That is the brand new Pentax 17. For the previous decade or so, movie cameras have all however vanished, leaving solely plasticky novelties and ‘disposable’ point-and-shoot fashions in the marketplace. Pentax, a century-old Japanese producer that has been a part of Ricoh Imagining since 2011, desires to convey the enjoyment of 35mm movie again to the buyer and prosumer market.
The Pentax 17 does many issues in a different way, not least as a result of it’s the primary movie digicam to bear the Pentax identify for over twenty years. For a begin, it’s a ‘half-frame’ 35mm movie digicam, utilizing customary 35mm movie canister however splitting every body into two photos. As an alternative of 36 photographs on a roll, you due to this fact get 72 or thereabouts, with a corresponding 50 per cent degradation within the density of the movie grain.
For analogue aficionados, that grain is what it’s all about. The world is likely to be awash in undesirable second-hand movie cameras of various levels of high quality, however the Pentax identify has a longstanding affiliation with high quality and getting a field contemporary 35mm digicam is one thing many photographers feared would by no means occur once more.
The machine is superbly completed, with analogue controls and a hard-wearing, half-metal physique of the kind that’s seeping again into digital digicam design. The Pentax is certainly not for pure point-and-shoot pictures – all of us have our telephones for that – however a device that’ll reward studying its foibles and strengths.
With a built-in flash however no auto-focus, there are solely six modes at hand, every of which can be a contemporary grasp class to the digital era. Among the digicam’s parts have been so lengthy out of manufacturing that the Pentax group needed to strategy retired workers in an effort to faucet into their skillsets.
The supply of 35mm has been steadily rising over current years, as cult digicam makers like Lomography churn out a gradual stream of collectable, esoteric designs. It was additionally just lately introduced that Fujifilm was restarting manufacturing of its basic C200 and C400 movie in a facility in China. The Pentax 17 provides a contemporary alternative to eschew the digital realm.
Pentax 17, extra info at Ricoh-Imagining.co.jp, accessible from Analogue Wonderland, £499.99, AnalogueWonderland.co.uk
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