First photo leaks of Pentax 17 film camera – official update next week

The first photo has leaked of Pentax’s upcoming half-frame film camera. It’s the first camera to come from the company’s “Film Project”, which kicked off in December 2022. An update in May 2023 told us about some of the challenges the team was facing.

A short time after, we were treated to a teaser of a prototype camera on display. At the beginning of 2024, the company announced development of a half-frame film camera. Last month, we got another teaser. Now, there’s a leaked photo.

Pentax 17 – What does the photo tell us?

Well, it tells us a few things. It’s called the Pentax 17 and it has a fixed 25mm f/3.5 HD Pentax Lens. This is a half-frame camera, though, so the field of view won’t be quite what you’re used to with a “full-frame” 35mm film camera.

There appears to be some kind of focus scale printed in feet and metres below the lens. How you’re supposed to read this while shooting, I’ve no idea. It has an optical viewfinder, of course, it’s not TTL. It also has a built-in flash – I wonder if it has a sync socket?

I don’t know that it’s quite my cup of tea, but I’m not going to say that it isn’t just yet. It’s a very interesting camera and I quite like the idea of a half-frame. But I’d have to hold it in my hand and find out the price before deciding.

Official Pentax announcement coming June 18th (or 17th)

As the above image was beaming its way around the world’s social media networks, Ricoh themselves put out a statement regarding the Pentax Film Project. The company is going to be making an announcement on June 18th (local time), but that might be the night before for many of us.

We sincerely appreciate your support and patronage of RICOH IMAGING COMPANY. We are pleased to inform you that we will release the latest update video about our film camera development on our YouTube channel at 5 a.m. on June 18 (Japan Standard Time).

Translated to other parts of the world, 5am on June 18th (Japan Standard Time) works out to:

• June 17th, 9pm – UK
• June 17th 4pm – US Eastern
• June 17th 1pm – US Pacific

Given that there is a leaked photo, we can probably expect a Pentax 17 announcement next week. Probably. It’s also possible that we won’t get one. And even if we do, it may not be available immediately. Chances are, it’ll be a pre-order with a release date in the coming weeks.

I have to be honest, this is the one camera where I’d actually accept the “we underestimated demand” excuse if it gets backlogged. This is the first film camera from a major industry player in years. It may fly off the shelves or it might just sit there forever.

At this point, it’s an untested market that’s relying on the film community to put its money where its hype mouth is. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.