Pentax: Two new compact film cameras planned - Pentax 17 announced June 2024

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Henning Serger

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More information about the Pentax 17, the Pentax film camera project in general and Ricoh's / Pentax' philosophy in this interesting interview:


Best regards,
Henning
 

mshchem

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Henning Serger said:
More information about the Pentax 17, the Pentax film camera project in general and Ricoh's / Pentax' philosophy in this interesting interview:


Best regards,
Henning
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This is a great interview. I am sure Pentax is overjoyed with the response to the 17. Sounds like they're trying to get product to customers. The Pentax 17 is going to be on many kids, young and old, holiday wish list.
 

Agulliver

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That's a great little interview. The takeaways I have are that demand for the 17 surprised the Pentax management. They are committed to continuous production of the 17, it's not a "limited edition". They even seemed to feel a need to deny that they're abandoning digital cameras.

It looks like they're holding fire on the next model while they analyse the market. But the 17 is definitely not the end of the journey. Film is important to their business and "quite important" in terms of the percentage of their sales. Medium format in the future is highly unlikely, but they're not entirely ruling it out. I'd categorise this as "never say never" but those holding their breath for a new 645 will be disappointed. They're not looking to recreate old products but to develop new products for today's market and the future.

All in all they came across as *very* positive about the Pentax film project, the 17 is clearly continuing to sell more than they can manufacture and is projected to continue to sell for the foreseeable future. "Film Never Went Away" as one of their taglines says.
 
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Henning Serger

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Agulliver said:
It looks like they're holding fire on the next model while they analyse the market.
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Yes, and that is definitely the best decision to conduct a very precise market research. Ricoh / Pentax' camera operation is the smallest of the big(ger) camera manufacturers, even Leica is meanwhile a bigger camera company. Pentax cannot afford a big failure. The decision for the film camera project in general and the Pentax 17 as a start product has been courageous and risky. And the film community should appreciate that.

Agulliver said:
But the 17 is definitely not the end of the journey. Film is important to their business and "quite important" in terms of the percentage of their sales.
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Indeed. Last year Pentax sold less than 100,000 digital cameras. And so far, about three months after market introduction, already more than 20,000 Pentax 17 have been sold.

Best regards,
Henning
 

stevenjeong99

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Is it just me or does anyone also prefer actual old film cameras to these newly released ones..? I just prefer the metalic analogue feel of the old cameras to the plasticky new ones..
 

Angarian

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stevenjeong99 said:
Is it just me or does anyone also prefer actual old film cameras to these newly released ones..? I just prefer the metalic analogue feel of the old cameras to the plasticky new ones..
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The Pentax 17 has a top cover and bottom plate made of metal. And it is very well designed, very solid. See the link here in this thread to the video in which someone is taking the camera apart, showing the construction in detail.
That also shows that the camera has a very good repairability. Better than lots of older cameras.

And the new Rollei 35 AF from Mint seems to have a full metal camera body.
 

koraks

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stevenjeong99 said:
Is it just me or does anyone also prefer actual old film cameras to these newly released ones..?
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Just above your post is about 41 pages of diatribe revolving around that sentiment and its inverse. If you fancy it, you could flip through those pages to see which arguments for and against that thesis are popular and how they are countered.
 

mshchem

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I think the 17 is very cool. Filled a under served market. Having a pocket size camera with a stellar lens, endless exposures.....

People are going to want a good, better, best version of this camera.

How bout a Pentax 24, square format? Or 24/17 Dual format???

If people shoot Ektar or Portra 160/400 half frame will make great images.
 

Richard Man

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I always though 24x24 could be interesting. Victor couldn't be wrong right?
 

MattKing

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Richard Man said:
I always though 24x24 could be interesting. Victor couldn't be wrong right?
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Or so the Robot Camera company thought.


As did (essentially) Eastman Kodak and everyone else who made 126 film and cameras.
 

brbo

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I’m a 24x24 fan, I've got 3 cameras that shoot square on 135 film (well, four if 126 counts), but I think that for "general" public square would mean a lot of hassle because lab scanning efficiency would drop like a stone which means scanning would be less accessible to people who can't/don't want to camera scan their film at home.

Personally though, I would buy a Pentax 24 in a heart beat!
 
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koraks

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Yes, post-processing infrastructure would be a concern for the 'mass' public. But for myself, I'd actually find that square ratio in such a small and portable package very interesting.
 

foc

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koraks said:
Yes, post-processing infrastructure would be a concern for the 'mass' public.
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I wonder if a software solution could be made available for Frontier, Noritsu, Pakon, etc, commercial scanners or a work-around in Photoshop.

