Originally posted by Adam A while back I looked into adding a category for Pentax film compacts, but what stood in the way was (1) very limited historical information on the topic and (2) a general lack of interest from the community. We still decided to set up a section for digital compacts, which is fairly complete for recent models, but hardly anybody has posted a review there.
What might therefore make more sense for film cameras is more of an article explaining the evolution of technology/features over time, or the legacy of certain models. Does anyone have any info that might be of use, whether for this or a potential camera DB?
Japanese wikipedia is a good source to find out which model was released when, though I don't know if this is truly exhaustive.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/PENTAX%E3%81%AE%E9%8A%80%E5%A1%A9%E3%82%B3%E3%...B8%80%E8%A6%A7
User manuals for all of the last Pentax film compact series (all Espio 35mm film cameras and Efina APS cameras listed on wikipedia) are available at Ricoh Imaging Co. Ltd. web page, but again these are in Japanese. You need to visit the following URI and then click "生産終了製品" or discontinued products to reveal that section. (Though the English page at Ricoh Imaging Co. Ltd. has "discontinued products" section, unfortunately it doesn't list any film compacts.)
????? / ?????? / ???? | RICOH IMAGING
For example, Espio Mini was released in 1994 and was the only Espio with a prime lens according to wikipedia, and you can tell from the manual that it had 32mm F3.5 lens (3 groups 3 elements), 0.34x OVF with 85% coverage, supported AF, bulb mode up to 5 minutes (!!), panorama mode, auto loading, auto winding/rewinding etc.
https://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/japan/support/man-pdf/emini.pdf