Any cheap 110 cameras with sharp lenses? Other than Pentax Auto 110?

skorpiius · Nov 7, 2020

Just curious what might be out there that can pull as much detail as possible out of the tiny 110 negs, but cheaper than a Pentax Auto 110.

skorpiius · Nov 7, 2020

Oh crap this isn't 35mm. But there's no delete button?

ic-racer · Nov 7, 2020

Rollei 110A has a 2.8 Tessar. I have never used it, as I use 16mm film, not 110.

Donald Qualls · Nov 7, 2020

skorpiius said:
Oh crap this isn't 35mm. But there's no delete button?

Just hit the "report this post" on your own starter post, and tell the mods in the notes that you accidentally put it in 35mm. I don't know that we have a subminiature section, but "miscellaneous equipment" should catch it.

FWIW, the top end of the Kodak Pocket line had a glass triplet or Tessar type lens (front element focus), rangefinder, and a pretty good auto exposure (though the 110 cartridge system speed sensor limited it to only 100 or 200 film speed -- fortunately, negative film has lots of latitude). This (and the Rollei above) are probably the only 110 I know in the classic form factor (i.e. chocolate bar shape) that beat the better Minolta 16 cameras -- and beat them very effectively (though it's harder to reload a 110 cartridge than a Minolta cassette).

Craig75 · Nov 7, 2020

As @ic-racer said the rollei comes with a high reputation but... a lot of them are broken or erratic and i cant remember why. Youd need to read up on it but from memory there is something about them that makes them not an optimum choice today as a regular shooter which is why the pentax is the most popular choice

Craig75 · Nov 7, 2020

Personally i think the kiev 16mm or minolta 16 and a can of 16mm double x is the best combination rather than 110 but you should be able to get a pentax 110 kit cheap (i think mine was $30 with the shoulder bag and three lenses) and it really is a classic piece of pentax engineering

MattKing · Nov 7, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
FWIW, the top end of the Kodak Pocket line had a glass triplet or Tessar type lens (front element focus), rangefinder, and a pretty good auto exposure (though the 110 cartridge system speed sensor limited it to only 100 or 200 film speed -- fortunately, negative film has lots of latitude).

The Pocket Instamatic 60 was more refined than even that, because it also worked really well with Kodachrome 64.
I have my Dad's holiday travel slides (and the matching 110 projector) to prove it.

Huss · Nov 7, 2020

ic-racer said:
Rollei 110A has a 2.8 Tessar. I have never used it, as I use 16mm film, not 110.

I have two Rollei A110s. Ridiculously well made over built cameras. Superb lens with zone focus, AE exposure.

Cholentpot · Nov 7, 2020

Agree with Instamatic 60.

Excellent camera, tack sharp too, you'd be surprised. Battery can be a challenge but I put one together myself. It has a nifty rangefinder and it's just a great feeling camera.

AgX · Nov 8, 2020

ic-racer said:
Rollei 110A has a 2.8 Tessar.

Several Agfa Agfamatics got Tessar type lenses too ("Solinar"), and even more features than the Rollei (eg. macro).

blockend · Nov 8, 2020

Film formats smaller than 135 are essentially commercial innovations. If film could be sold in smaller surface areas at equivalent or greater prices, the profit was bigger.

Donald Qualls · Nov 8, 2020

blockend said:
Film formats smaller than 135 are essentially commercial innovations. If film could be sold in smaller surface areas at equivalent or greater prices, the profit was bigger.

For those of us who own, carry, reload, and use various 16mm (and smaller -- looking at you, Minox) cameras that can still produce high quality images, there's also the factor of having a good camera that can genuinely always be with you.

Before literally every phone was a camera good enough to compete with consumer "compact" point-and-shoots (or, eventually, destroy their market), there were cameras like these quality 110 examples, the Minolta 16 QT and MGs, the Kiev 30 and 303, Rollei 16, Edixa 16, and a few others. Cameras that genuinely could fit in a hip pocket or a belt case smaller than a modern cell phone holster. Cameras that could take advantage of every advance in film technology to produce better and better images. A Minox could make microfilm quality images of documents in the 1940s on an 8x11 image frame, or record street scenes, informal portraits, etc. -- and on slow film, it could still be hand held in reasonable light with f/3.5. An original Minolta 16 was a snapshot camera -- fixed focus with slip-on auxiliary diopters (sold separately) on a 10x14 mm frame, nowhere near as good a lens as a Minox -- but the later ones (and the Soviet copies of the early ones) that had adjustable focus could still produce some nice images on 13x17 or 13x18 frame -- essentially, half of a half frame (same frame as 110, but without the cartridge designed to be thrown away, and capability to load longer rolls if desired).

Kiev 303 (triplet lens, 28mm f/3.5), .EDU Ultra 100 (cut from 120), Parodinal 1:50

blockend · Nov 8, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
For those of us who own, carry, reload, and use various 16mm (and smaller -- looking at you, Minox) cameras that can still produce high quality images, there's also the factor of having a good camera that can genuinely always be with you.

Sub-miniature formats can offer excellent results, but they are very demanding of optics, film choice, processing and printing. In the popular 110 format most cameras were nothing special, and photofinishers aimed at volume, not quality. Compare to a previous generation who shot box cameras which were very forgiving of lens quality and processing.

Half frame was a good way of getting more shots from a roll, for enthusiasts who took enough photographs to return their 72-74 shots before they'd forgotten what they had taken! 110 and the larger 126 and 828 was just less film for your money. Olympus's OM cameras undermined the half frame Pen concept, and XA series delivered the coup de grace. None of this should suggest sub-min photography is any less interesting for enthusiasts willing to put the effort into getting it right.

