Pentax Film Project

Paul_R_H wrote:

You are right, it's a stupid camera. But it's not stupid of Pentax to make and sell it to enthusiasts. If there are buyers it's a business.

But are there? Look how cheaply you can buy an MZ-S or an LX and there don't seem to be lots of people chasing K-Mount film cameras.  And If Ricoh sells us an KF or K1 or K3 they hope to sell us lenses on the back of it. If the people wanting to shoot film are buying used film era lenses, it's not a great business. My go-to films 35 years ago were XP1 and FP4 , and XP2 and FP4+ replace them 25 years ago. What film is available today? XP2 and FP4+. Is it worth investing in a DFA*50 to shoot on FP4 or why not have pickup an FA 50 or a manual focus 50 and have something which is smaller / lighter - i.e. easier to live with, for a fraction of the cost.

And there might be buyers, using film for recreation or art, just as there are people who travel by horse even though we have very excellent electric motorbikes.

Since we're both UK based it's more like saying people like to drive a Morris Minor or a 2CV or a 1970's mini. Should any of those be put back into production ?  An open fire is lovely but building houses with coal fires again ? Some things have just had their day.

I gave up film because it was, even a decade ago, £20/$25 per roll to shoot,

I shot 1800 frames in a few days earlier in the year. £1000 worth of film and processing. And if I were still shooting film I wouldn't have been able to afford the DFA*85 or DFA 21 Limited

My biggest concern is that they say they want to make it affordable. It won't be 'very affordable' compared to digital, because of the costs of machining and assembling intricate mechanical parts.

A film transport shouldn't be too difficult to re-manufacture from old plans and aren't horribly intricate compared with a shutter / mirror which can be shared with the K1.

Anyway cost was always the inhibitor for film – the cost of film and processing not of the camera. As they used to say at processing labs, most rolls were 'a Christmas tree at each end and a beach in the middle'.