The new Pentax 17

A friend of mine just showed me an editorial they shot with one of these (mixed in with Hasselblad and Contax G2 shots) and I'm extremely impressed by the quality you get from the lens. I'm actually casually on the lookout for one now!

I had a play with one in Real Camera, Manchester last week. It's quite a nice thing and I can see the appeal. not sure it's a £500 camera but it's not bad at all. (they have their ex demo one for sale if you were interested)
 
I had a play with one in Real Camera, Manchester last week. It's quite a nice thing and I can see the appeal. not sure it's a £500 camera but it's not bad at all. (they have their ex demo one for sale if you were interested)

Yeah the £500 price point is hard to swallow for me. It's such a capable (in the right hands), charming thing though and the handprints I've seen were really nice.
 
Yeah the £500 price point is hard to swallow for me. It's such a capable (in the right hands), charming thing though and the handprints I've seen were really nice.
Definitely capable. I follow a wedding photographer who's been using one in her wedding workflow and she has some lovely images from it.
 
Apologies, I meant to post the above to the Lens Id thread. Any chance it could be moved?
 
My personal view is that a full-frame 35mm camera (even if otherwise identically featured) would have been a better proposition from Pentax.
I have seen suggestions that the spacing inside the 17 would accept a 36mm frame with a different lens. I was rather expecting that we'd get a Pentax 36 as the next iteration. Shame about the "pause"!
 
But paying £499 for a half-frame camera doesn't really appeal to me.
We also had the Rollei AF at £800. Seems to me that we can't expect a (not-junk) new camera at second hand prices. It's the Catch 22 of the new film camera market. Yes, we'd all like to see new film cameras (preferably a bit better featured than this example), but when one is offered we're all "Oh I could get something 'better' for half the price"!

Meanwhile, MPB is listing a Contax T for over £2,000, and new digital cameras seem to have doubled in price in the past few years.

I'm pretty sure that if it had been the new manual/metered SLR I'd like to see, it would be well over £1,500, which I wouldn't like to see!
 
The problem with new film cameras is there are still tons of old ones around in perfect working order for a fraction of the price.
Still, I hope any new ones are successful though.
 
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