on supporting the Pentax Digital shooters of which myself included are using Pentax’s only Full Frame Digital camera, which is now several years old!
Considering that Pentax are not going to go mirrorless, the choice to go film in priority of supporting their current DSLR base seems bizarre to me. I suppose time will tell.
Not every day there is a film camera on the horizon and I think this is admirable. I love that they pull the trigger on that and I feel all of the film lovers out there should celebrate. At least I will 🙂
Great review, Stephen. It’s difficult to discern how sharp or clear the half frame images are from the Pentax 17, given the limitations of posting jpg or png images for a blog post, but I’m hoping my local camera store will have some actual sample prints from a lab once they’ve received the camera.
Like you, I feel like the bones and most of the research Pentax did for this camera could be put into releasing a “Pentax 35” without a large amount of effort – now that’s a camera I could see spending $500 USD on without hesitation.
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How does it compare to an Olympus Trip 35? I can find one of these, fully refurbished, for half the price of the Pentax 17.
Half-frame instead of full-frame, integral flash, more shutter speeds, can use films up to ISO 3200.
The Trip 35 is better, and it’s also full frame. Pentax 17 has a few things I don’t like.
https://valentinsama.blogspot.com/2024/06/pentax-17-algun-detalle-que-no-te-han.html
The Trip has limitations in terms of shutter speeds and no flash. The Olympus Pens are probably a fairer comparison as they’re half-frame too.
Yes, but the Trip 35 is much better in terms of image quality. And completely refurbished it costs much less… and it doesn’t use batteries!