Pentax 17

A new film camera. Who woulda thunk it?

I was really excited when I heard that Pentax was going to make a new camera model. My Dad’s camera, which hurled me down the film shootin’ rabbit hole that I likely will never be able to crawl out of, is a Pentax so that’s kind of karmically fitting.

Then they announced it was going to be half frame. Huh. Okay, I guess. I have enough trouble getting things to look half decent in a full frame resolution, I can only imagine how shitty my stuff would look at half of the resolution. I was still interested, but a little less interested.

Then I learned that it’s not an autofocusing camera, and it’s also not a manual focusing camera. It’s just a zone focus deal and since it’s not an SLR you don’t see through the lens when you look through the viewfinder, so focusing is literally guesswork. Huh.

Am I still interested? Yes. Am I as interested as I was a few days ago? No.

The YouTube is suddenly riddled with review videos. Today must be the officially sanctioned Pentax Press Day, or whatever they call it in the biz.

Here is one I haven’t watched yet:

Here is another one I haven’t watched yet:

Here is one that I am watching as I type this:

Here is one I have watched:

The Bad Flashes video just said the sale price will be $499 and the on sale date will be June 24th via the Pentax website. $499 is too expensive for me. My interest just dropped to very near zero. Sorry, Charlie. Maybe if the price comes down I will check it out, just to be a part of the party and stuff.

Here’s hoping it’s successful and leads to a new full frame SLR. That would be really cool.

I Want to Try All of This

I want to try everything he talks about in this video. Especially the zone focusing stuff. The biggest problem I have with my film camera is manual focusing. The camera is older than the concept of auto focus so I have to do it all with my own eyes and my eyes are unreliable (see the posts from a few days ago with all the shopping for glasses).

The thing that worries me is knowing distances without any measuring device. How far is four feet? How far is 10 feet? How do I know without tons of practice, which implies tons of wasted film. I don’t want to waste film, it’s freakin’ expensive!

I’ll figure it out. Maybe I’ll finally get to the city and spend a day pretending I am a Boston area street photographer. That would be groovy, wouldn’t it?