Should Pentax make a new film SLR

house · 12-01-2021, 10:57 AM

Film manufacturing seems the biggest issue for film photography these days. Prices going all sorts and stock low despite what appers to be strong demand again. For film photography to really work you need reliable and good access to film. I'm wondering if that will be the sticking point for film photography.

filmmaster · 12-01-2021, 04:02 PM

Originally posted by house

Film manufacturing seems the biggest issue for film photography these days. Prices going all sorts and stock low despite what appers to be strong demand again. For film photography to really work you need reliable and good access to film. I'm wondering if that will be the sticking point for film photography.

manufacturing support is one thing, but its a dedication to production that matters.

we cant have companies like kodak shut huge portions of production down just to balance the books to show a .002 cent increase when they want.

And fuji needs to stop shutting production down to burn off excess inventory when they have wharehouses all over the world.

Now if fuji had shut down 80% of its production to say "we have enough in our inventory systems for 2 years, so were selling off 6 months of this chemical to Adox so they can make something with it...."

bahnstormer · 12-01-2021, 04:43 PM

i m a no. chances are pentax (or anyone else) would remake a budget camera like the k-1000, i doubt anyone on here would pay the likely price of c.1000 for a basic full frame film camera. k-1000 prices going thru the roof as part of the
stranger things fad. when junk models are selling for 2 x price of working MX, it s a hipster thang. was at a fleamarket recently and picked up a fully working MV with 50 1.7 for 20 euro, k 1000s were going for 150+

colour cine film is unlikely to die off soon as hollywood still using it. i m interested to see if kodak ll do a limited run of 100ft spools of vision 3 for the home gamer to spool down onto magazines.

disconnekt · 12-01-2021, 09:52 PM

Originally posted by bahnstormer

i m a no. chances are pentax (or anyone else) would remake a budget camera like the k-1000, i doubt anyone on here would pay the likely price of c.1000 for a basic full frame film camera. k-1000 prices going thru the roof as part of the
stranger things fad. when junk models are selling for 2 x price of working MX, it s a hipster thang. was at a fleamarket recently and picked up a fully working MV with 50 1.7 for 20 euro, k 1000s were going for 150+

colour cine film is unlikely to die off soon as hollywood still using it. i m interested to see if kodak ll do a limited run of 100ft spools of vision 3 for the home gamer to spool down onto magazines.

Kodak wont likely do it, especially since places like Ultrafineonline & Film Photography Project are selling Vision3 films in 100' rolls. There's been more photo retailers in the last year or so that are starting to sell them loaded into 35mm cassettes, and some are able to aquire 70mm stocks of it and covert it to 120.

**beachgardener** · 12-01-2021, 09:58 PM

The KF a new Pentax film camera, yes go for it, perhaps they could repurpose the old Kodak plus-x pan as a Pentax film or some such thing

Bring back the Plus-x!!!

drmoss_ca · 12-08-2021, 07:35 AM

One thing's for sure - prices of used film cameras are rising, and that means the numbers of available, working cameras is falling. Our 'happy time' is probably over. Presumably agenda items at Harman, Alaris and Fuji are being tabled. They could band together with a company capable of making a basic SLR (Nikon, Canon, Ricoh/Pentax, Cosina) and not only own, they would be the market for film cameras, and they'd have a reason to keep making and selling film. If that doesn't happen, and I don't expect it to, the market for film will inevitably contract again, prices will rise, companies will get out, and one day, the last man standing will fold.

womble · 12-10-2021, 01:05 AM - **2 Likes**

Jeez this thread is a barrel of fun. In the UK we have multiple "indie" film labs opening up. Many allow you to download scans the day after you post them. Analogue Wonderland had to move to bigger premises to cope with demand in film sales. In Finland "Camera Rescue" is running courses to train new repair techs and has "rescued" over 100,000 film cameras. Small one-man-band companies are making film scanning masks, light meters, spot meters... There are more film photography podcasts that any one person has time to listen to.

Yes, the price of film has gone up, but petrol has risen from a low of 99p a litre a year and a half ago to 150+p a litre now. Prices of everything have gone up.

