- Pentax's new film camera will finally be released in mid-2024
- It will be a compact mid-frame with electronic and manual controls.
- Its lens will be based on the Ricoh Auto Half and Pentax Espio Mini
Pentax's new film camera has been a long time in the making, with the project first announced back in 2022. But if you've been longing for an analog companion other than your family's dusty old SLR, we've got good news: the Pentax . The unnamed camera will be fully launched in mid-2024.
The news came in an update shared on YouTube (below) by Pentax parent company Ricoh. In the video, the camera's designer, Takeo Suzuki, says that the project has reached “the next stage of product development” and that the company has “finished assembling a prototype” that it is already using.
While the video doesn't reveal a release date for the camera, Pentax told Petapixel that its release schedule is “projected for summer 2024.” We don't know if that's when the film camera will be fully announced or if that's when it will go on sale. Either way, the camera is finally headed toward production, and it's such a passion project that even retired Pentax engineers have apparently gotten involved.
Fortunately, the video also tells us a lot more about what kind of film camera it will be. Die-hard fans of film photography may be disappointed to learn that it won't be a reborn Pentax K1000 SLR, but rather a compact film camera in the spirit of Kodak's Ektar H35… only much more interesting.
Why a half frame camera?
One thing Pentax's new film camera and the Ektar H35 will have in common is that they are both “half-frame.” As the name suggests, these cameras use standard 35mm film but only use half the frame. Its golden age was in the 1960s with cameras like the Olympus PEN series, but Pentax says it chose the format for some practical reasons, even though it had never made one before.
First, Pentax says that portrait photos are in line with the current era of smartphones and the aspect ratio of snapshots shared on social media. Even though their new camera uses film, younger photographers also scan and share snapshots digitally.
Half-frame should also, in theory, reduce the cost of shooting on film. “Compared to the heyday of film photography, the price of film is much higher today,” explained Takeo Suzuki. “By designing a vertical format camera, we thought we could double the number of photographs captured on each roll of film.”
In other words, you should be able to capture 48 photos on a roll of 24-exposure film, or a whopping 72 photos on 36-exposure film. Although that may also depend on the film processing skills of your chosen lab.
What will it look like?
While we sadly didn't get a glimpse of the actual camera in the video, Pentax did reveal some promising details about its design. Unlike simpler remakes like the Kodak Ektar H35, Pentax's camera will give you a mix of electronic and manual shooting controls. There will be an electronic shutter, automatic aperture and shutter speed controls, and potentially also a mode dial to choose the shooting mode.
For focusing, you won't get anything as modern as autofocus, but rather the Pentax camera will teach you the art of “zone focusing.” Zone focusing, which has long been popular with street photographers, involves setting the camera's focus to a certain distance (using the lens's focus ring) and waiting for your subjects to enter that zone.
This is also how it will work on Pentax's new film camera. But Takeo Suzuki says, “We'd also like to incorporate a mechanism that tells you the selected focus area at a glance when you look through the viewfinder,” which would be a nice touch.
Perhaps the best news for cinema nostalgics is that the Pentax camera will also have the classic film winding and rewinding. “We intend to recreate an old winding mechanism used in old film-format SLR cameras,” says Suzuki, which “works and feels exactly as it did.” Finish shooting a roll of film and you will also pull out the rewind crank and turn it to wind the film.
What's wrong with the lens? Pentax says it chose one based on two of its most popular film cameras from the past. The angle of view is apparently inspired by the Ricoh Auto Half, which was first released in 1962. It had a 25mm f/2.8 fixed focus lens, so it looks like we can expect something similar on the new film camera from Pentax.
Meanwhile, the optical design of the lens is based on the Pentax Espio Mini. That little compact camera, which first landed in 1994, had a highly praised 32mm fixed lens, with three elements in three groups. Suzuki claims that the Espio Mini “was hailed as a masterpiece by many fans in the past” and the combination of the two cameras certainly sounds promising.
Analysis: An exciting project for film beginners
When Pentax first announced its film camera project back in 2022, many began dreaming of a reborn Pentax K1000, which, to be fair, is one of the best film cameras ever made. But Pentax has clearly gone a different route, courting younger photographers with a half-frame compact, and that makes a lot of sense.
After all, the resurgence of film cameras has largely been sparked by Generation Z, with Instagram and TikTok flooded with hashtags dedicated to grainy, old film photos. The only problem with this comeback is that it has also skyrocketed the cost of the film, with some popular stocks tripling in price in recent years.
Fortunately, there are still ways to shoot movies on a budget, and one of those tactics is to purchase a half-frame camera (like the new Pentax model) and another is to pick up popular consumer stocks from companies like Kodak and Ilford. wholesale. But it will be interesting to see if Pentax also has any tactics to help alleviate this situation when its new film camera is finally released in a few months.
While it's still too early to say how much we'll like this new film camera, it certainly looks like it has a promising combination of ingredients. Cheap half-frame cameras like the ubiquitous Kodak Ektar H35 (above) cost around $65/£50, but Pentax's new model looks like it will be much more interesting with a price that hopefully won't be drastically higher.
Combining beginner-friendly auto shooting modes with the tactility of zone focus sounds smart, as does the combined optics of the Ricoh Auto Half and Pentax Espio Mini (two highly regarded film cameras from the past). Pentax certainly has the heritage to create a fun little film camera, and I'm looking forward to trying it out.
The question is whether it could also inspire other camera giants like Nikon, Fujifilm and OM System to join the analog renaissance. Takeo Suzuki certainly hopes so, stating that he “would also wish that other camera manufacturers would follow suit and enter the analog camera market.”
Leica is already there with cameras like the M11 (above), which I previously called a “glorious relic in an era of camera phone convenience.” And the phenomenal recent success of the film camera-inspired Fujifilm X100VI shows that analogue design is having a moment.
Hopefully, Pentax will give us something that's a little more affordable than those modern classics, but also a little more authentic than the recent charge-ins for film cameras.
