Pentax 17

Hi Ariel

There's certainly been a lot of media interest in it and most of the big UK retailers are inviting orders...  But I agree with you that the price (UK: £499) is definitely on the high side - after all, if you can find one, you can get a Yashica Half-14 for a lot less and a Half-17 for about a tenth of the cost.  The lenses might not be quite as wide but they're certainly a lot faster - and don't forget the lovely 72-E or the much more sophisticated Samurai models...   

Having said that, Ricoh are to be applauded for producing a new film camera and a thrifty half-frame to boot.  Of course, Kodak got there first with the Ektar H35 and the slightly enhanced H35N - they're more basic cameras but MUCH less costly.  A few years ago, people were advising everyone to get rid of their small format film cameras as 35mm film was dead...isn't it great to see the renaissance of the medium? 

The fact that there's a major camera company reintroducing a film camera into a digital landscape is great. I've always found it odd that everyone dropped all production of film gear entirely. An artist can use a vast number of 'implements' and mediums to paint, draw or sketch, but suddenly digital turns into the only valid mechanism for photos? However, there certainly are some aspects of this model that lead me to wonder... "what the hell were they thinking?".

As Arial notes, the specs and the price just don't match up to what should be possible and expected from a company that is extremely familiar and experienced with producing film gear. If you see the specs first, imagine you haven't seen product photos yet, and temporarily missed the bit about half-frames... you might start to envision something that might be a compact point-n-shoot similar to the Olympus XA/XA2 series. Then - modify that idea when reading it has a standard winding lever and a manual rewind crank, and start subtracting cost from the expected/possible MSRP.

After a new picture emerges in the brain, seeing the marketing pics, and noticing the pronounced grip (battery cover), large-ish SLR-like shutter/ISO knobs and layout, a pug-nosed indent at the front for the framing window, and the very odd and (to my eye) awkward and amateurish eyepiece... I start to think it's a mashup of a Yashica FX-3 and a Nikonos V, with a Konica 40mm pancake (but a bit wider). And IMHO, everything is still overpriced for a mechanical transport camera, and no included flash.

It could be that I'm jaded, or too old, or just cranky overall... but I don't really get the design or the choices, and certainly not the price.