I never stopped using film. In the late noughties I was very down as to the future. The end of Kodachrome was very sad for me. The film photography market is more buoyant now than it has been for years. Yes it's expensive but a K-3iii and a HD* 16-50 will cost you £3,300 and that's a great deal more than I'll spend in film and cameras and CLAs in several years.

The internet has a depressing habit of reinforcing what you believe.

filmmaster · 12-11-2021, 10:06 AM

Look at instax cameras,,, its a crap product, the cameras suck, the "film" sucks, and the image is gone inside three years. Yet they somehow have no issue making the film or the cameras.

Sure the cameras are expensive, but that Mint company gives you FREE film to use if you buy a camera. More of a "we own you now" situation..

Sure its nice to see that place in finland rebuilding cameras, but i cant get my hands on one here. VAT, shipping, etc makes it prohibitive unless they found it in an unopened factory box.

Scissors · 12-12-2021, 07:43 AM

Analogue looks like it is here to stay. There must come a point when the market for a new camera is big enough to justify making one, I reckon it is getting close. As costs rise and supply diminishes it will become viable. An MX / OM1 / FM2 style camera but how much could it sell for? How much would we pay? Cosina are probably the people who would make it but I wonder whose name would be on the front?

**TwoUptons** · 12-12-2021, 08:30 AM

Originally posted by Scissors

Analogue looks like it is here to stay. There must come a point when the market for a new camera is big enough to justify making one, I reckon it is getting close. As costs rise and supply diminishes it will become viable. An MX / OM1 / FM2 style camera but how much could it sell for? How much would we pay? Cosina are probably the people who would make it but I wonder whose name would be on the front?

If Cosina makes it, it could have all of those names on the front... they've certainly done that in the past...

But I can't see Minolta/Sony, Olympus, Nikon, or Canon putting energy into a film camera that doesn't take their new mirrorless lenses.
Nikon and Canon might be brave enough to do that with some weird film rangefinder (with an electronic viewfinder?), or maybe a half-frame Olympus, but I can't see Sony doing it -- they don't have the nostalgia.

Ricoh is really the only company left that is interested in selling SLR lenses, and that would be the only real way forward.
That basically rules out an all-mechanical camera, since it wouldn't work with the new lenses.
At the end of that, you would still end up with $1,000 or more for a ZX-M or ZX-L equivalent (depending if you wanted to keep AF). More if you wanted a MZ-S equivalent.

All that said, there would be an interesting opportunity for Ricoh with the older FF Limiteds and their aperture rings, but the 21 suggests they aren't taking that road forward.
Even if they wanted to just "build a couple hundred LX bodies", could they source the bits?
And they aren't exactly rolling in cash to develop such a thing right now...

-Eric

andrewd · 12-13-2021, 06:17 AM

Interesting thought about a film camera that takes the new mirrorless lenses. There would be technical challenges for sure because there is not enough room for a reflex mirror and no mechanical couplings for a rangefinder.

One way it could be done is with a fly-by-wire optical rangefinder, where turning the lens focus barrel sends an electrical signal which adjusts the rangefinder sub mirror with motors. This would have the benefit that they could make it possible for user calibration of the rangefinder. They could make a digital accessory back for rangefinder calibration.

Metering would be off the front shutter curtain or film surface.

Something like this would be an uber expensive niche product. I give it 0.001 chance, but no harm in dreaming

**TwoUptons** · 12-14-2021, 02:42 PM

I also still have hopes that one of the Chinese "artisan" companies will make a M-mount film rangefinder...

But Nikon/Canon/Olympus could make a rangefinder patch that corresponded with the lens electronics and focus by wire.
Lens framing could be with a LCD overlay. And metering off the shutter front.

But the economics still don't line up to me...

-Eric

h.butz · 03-01-2022, 10:59 AM - **1 Like**

There are no "camera" companies, only optical companies. Nobody goes into the business of offering a film camera to make money on the cameras. They sell the cameras so you'll buy the lenses. It's why you can buy a fantastic Epson printer with all the bells and whistles for under $200 bucks - because they nail you on the ink. So, since Pentax is doing a great job selling lenses they won't be motivated to go back into film camera production.

