Pentax 17

I fell for the hype and got a Pentax 17, a new film camera made by Pentax in 2024, wow! 

It's weird. I like it, but it's weird.

It shoots half frame but with an extrememly sharp ~37mm full frame equivalent lens. By the time of this posting I've shot two rolls of mostly garbage around town, and am halfway through a third. Foto Huus scans half frame as a full frame diptych, which means I then crop his ~3MP scans into ~1.4MP scans.

Scanning half frame in this way means you get a bit cut off from each side, as two half frames together is slightly bigger than one full frame negative. This also means, given a regular full frame scanning mask, you can get a bit out of phase, where you only get a piece of one frame, the border, the entire next frame, and a bit of border again:

So I've invested in a proper half frame mask for scanning with my fuji + macro lens combo. I have rescanned some half frame shots with my actual scanner, and there is a ton of resolution, so I'm happy to shoot more. 

The biggest annoyance for me is remembering to turn on the camera first. My only other film camera with an advance lever (the crank that rolls the film forward for the frame) is the Revueflex AC1 (aka Chinon CE-3) which is "on" all the time, or more correctly, "on" whenever you half press the shutter button, which closes down the aperture and engages the light meter. The Pentax 17 has a separate on switch, and the camera obviously won't fire unless you remember to turn it on first, even though you can wind the advance lever at any time. I'll probably get used to it with time though.

Anyways heres some pics from the two rolls I blew through to test it out. Most were shot in a couple days while we were moving apartments. Nothing that special or notable. 

I am, in theory, going to Bern pride with Alec in a few days if I overcome this jetlag from my California trip, maybe I'll bring the Pentax 17 with me.