Note: I wrote the following text on Cohost as a reply to someone asking me for my thoughts on the Pentax 17.
Long comment incoming!
First things first, Mifune already beat me to the punch, so I’d recommend reading their post if you haven’t: https://cohost.org/mifune/post/7538139-my-thoughts-after-us
Here’s a collection of photos I’ve taken on the Pentax 17 so far (and gotten back from the lab, I’ve like another three rolls pending right now): https://sentimental.pics/2024-09-16-pentax-17-showcase/
Overall I’ve really enjoyed using the Pentax 17. I’m a big small-camera person, having been a relatively early adopter of Micro Four Thirds back in 2011, and while the 17 isn’t the smallest compact film camera it’s small enough to meet my needs. It’s also extremely light, which according to internet people is a Bad Thing because it makes it feel cheap but it’s so incredibly necessary to me.
The controls are all good and the right level of fiddly, and I was already OK at scale focusing prior so I don’t really lose anything here. Plus, with the smaller format and middling max aperture unless you’re mostly taking close-ups most things will be in focus anyway. It’s also kind of freeing being forced to worry too hard about focus, although if you have more confidence than me you could do that with any camera lol.
I do have criticisms:
- Half-frame is take it or leave it. More photos per roll is great, but the resolution decrease and apparent grain-size increase is noticeable. Again, I was Micro Four Thirds for a long time so I knew what to expect, but if you’re an IQ junkie you’re gonna be disappointed. Hopefully Pentax follows through and makes a new compact 35mm film camera at some point.
- The camera is weirdly slow? Mifune comments about this on their post, but for a camera that reads as “mostly manual”, there’s a non-trivial amount of shutter lag.
- 1/350 max shutter speed is ridiculous lol. I almost feel like they capped it because they don’t want people using higher ISO films and getting upset about the grain size. In reality they probably just took an existing, very old lens system from one of their earlier compacts and didn’t bother upgrading it.
- It costs $500. I’m fortunate enough to be in a situation where this doesn’t hurt me much, but it’s certainly more expensive than getting an Olympus XA, a Rollei 35, or even one of Pentax’s original film point and shoots like the PC35AF on eBay. At the same time though, as an owner of partially broken cameras and a friend of people who have completely broken cameras, it’s nice that you can now put some money down and reasonably expect that your electronics-filled camera will work for the near-medium future, and with a warranty!
I’m happy with my purchase and will continue shooting with the Pentax 17 until I’m sick of it (currently have a roll of some dumb Lomo film in there), but I also have other cameras I can use to supplant its limitations. I’d be much more critical if it was my primary camera, or maybe my first film camera.