What I would like to see is Pentax sell classic camera parts so we can fix up that huge pile of junk on ebay and restore the dirty, fungus riddled, sticky shuttered, dead light meter'd bodies.

andrewd · 03-02-2022, 12:11 AM

Originally posted by h.butz

What I would like to see is Pentax sell classic camera parts so we can fix up that huge pile of junk on ebay and restore the dirty, fungus riddled, sticky shuttered, dead light meter'd bodies.

That would be great but unfortunately I don’t see it happening. I think our only hope is for a third party company to do this.

**TwoUptons** · 03-05-2022, 06:37 AM - **1 Like**

Originally posted by h.butz

There are no "camera" companies, only optical companies. Nobody goes into the business of offering a film camera to make money on the cameras. They sell the cameras so you'll buy the lenses. It's why you can buy a fantastic Epson printer with all the bells and whistles for under $200 bucks - because they nail you on the ink. So, since Pentax is doing a great job selling lenses they won't be motivated to go back into film camera production.

What I would like to see is Pentax sell classic camera parts so we can fix up that huge pile of junk on ebay and restore the dirty, fungus riddled, sticky shuttered, dead light meter'd bodies.

That explains why this probably won't happen...

If we all fix up our MESupers and K1000s using Pentax supplied parts, we can't use the new Pentax lenses with them...
There's a very short list of available new lenses that will work with any of the manual focus cameras...

-Eric

View Poll Results: Should Pentax make a modern film SLR
Yes	47	34.81%
No	88	65.19%
Voters: 135. You may not vote on this poll

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12-01-2021, 10:57 AM	#166
house Pentaxian Join Date: May 2015 Photos: Albums Posts: 3,306	Film manufacturing seems the biggest issue for film photography these days. Prices going all sorts and stock low despite what appers to be strong demand again. For film photography to really work you need reliable and good access to film. I'm wondering if that will be the sticking point for film photography.

12-01-2021, 04:02 PM	#167
filmmaster Banned Join Date: Nov 2021 Posts: 141	Originally posted by house Film manufacturing seems the biggest issue for film photography these days. Prices going all sorts and stock low despite what appers to be strong demand again. For film photography to really work you need reliable and good access to film. I'm wondering if that will be the sticking point for film photography. manufacturing support is one thing, but its a dedication to production that matters. we cant have companies like kodak shut huge portions of production down just to balance the books to show a .002 cent increase when they want. And fuji needs to stop shutting production down to burn off excess inventory when they have wharehouses all over the world. Now if fuji had shut down 80% of its production to say "we have enough in our inventory systems for 2 years, so were selling off 6 months of this chemical to Adox so they can make something with it...."

12-01-2021, 04:43 PM	#168
bahnstormer New Member Join Date: Dec 2021 Posts: 4	i m a no. chances are pentax (or anyone else) would remake a budget camera like the k-1000, i doubt anyone on here would pay the likely price of c.1000 for a basic full frame film camera. k-1000 prices going thru the roof as part of the stranger things fad. when junk models are selling for 2 x price of working MX, it s a hipster thang. was at a fleamarket recently and picked up a fully working MV with 50 1.7 for 20 euro, k 1000s were going for 150+ colour cine film is unlikely to die off soon as hollywood still using it. i m interested to see if kodak ll do a limited run of 100ft spools of vision 3 for the home gamer to spool down onto magazines.

12-01-2021, 09:52 PM	#169
disconnekt Pentaxian Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: SoCal/I.E. Photos: Albums Posts: 1,701	Originally posted by bahnstormer i m a no. chances are pentax (or anyone else) would remake a budget camera like the k-1000, i doubt anyone on here would pay the likely price of c.1000 for a basic full frame film camera. k-1000 prices going thru the roof as part of the stranger things fad. when junk models are selling for 2 x price of working MX, it s a hipster thang. was at a fleamarket recently and picked up a fully working MV with 50 1.7 for 20 euro, k 1000s were going for 150+ colour cine film is unlikely to die off soon as hollywood still using it. i m interested to see if kodak ll do a limited run of 100ft spools of vision 3 for the home gamer to spool down onto magazines. Kodak wont likely do it, especially since places like Ultrafineonline & Film Photography Project are selling Vision3 films in 100' rolls. There's been more photo retailers in the last year or so that are starting to sell them loaded into 35mm cassettes, and some are able to aquire 70mm stocks of it and covert it to 120.

