New Pentax film camera teaser confirms half-frame 35mm

Despite sharing much of its journey so far, Pentax is being quite coy with the specs of its upcoming film camera project. It’ll be the first new film camera the company’s released in years, but we still don’t know much about it.

Now, in a new teaser, Pentax is being equally secretive, revealing virtually nothing about the camera. Well, I say virtually. It does confirm something that Pentax has already told us. It will have a half-frame 35mm format.

What do we know about the new Pentax film camera?

We know that it will be a compact camera. We also know that it’ll utilise a half-frame 35mm format, allowing two images per typical frame. This means you’ll get up to 48 or 72 photos per roll, depending on whether you use 24 or 36 exposure rolls.

This isn’t the first teaser Pentax has released. Last summer, the company put a partially covered model with a transparent plastic shell in a glass case on exhibition for visitors to check out. Very little of the camera was on display, but we got to see a little something.

What else do we know?

Well, not much.

Since the film project was first announced at the end of 2022, along with a video getting us up to speed on the current status and the company’s goals, in May last year, we got some insight into the company’s mindset, sharing more of their vision but not really any specs.

In January we reported that the new camera was in the prototyping stages and out being tested in the wild. They even released a few sample photos to show what it could do. But we still didn’t see the camera or learn any new specs.

Pentax did also publish another video on Instagram showing some elements of the camera’s mechanisms. Knowing that it’s a pretty basic, bare-bones, manual compact camera, though, there isn’t really all that much to know.

But there are still a few questions that potential customers will be keen to see answered.

What are the maximum and minimum shutter speeds? Does it have a built-in fill flash? Can it shoot multiple exposures on the same frame? As a compact, it has a fixed lens. Can I screw a filter onto it?

I guess we’ll have to keep waiting to find out, but with a teaser now being released, we’re probably quite close to a release.