Pentax 17: First Roll

17 August, 2025

A New Entry into the Market

    The Pentax 17 is a truly new film camera, released just last year, Summer of 2024! This is particularly significant and exciting, given the other current film camera offerings that you can buy new. To sum it up, you can either pick up a miserably made, all-plastic piece of crap (basically a reloadable disposable camera), or shell out over $6k for a new Leica film body.
    Nikon discontinued its last two film SLR's, the F6 and FM-10, around 2020. Polaroid (by way of Impossible Project's efforts) and Fujifilm both provide instant film systems, but that's a whole different experience (and much more costly to shoot than 35mm film). There's also the Lomography cameras, which I've used and enjoyed, but those are, if we're being honest, on the lower end of the scale, both in build and imaging, while being arguably more expensive than they should be.
    That means that there is a huge gulf in the middle of the market, which Pentax has decided to introduce a product into. I'll address the $500 pricetag of the Pentax 17 later, but my point here is to say that this camera lies in the basically empty area between two extremes.

Camera Overview

    The Pentax 17 is quite a unique camera, full of charming(?) idiosyncracies. I really love the looks of this camera. The warm silver top and bottom plates, the viewfinder housing, and the sort of jumbled, but functional and accessible controls all make for a funky take on classic design. It wouldn't look out of place on display in a Wolf Camera during the 1980's!

    The specs, though, remind me a lot of the Olympus Pen cameras from the 1960's and 70's. First and foremost, it's half-frame, which is where the "17" comes from (17 being roughly half of 35mm). This means, you get twice as many shots per roll! Exposure is easy and automatic, with several modes to choose from:

• P with and without flash, will automatically choose the best shutter speed and aperture values
  • all the yellow modes are with flash, and the white modes are without flash
• Slow shutter speed bias with and without flash (the crescent moon icons)
• BOKEH biases towards the widest aperture
• B (Bulb) will hold the shutter open for as long as you hold down the shutter release button (the aperture will be set at the widest f3.5)
• Auto which is like P but will fire the flash if it decides (without having to switch modes), but...
  • this also overrides the focus selection, setting focus at infinity.

    The camera is manual scale-focus, and the viewfinder (oriented vertically) is just that, no rangefinder. Through that viewfinder, you can see the picture scale for focus distance, and underneath the lens barrel, you'll find the corresponding feet and meters. The minimum focus distance is a surprisingly close 25 centimeters!

    There are also two indicator lights by the viewfinder, one blue and one orange, that will provide warnings:

• At Camera Startup
  • Both alternating quickly - Dead battery
  • Blue blinking quickly - Not enough light/lens cap still on
• When Shutter is Pressed Halfway
  • Both alternating quickly - Dead battery/film advance lever not fully wound
  • Blue blinking quickly - Not enough light/lens cap still on
    • will not happen when on flash modes after the flash is charged, or on Bulb
  • Blue blinking slowly - Shooting range set to close-up (either fork-and-knife or flower)
• In Flash Modes
  • Orange blinking slowly - Flash is charging
  • Orange solid - Flash is charged

So How is it?

    I carried the Pentax 17 around with me for about a week, loaded with a roll of Kodak Gold 200, capturing some daily life. At the end of the week, I brought it with me to a local cars and coffee meet, which was a lot of fun! It's not as pocketable as a true compact, but it's smaller (and much lighter) than a Leica M camera; it's very easy to just grab and go.
    The vertical oriented viewfinder definitely influenced me to shoot more vertical photos. The control dials feel ... OK (more on that below), and the scale focusing was easy to adapt to. I did miss focus a handful of times, but not unusably so.

    The 25mm f3.5 lens provides a field of view similar to a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera, and is pleasingly sharp and contrasty. This is definitely a modern lens that is (thankfully) not what people might call "characterful." I think a lot of people outside of the film-shooting niche hold the misconception that film = low fidelity, expecting it to yield peculiar and flawed results. You can find lots of photographers on places like Instagram defining "the film look" as odd color-shifts, intrusive grain, under-exposure, abnormal saturation, steep sharpness falloff in the corners, vignetting, and all manner of affectatious effects. It's downright refreshing that Pentax decided to create a lens that gives "normal" results (cough, cough Lomography)!

    That said, by its very nature of being half-frame, the photos do come out grainier (same as if you were to crop halfway into a full-frame shot), but as long as you're not shooting a higher speed film, it shouldn't be too bad. Another quirk of half-frame is the popular practice of shooting diptychs (two images presented together). Not that anything is really stopping you from making diptychs with any other camera, but getting back the negatives and seeing the images right then and there, side by side, naturally makes you lean towards sharing or printing them this way.

What are the Issues?

    As I've hinted throughout this discussion, there are some issues I have with the camera, both conceptually and in practice. Let me run through some of the more minor points in rapid-fire. The camera is completely battery-dependent (takes one CR2), and pretty battery-hungry from what I've heard. The max shutter speed is only 1/350, so you better choose the right ISO, which is tough when a roll can be 72 shots! The power switch, the exposure compensation, and the mode dial are all pretty easy to knock out of the intended setting, without realizing; only the ISO dial is locked-in with a button release. I wish that all the detents were a bit stronger, and I wonder how they'll hold up after years of regular use.
    One of the most immediate questions someone might ask is, "how much does it cost?" $500 is no small sum, especially when considering that this is being looked at by people who may be new to film, or might be considering a second camera. Maybe my expectations haven't adjusted to the current cost of goods and devalued dollar, but I was really hoping for a bit more. The materials aren't the best, mainly a mix of textured plastics. Sure it's functional, and while I would say it's better than a lot of other current new cameras, the way the Pentax 17 feels in hand isn't exactly what I'd call "durable."
    This matter is made so much worse when you start to consider used cameras (a point I've held off mentioning up to this point). For about $100 less, you could pick up a decent condition Nikon F3, an absolute beast of a camera, along with a nice prime lens! There are lots and lots of excellent options for about half the price, so why choose the Pentax 17? From a purely pragmatic standpoint, don't. Even considering the one year warranty, you'll find plenty of old cameras, of any form factor you could want, that function without issue and are readily repairable.

    So again, why? Well, to be honest, I'm a sentimental sucker! I want Pentax (Ricoh) to succeed in their film photography endeavors. I love the fact that something so anachronistic and weird is available! If I wasn't like this, I'd just shoot whatever digital camera had the "best" specs for what I was willing to spend, and I'd just go to the theater to watch the same old Marvel slop over and over again, and I'd have Brat on repeat on Spotify. I'm a contrarian who shoots film, spending time and money on photos that might only ever get seen by 3 people in the world, instead of pumping out content on an algorithm-optimized social media account.
    I really enjoy finding unique experiences, and I guess my tastes are a little weird. I promise I'm not just trying to be different for the sake of it. I actually have a 9-5 office job that I thoroughly enjoy (seriously!). But I think it's great when there are choices available outside the mainstream, and I think it's culturally important that those choices are available, even when they don't appeal to me personally.
    So, despite all its quirks, I think the Pentax 17 is a great camera that deserves to exist! It is not going to be the best choice for most people, and it might not even be a good choice for me. However, I'm so happy that it's out there for the people that will click with it. This will be a fantastic camera for someone who wants to shoot half-frame, their film going twice as far, and appreciates the graininess, wants something easy to carry, and likes the auto-exposure with scale-focus workflow. I know those people exist, and I dearly hope that there's enough of them buying this camera to convince Pentax (Ricoh) to release more film cameras!