Pentax 17 – do I really want one?

Quite a lot of noise in the photography press regarding Ricoh Pentax’s new point and shoot film camera, the Pentax 17. And even more noise regarding its somewhat hefty price ticket: £550.

Choices

However for me it would have to be a choice between one of these (below) Pentax ME SUper, or more likely a small modern(ish) mirrorless camera such as one of the time Lumix GX series. Whilst the Pentax ME did have a battery, it was only for the TTL metering. The camera would work without it and the little LR44 batteries literally lasted for years. Though TBH, much as I really loved my Pentax SLRs at the time, laziness, c/w a deep aversion to scanning another negative, or buying another roll of film, it would 99.9% certainly be the camera on the right, or something similar, even if I did need to remember to charge the battery first.

To explain my deep-rooted aversion to scanning, I’m a bit like the boy who made himself sick on ice cream. Between 1994 and 2005, I scanned or supervised the scanning of around 33,000 35mm of my own negatives and probably around 10,000 mostly clinical slides, on a Kodak RFS 2035S film scanner. Exciting as it was when we first started, by the end, the novelty had worn off and it had become an extremely boring and tedious chore. Frankly I’d be happy never to scan another neg or slide for as long as I live! 🙂

So the short answer to the question is “NO!”