Paul Howell · Nov 8, 2020

Minolta 110 zoom, Produced for a short time, the Mark II is harder to find.

Donald Qualls · Nov 8, 2020

blockend said:
110 and the larger 126 and 828 was just less film for your money. Olympus's OM cameras undermined the half frame Pen concept, and XA series delivered the coup de grace. None of this should suggest sub-min photography is any less interesting for enthusiasts willing to put the effort into getting it right.

These also offered considerable improvement in ease of use. I don't personally consider 828 easier to load than 135, because I learned to load 135 at age nine. For adults moving from 120/620 or 127 to 35mm, 828 was a familiar paper-backed roll on a metal spool, with a loading process they were already confident in -- and 126, then later 110, were literally drop-in loading (which wasn't available in 135 until the 1980s). Most of the other 16mm formats also offered some version of drop-in loading -- Minolta/Yashica had cassettes, Minox had cassettes (before WWII, no less), a number of other 16mm formats had cassettes of one sort or another. Edixa 16 loaded just like 135 -- including rewind at the end of the roll -- and depended on the sprocket holes on at least one side of the 16mm cine film.

In the end, 126, 110, and Disc were about the old, original Kodak idea: make photography so easy there's no bar to entry for anyone who can afford a camera and roll of film. Unlatch the back, unwrap the cartridge, drop it in, close the back, advance until the film stops, and good to go for 12 or 20 shots. At the end, the camera automatically continues until the backing runs through -- open the camera, take the cartridge to the processor, done. My grandmother was about as non-technological as it was possible to be, living in the 1960s, 1970s, and on (she died in 2006 at 101). Yet she used to get decent pictures from 126 cameras, and more or less okay ones from a Disc camera, even though she couldn't see through the viewfinder of the latter with her glasses (and couldn't see anything without them). She always had trouble with 620, even when I was a kid and she was only in her 50s -- but 126 she could handle.

blockend · Nov 8, 2020

Paul Howell said:
Minolta 110 zoom, Produced for a short time, the Mark II is harder to find.

Also the movie camera looking half frame, Yashica Samurai.

Donald Qualls said:
She always had trouble with 620, even when I was a kid and she was only in her 50s -- but 126 she could handle.

My mother was the same. The local chemist where she bought her film loaded and unloaded the camera for her, which was not uncommon with box cameras. They stocked some very odd formats, and I have a distant memory of the owner telling a disgruntled lady her film was no longer being made. 126 made everything easier, but odd that women who worked in extremely dextrous textile work couldn't keep tension on a spool of paper!

Donald Qualls · Nov 8, 2020

blockend said:
odd that women who worked in extremely dextrous textile work couldn't keep tension on a spool of paper!

Especially as you start to get some age on you, what you do every day is so easy you can do it in your sleep (like me fixing a Hitachi/Metabo NR83 series nail gun -- do a couple thousand of anything, it'll seem easy), stuff that you don't do often may become hard to remember, or the physical skill hard to retain (like me playing golf -- I tell people I don't play golf, I play a closely related game called either goof or flog; same rules, but much higher scores).

bsdunek · Nov 8, 2020

Paul Howell said:
Minolta 110 zoom, Produced for a short time, the Mark II is harder to find.

I have two of these, on for B&W the other for color. I've been really happy with the results. I can make nice 8 X 10's with them.

Paul Howell · Nov 8, 2020

blockend said:
Also the movie camera looking half frame, Yashica Samurai.

My mother was the same. The local chemist where she bought her film loaded and unloaded the camera for her, which was not uncommon with box cameras.

I was covering a story in Wichita Falls Texas, this is the mid 70s, I stopped by the local cameras store to pick up some TriX, a middle aged woman brought in a Hasselblad, the counter clerk took out the film and reloaded it with a roll of color, made sure shutter was set to 1/125 and F stop to 11 and handed it back. Oil monyed.

Donald Qualls · Nov 8, 2020

Paul Howell said:
I was covering a story in Wichita Falls Texas, this is the mid 70s, I stopped by the local cameras store to pick up some TriX, a middle aged woman brought in a Hasselblad, the counter clerk took out the film and reloaded it with a roll of color, made sure shutter was set to 1/125 and F stop to 11 and handed it back. Oil monyed.

If she bought the 'Blad there, and brought in all her film, and paid for large prints from time to time, that level of service made excellent sense. Even more so if her husband or father owned the store...

Paul Howell · Nov 8, 2020

Minolta Weathermatic 110

blockend · Nov 8, 2020

Paul Howell said:
1/125 and F stop to 11

That's a great story. When the 1970s SLR boom hit, there were a lot of people shooting fixed apertures and shutter speeds who wanted to look the part, which is why automation was such a big deal. Perhaps the craziest example is the fully automatic Konica FP-1, which took standard lenses but only shot them at f2.8, 5.6 or 11, but hey, it's an SLR!

Cholentpot · Nov 8, 2020

blockend said:
Film formats smaller than 135 are essentially commercial innovations. If film could be sold in smaller surface areas at equivalent or greater prices, the profit was bigger.

They're fun and enjoyable to use. I'm not babysitting my frames, ultimate snapshot cameras.

Bud Hamblen · Nov 8, 2020

Kodak Pocket Instamatic 60. Kodak Ektramax (first mass-produced aspherical lens element).

vlasta · Nov 8, 2020

Nobody to mention Canon 110ED with 2.0 five elements lens, rangefinder, hot-shoe, date imprinting, 8sec-1/500, 2.0-16.

Even better is newer 110ED 20 which automatically recognize higher speed cartridges.

Any cheap 110 cameras with sharp lenses? Other than Pentax Auto 110?

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