Spiraling out of control. Observations about the ever changing photography business.

I sat across a small wooden table from an avowed photographic gear fanatic. Someone who has owned three different medium format digital camera systems. Someone who thinks nothing of acquiring a really cool but very limited edition medium format shift lens from Germany just because....it might be cool to have. And this person is not a spend-y amateur with a short attention span and an overwhelmed credit card. Nope, he's a consummate professional who has made and accumulated millions of dollars from practicing his craft and investing the proceeds wisely. So, I was a bit shocked when I asked him which cameras he took with him on a recent, month long vacation to the South of France, and he replied by holding up his current model iPhone. No conventional camera from his burgeoning toolkit. Just his phone. And he was very happy with the results. 

That was one data point that hit me with a certain strength. And on a related tangent...

I watched several videos and read Mike Johnston's short take on the newly introduced Pentax 17 yesterday. As you may or may not know I started collecting half frame film cameras back in 1981. I snapped up a bunch of Olympus Pen FT cameras and lenses, all of which were made in the 1960s and 1970s. They are small system cameras and when you hold them as you would hold a regular camera for a horizontal shot you'll get a vertical frame because the cameras are half frame cameras and that's they way they are configured. The Pen FTs used a rotary shutter made of titanium. Their fastest shutter speed is 1/500th of a second but the fact that they are rotary shutters means that the cameras will sync at all shutter speeds with electronic flash. Pretty cool. Interestingly no one has made a really comparable half frame system since.

And all hoopla to the contrary, they still have not. Let me explain. The Pentax 17, while "cute" and easy to use, is a very crippled camera even by comparison to the ancient Pen FTs. Where the Pen FTs had a full complement of manual exposure and focus settings the Pentax 17 offers only Program mode. Where the Pen FTs offer a full SLR viewing and composing experience, through an optical viewfinder reflex, TTL path, the Pentax offers only a direct optical viewfinder which will be plagued by inaccurate framing at closer distances. It's all about the parallax distortion. A fixed finder with stationary frame lines is only accurate at one distance. Everything else is a compromise. 

But the biggest difference is that even back in the early 1970s the Olympus Pen FT offered users a full range of very good, and sometimes very fast, lenses. Lenses like a 60mm f1.5 and a 40mm f1.4. Lenses that were actually considered to be superb in those days. And are still competitive! The Pentax 17 comes with a compact, 37mm equivalent lens --- permanently attached to the camera. 

But the ultimate issue with the Pentax camera and lens is that there is no focusing mechanism in the camera. No rangefinder. No viewfinder indications for sharp focus. Nope. You get your grandfather's image scale, complete with pictograms, on the lens barrel. You get to choose "mountain" or "group shot" or "single person" etc. which means you'll never be sure of critical sharpness until you develop your film and check it with a loupe.

So far removed from the silky smooth focusing rings on the lenses of the ancient Olympus system. 

What you are left with is basically an updated version of a disposable camera from the 1980s only instead of being "disposable" and made of cardboard and plastic, parts of the new camera are metal and you can reload it over and  over again with 35mm film. But otherwise you are stuck with "guess composing" and "guess focusing" and no exposure control beyond what is provided by the program mode and an EV dial. I guess you'll hear a lot of reviewers make the excuse that if you shoot color negative film you'll have "tons of latitude" which will cover your ass if the camera disagrees with reality, vis-a-vis exposure.

What will you pay for this cute but completely crippled point-and-guess-and-shoot camera? The retail price is right at $500. The surface area of the film frame is small. But I guess that "guessing" is the reason for the purchase. The Pentax 17 is a late stage play for nostalgia and a device for people who want to automatically create distressed photographs. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I think it's basically a cynical ploy by a niche camera maker hoping to hang on to some part of the market that no one else is serving. But you have to ask yourself, if there is a market for a crippled, small frame, non-interchangeable, non-focusing, non-system film camera why haven't bigger players jumped into that market? Perhaps their market research persuaded them to mine other veins. 

I have to say that I think my friend's iPhone 16 Pro will provide a much more satisfying photographic experience than the very limited use parameters of the Pentax 17 will provide. And you have the added benefit of being able to surf the web and EVEN make old style phone calls. 

Don't get me wrong. I love compact film cameras. But the ones I love (and still own) are more like the Canon Canonet QL17iii. A sturdy beast of a camera, with a coincident rangefinder. A rangefinder that compensates for parallax. A camera that provides full manual control, a much faster lens, a full 35mm frame, shutter speed priority automation, automatic guide number flash, and no life or death reliance on an expensive CR2 battery. Pick one up in mint condition for a lot less than the purchase price of the Pentax and have a reputable repair agency CLA (clean, lube and adjust) a Canonet and I can pretty much assure you that you'll have a much more pleasant, holistic experience taking photographs. 

The Pentax 17? Except as jewelry or a novelty item? Hard Pass. Next up? Let's trash the Panasonic S9. What a disaster!

It's like the camera makers have yet to parse TikTok and are just spiraling out of control. We needn't join them in their quest...

 2018. Iceland. Stairway to somewhere.