For the past couple of years I’ve closed the year with a post on three cameras I’ve used in the previous 12 months.
These are sometimes cameras that are new to me, or sometimes cameras that have lurked in the back of the cupboard and have been rediscovered. (You can read the previous posts from 2022 here and from 2023 here.)
This year, I have three more cameras to list, but with a crucial difference this time: all three of them are completely new. In fact, one of them is a prototype which won’t be commercially available until 2025.
The three cameras include a model that marks a return to film camera-making by a major Japanese manufacturer in nearly two decades, an innovative 110 camera from an Austrian experimental-photography powerhouse, and a new 35mm camera designed and produced from a garden shed in Liverpool.
Pentax 17
Without a doubt, the biggest analogue photography story of the year: the Pentax 17 was the first new film camera to be produced by Pentax (now part of Ricoh Imaging) in nearly 20 years.
Originally thought to be an auto-focus 35mm compact, the Pentax 17 upended those expectations as the year progressed, with the Pentax designers letting slip that it would be both a half-frame camera and use zone focusing.
In the weeks before the camera was officially announced, Ricoh Imaging messaged me offering an example to test ahead of launch day. The camera arrived – complete with Pentax cap and tote bag – a few weeks before the unveiling. I set to work shooting as much as I could in what turned out to be a particularly overcast June.
The Pentax 17 earned acres of press coverage in the photographic press and beyond: it looked unlike anything Pentax had produced before, while still cramming in a few Easter eggs from previous designs to keep the camera nerds happy. (You can see a list of them here.) The zone focusing alluded to holiday-time cameras of decades past while still offering something new; the zone pictograms included a plate and cutlery for the closest distance, perfect for Instagrammers who post pictures of their three square meals.
The Pentax’s 35mm f/3.5 lens (a full-frame 37mm equivalent modelled on the lens used in the Pentax Espio Mini of the 1990s) is sharp and contrasty, with excellent coatings to deal with flare and abberations. It’s light without feeling like a toy camera. The integral flash fires a useful burst of light without overpowering close-in subjects. The wrist strap makes this camera really easy to carry with you at all time – which isn’t a bad idea, given how long it takes a to shoot a roll of film in a half-frame camera…
Though half-frame isn’t my usual gig when I’m shooting 35mm, I can’t deny the Pentax 17 was fun to use – it felt very different to the cameras I usually play with. The pictures were sharp and contrasty in good light. It took only a quick flip through the manual to get to grips with the camera’s features, and
Some weeks after the Pentax 17 I took the camera with me on a trip to India. The Pentax 17’s two-for-one frugality with a roll of film was a definite advantage in a country where there’s a half-dozen photo opportunities on every street. I can see this camera becoming a regular in my camera bag for trips in the future.
Read more: Pentax 17: First impressions
The Pentax 17’s lo-fi focusing and the half-frame format caused a few furrowed brows on its release – as did its price tag (the camera cost £500 here in the UK). Yes, you can buy an old half-frame camera for a lot less. You can also buy a mechanical, all-metal camera from the 1970s for a lot less. Both will leave you with plenty of change from £500, but they won’t have the effect the Pentax 17 has had on the wider film photography market: we’ll likely see other major camera manufacturers roll the dice aswell, thanks to the Pentax 17’s success.
Lomography Lomomatic 110
It’s apt that Lomography is the only company still making 110 film; this was a film for summer holidays and days at the beach, 70s-style, with a camera small enough to pop in your pocket. Then 35mm and the cameras that used it became cheaper and cheaper and 110 spiralled into obscurity. Only diehard Lomographers gave it the time of day.
The Lomomatic 110 is by no means the first 110 camera under the Lomography name, but it’s definitely the best. Styled after the classic “Minox-style” pull-out 110 compacts from the higher end of the market, the Lomomatic 110 is a definite step above the usual one-shutter-speed 110 cameras Lomography has released so far.
The camera’s exposure system and zone focusing ape those in the famed LOMO LC-A compact, with a fastest speed of 1/250 and a Bulb speed as slow as 30 seconds. The attached flash can be used for fill-in flash during the daytime as aswell as full strength.
The Lomomatic has its foibles – the half dozen rolls I shot included more blank frames than I’d like – but this old-school 110 camera is “fun” with a capital F. Shooting with it reminded me of the first few months owning a LOMO LC-A 25 years ago. Who cares if 110 is good for little more than grainy snapshots for social media? Sometimes cameras don’t need to be anything more than just a hoot to shoot.
Read more: Lomography Lomomatic 110 review
Chroma Click
Another camera I’d have loved to include in this round-up was MiNT Camera’s Rollei 35AF, a 21st-Century rethink of the much-loved Rollei 35. Unfortunately, the UK seems to have been left off the Rollei 35AF’s release map so far, and no review example has been forthcoming so far.
So instead of the Rollei 35AF, I’m including a camera which isn’t even on sale yet: the Chroma Click. The Click is a 35mm full-frame/half-frame camera made by Steve Lloyd, who runs Chroma Camera from his home in Liverpool in the UK. Chroma Camera has released a number of 3D-printed large-format and medium-format cameras over the past decade or so, and started to dip its feet into 35mm too, releasing a pinhole camera called the Cube FF earlier in 2024.
The Click, however, is a step up: it’s a camera that can be shot in either full-frame or half-frame formats, and at its heart is Chroma Camera’s Double Glass lens, originally released in Leica Screw Mount in 2022. This 24mm lens has a fixed aperture of f/11, but as the name suggest is made from glass and not plastic.
The Click is like a 3D-printed Box Brownie for the 21st century – you trip the shutter using a lever on the front of the camera which travels between two magnets. After the luxury of camera shutter buttons this takes a little getting used to, but the Click is a camera for those times when you’re not craving hi-tech toys.
I’ve used the Double Glass lens on some of my Soviet rangefinders before and been impressed with the sharpness. The Click is perfect for street and travel photography thanks to that ultra-wide perspective, and the fact anything from about five feet to infinity will be acceptably sharp. Shoot 100 or 200 ISO films on sunny/mostly sunny days and 400 when its cloudy.
The Click will be launched via Kickstarter some time in 2025 – sign up to Chroma Camera’s emails to get advance warning.
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.