Many years ago I made a simple Photoshop action to crop half frame images from Frontier 35mm scan (two half frames together) It was rather crude but it worked with some manual override. I am sure someone with better knowledge than myself could find a solution.

I must admit I always had a soft spot for the Agfa Rapid system in 24x24 format.
 
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Henning Serger

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Fortunately that won't be a big hurdle as new 24x24 scanning masks for the most widespread lab scanners like Fuji SP 3000 and Noritsu HS-1800 can be made very fast and at low costs.
There are already some small and innovative companies producing new (and often improved) scanning masks for these scanners. Halfframe 18x24 is also already offered.
Here just one example for such a company and their product programme:

Featured products

Made by Bobach
bobach.org

Concerning 24x24mm square format in general, I think it could be indeed successful for Pentax to offer a "Pentax 24 square" as a sister model to the current Pentax 17.
Because of the following reasons:
1. The square format has been very popular in photography for decades. Not only in medium format, but also in amateur formats: More than 150 million Instamatic 126 cameras have been sold in a bit less than three decades. And also a high three-digit million number of Polaroid integral instant film cameras, and several million Fujifilm instax square cameras.
The square format has not been as popular as the rectanglar formats, but nevertheless a very significant percentage of photographers like it (and lots of photographers are using both rectangular and square format).
2. "Same parts strategy": Most of the parts of the Pentax 17 can be used for such a Pentax 24 as well. That lowers both design costs and production costs significantly, with improved economies of scale.
3. If Pentax offers a "camera family" based on the Pentax 17 - Pentax 17, Pentax 24, Pentax 35 - it would not also lowers overall costs, but also the total customer base / user base could be increased significantly. It would also be very good from a marketing point of view.

Best regards,
Henning
 

brbo

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Henning Serger said:
Fortunately that won't be a big hurdle as new 24x24 scanning masks for the most widespread lab scanners like Fuji SP 3000 and Noritsu HS-1800 can be made very fast and at low costs.
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Masks are of little use if you have to manually position the film for every frame. It barely works for Frontier MF scanning (so much so that Noritsu scanners are preferred choice for MF), but on Frontiers and Noritsus scanning 55+ square frames on 135 film would easily be 10x slower than regular 35mm frames. For normal throughput minilab scanners would have to be adjusted in software as well and that is unlikely to happen since Fuji and Noritsu are sadly out of scanning business.

As I said, it's doable, but very inefficient. The other option is to have 24x24 image with 35mm frame spacing (like Lomo LC-Wide) but I doubt Pentax would opt for that.
 

xkaes

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foc said:
I must admit I always had a soft spot for the Agfa Rapid system in 24x24 format.
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There are also several 35mm half-frame cameras that used the Agfa Rapid cassettes -- Canon, Mamiya, even the Ruskies got in on it.
 

xkaes

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  • (1940) Agfa and Ansco joined forces in 1928 and made a wide variety of cameras over a period of many years. One of these was a completely redesigned Memo in 1939. It was a full-frame folding-bed camera. The next year they came out with a half-frame model of the same camera, also called the Memo -- to the confusion of many. It had shutter speeds of B, T, 1/2 - 1/250. The manually-focusing lens was available in f3.5, f4.5 and f5.6 versions. It did not use the original Memo cassette, but adapted the Agfa KARAT cassette -- used in the Agfa Karat cameras of the same time -- which eventually evolved into the popular Agfa Rapid cassettes used in many half-frame (and full-frame) cameras over the next 40 years.
 

MattKing

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Cholentpot said:
A working Robot has always been on my list of cameras I'd like to use some day. I like the design and the square format.
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If you find one without a lens, my "what am I going to do with this stuff" box has a standard lens for one - we could talk
 

mshchem

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This is all good information. I think my Dad's was an Agfa Memo, I think it was full frame now that I think about it. It was seized up by the time I got interested, my Dad finally let me "fix" it. That did it in for good. Ancient history.
 

Cholentpot

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MattKing said:
If you find one without a lens, my "what am I going to do with this stuff" box has a standard lens for one - we could talk
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I'll file this away in my memory case. These cameras don't pop up often 'round these parts.
 

cmacd123

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a few decades back, Half frame was popular in Japan I am told, so some Minilab machines will actually detect that format. 24mm square was uncommon so is unlikely to be supported.
 
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