12-01-2021, 09:58 PM	#170
beachgardener Site Supporter Join Date: Sep 2013 Location: Australia Photos: Gallery Posts: 3,842	The KF a new Pentax film camera, yes go for it, perhaps they could repurpose the old Kodak plus-x pan as a Pentax film or some such thing Bring back the Plus-x!!!

12-08-2021, 07:35 AM	#171
drmoss_ca Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Nova Scotia, Canada Posts: 520	One thing's for sure - prices of used film cameras are rising, and that means the numbers of available, working cameras is falling. Our 'happy time' is probably over. Presumably agenda items at Harman, Alaris and Fuji are being tabled. They could band together with a company capable of making a basic SLR (Nikon, Canon, Ricoh/Pentax, Cosina) and not only own, they would be the market for film cameras, and they'd have a reason to keep making and selling film. If that doesn't happen, and I don't expect it to, the market for film will inevitably contract again, prices will rise, companies will get out, and one day, the last man standing will fold.

12-10-2021, 01:05 AM - 2 Likes	#172
womble Pentaxian Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Hertfordshire Photos: Gallery Posts: 4,324	Jeez this thread is a barrel of fun. In the UK we have multiple "indie" film labs opening up. Many allow you to download scans the day after you post them. Analogue Wonderland had to move to bigger premises to cope with demand in film sales. In Finland "Camera Rescue" is running courses to train new repair techs and has "rescued" over 100,000 film cameras. Small one-man-band companies are making film scanning masks, light meters, spot meters... There are more film photography podcasts that any one person has time to listen to. Yes, the price of film has gone up, but petrol has risen from a low of 99p a litre a year and a half ago to 150+p a litre now. Prices of everything have gone up. I never stopped using film. In the late noughties I was very down as to the future. The end of Kodachrome was very sad for me. The film photography market is more buoyant now than it has been for years. Yes it's expensive but a K-3iii and a HD* 16-50 will cost you £3,300 and that's a great deal more than I'll spend in film and cameras and CLAs in several years. The internet has a depressing habit of reinforcing what you believe.

12-11-2021, 10:06 AM	#173
filmmaster Banned Join Date: Nov 2021 Posts: 141	Look at instax cameras,,, its a crap product, the cameras suck, the "film" sucks, and the image is gone inside three years. Yet they somehow have no issue making the film or the cameras. Sure the cameras are expensive, but that Mint company gives you FREE film to use if you buy a camera. More of a "we own you now" situation.. Sure its nice to see that place in finland rebuilding cameras, but i cant get my hands on one here. VAT, shipping, etc makes it prohibitive unless they found it in an unopened factory box.

12-12-2021, 07:43 AM	#174
Scissors New Member Join Date: Dec 2021 Location: London Posts: 3	Analogue looks like it is here to stay. There must come a point when the market for a new camera is big enough to justify making one, I reckon it is getting close. As costs rise and supply diminishes it will become viable. An MX / OM1 / FM2 style camera but how much could it sell for? How much would we pay? Cosina are probably the people who would make it but I wonder whose name would be on the front?

12-12-2021, 08:30 AM	#175
TwoUptons Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Nov 2015 Photos: Albums Posts: 4,223	Originally posted by Scissors Analogue looks like it is here to stay. There must come a point when the market for a new camera is big enough to justify making one, I reckon it is getting close. As costs rise and supply diminishes it will become viable. An MX / OM1 / FM2 style camera but how much could it sell for? How much would we pay? Cosina are probably the people who would make it but I wonder whose name would be on the front? If Cosina makes it, it could have all of those names on the front... they've certainly done that in the past... But I can't see Minolta/Sony, Olympus, Nikon, or Canon putting energy into a film camera that doesn't take their new mirrorless lenses. Nikon and Canon might be brave enough to do that with some weird film rangefinder (with an electronic viewfinder?), or maybe a half-frame Olympus, but I can't see Sony doing it -- they don't have the nostalgia. Ricoh is really the only company left that is interested in selling SLR lenses, and that would be the only real way forward. That basically rules out an all-mechanical camera, since it wouldn't work with the new lenses. At the end of that, you would still end up with $1,000 or more for a ZX-M or ZX-L equivalent (depending if you wanted to keep AF). More if you wanted a MZ-S equivalent. All that said, there would be an interesting opportunity for Ricoh with the older FF Limiteds and their aperture rings, but the 21 suggests they aren't taking that road forward. Even if they wanted to just "build a couple hundred LX bodies", could they source the bits? And they aren't exactly rolling in cash to develop such a thing right now... -Eric

12-13-2021, 06:17 AM	#176
andrewd Senior Member Join Date: May 2021 Posts: 238	Interesting thought about a film camera that takes the new mirrorless lenses. There would be technical challenges for sure because there is not enough room for a reflex mirror and no mechanical couplings for a rangefinder. One way it could be done is with a fly-by-wire optical rangefinder, where turning the lens focus barrel sends an electrical signal which adjusts the rangefinder sub mirror with motors. This would have the benefit that they could make it possible for user calibration of the rangefinder. They could make a digital accessory back for rangefinder calibration. Metering would be off the front shutter curtain or film surface. Something like this would be an uber expensive niche product. I give it 0.001 chance, but no harm in dreaming

12-14-2021, 02:42 PM	#177
TwoUptons Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Nov 2015 Photos: Albums Posts: 4,223	I also still have hopes that one of the Chinese "artisan" companies will make a M-mount film rangefinder... But Nikon/Canon/Olympus could make a rangefinder patch that corresponded with the lens electronics and focus by wire. Lens framing could be with a LCD overlay. And metering off the shutter front. But the economics still don't line up to me... -Eric

03-01-2022, 10:59 AM - 1 Like	#178
h.butz Forum Member Join Date: Nov 2013 Location: Long Island New York USA Posts: 52	There are no "camera" companies, only optical companies. Nobody goes into the business of offering a film camera to make money on the cameras. They sell the cameras so you'll buy the lenses. It's why you can buy a fantastic Epson printer with all the bells and whistles for under $200 bucks - because they nail you on the ink. So, since Pentax is doing a great job selling lenses they won't be motivated to go back into film camera production. What I would like to see is Pentax sell classic *camera parts* so we can fix up that huge pile of junk on ebay and restore the dirty, fungus riddled, sticky shuttered, dead light meter'd bodies.

03-02-2022, 12:11 AM	#179
andrewd Senior Member Join Date: May 2021 Posts: 238	Originally posted by h.butz What I would like to see is Pentax sell classic *camera parts* so we can fix up that huge pile of junk on ebay and restore the dirty, fungus riddled, sticky shuttered, dead light meter'd bodies. That would be great but unfortunately I don’t see it happening. I think our only hope is for a third party company to do this.

03-05-2022, 06:37 AM - 1 Like	#180
TwoUptons Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Nov 2015 Photos: Albums Posts: 4,223	Originally posted by h.butz There are no "camera" companies, only optical companies. Nobody goes into the business of offering a film camera to make money on the cameras. They sell the cameras so you'll buy the lenses. It's why you can buy a fantastic Epson printer with all the bells and whistles for under $200 bucks - because they nail you on the ink. So, since Pentax is doing a great job selling lenses they won't be motivated to go back into film camera production. What I would like to see is Pentax sell classic *camera parts* so we can fix up that huge pile of junk on ebay and restore the dirty, fungus riddled, sticky shuttered, dead light meter'd bodies. That explains why this probably won't happen... If we all fix up our MESupers and K1000s using Pentax supplied parts, we can't use the new Pentax lenses with them... There's a very short list of available new lenses that will work with any of the manual focus cameras... -Eric