Report Blog Entry
In 1978, Pentax launched an interesting camera. Accompanied by TV ads with a friendly smiling sumo fighter, this tiny thing entered the history as the smallest SLR camera ever made. In fact, it's not just the smallest SLR ever made, it's the smallest system camera, with plenty of cool accessories. So let's take a look at this teeny tiny thing and how this interesting piece of photographic history came to be.
Introduction
In 1972, Kodak introduced 110. A small easy to use film format with 18x13mm frames and paper backing, sold in plastic cartridges. In many ways it was a shrunk down version of the 60s 126 format, in fact the cartridge design and mechanism was almost the same. It quickly became popular and the small and cheap pocket sized plastic cameras made for the format quickly found their way into the pockets of many travellers and tourists.
However some companies also started experimenting with more serious gear that used this format. Companies like Minolta, Rollei and Canon made some higher end cameras in the mid 70s with sharp glass lenses.
An obscure Japanese company known as Sugaya Optical also wanted their slice of the cake and designed the Minimax Pocket 110 EE, a quite advanced miniature rangefinder camera which sadly failed. Only 4000 of those were ever sold.
And so Sugaya Optical sold the blueprints for their unproduced 110 format SLR to Asahi Pentax, who further refined it and released it as the Pentax Auto 110 in 1978. An upgraded version called the Pentax Auto 110 Super was released in 1981 (with a self timer, exposure compensation and a better film advance built in).
However the Super version is very rare nowadays so I decided to go with the regular 1978 model instead.
Overview
Design
The camera looks well... like a shrunk down 35mm SLR. It's kinda cute :3. It's pretty much palm sized and fits nicely into the pocket.
Build quality
The camera is mostly made from a mix of plastic and metal. The top and bottom plates are entirely made of metal as well as the internal mechanism while the backdoor, battery holder, accessories and other various details are mostly made of plastic. The camera definitely has an unexpected heft to it for the size. It's quite sturdy.
The only weak spot is the back door, which can bend a tiny bit and cause light leaks if you treat the camera too roughly. But if that happens, you can just use a bit of duct tape, tape over the edges of the door and you're good to go.
The lenses are surprisingly... 6 element glass lenses. The lens body is plastic but the optical elements are all multicoated glass with manual focus, which is really neat. Not many 110 format lenses actually have this amount of care and optical quality put into them.
The only weak spot is the back door, which can bend a tiny bit and cause light leaks if you treat the camera too roughly. But if that happens, you can just use a bit of duct tape, tape over the edges of the door and you're good to go.
The lenses are surprisingly... 6 element glass lenses. The lens body is plastic but the optical elements are all multicoated glass with manual focus, which is really neat. Not many 110 format lenses actually have this amount of care and optical quality put into them.
Features
The camera is mostly automatic. You put in two LR44 batteries and you're ready to go. The light inside the lightmeter lights up green when you half press the shutter if you have enough light to shoot handheld and orange when you don't.
The only form of manual controls you get is focusing, which is pretty much done the same way as on any other camera, by turning the focus ring on the lens. You advance the film using a double stroke film advance lever.
Apart from that, the camera also has a tripod socket. The shutter speeds on the leaf shutter inside go from 1s to 1/750 and every lens for this camera has an F2.8 aperture. You can also attach a cable release, which really helps when you're using a tripod.
The only form of manual controls you get is focusing, which is pretty much done the same way as on any other camera, by turning the focus ring on the lens. You advance the film using a double stroke film advance lever.
Apart from that, the camera also has a tripod socket. The shutter speeds on the leaf shutter inside go from 1s to 1/750 and every lens for this camera has an F2.8 aperture. You can also attach a cable release, which really helps when you're using a tripod.
Accessories
The standard 1978 kit that I have has 3 lenses - an 18mm (36mm equivalent) wide angle lens, a 24mm (48mm equivalent) normal lens and a 50mm (100mm equivalent) telephoto lens.
Later with the Pentax Auto 110 Super, 3 more lenses launched - 18mm panfocus lens with fixed focus, 20-40mm (40-80mm equivalent) zoom lens and a 70mm (140mm equivalent) telephoto lens.
Apart from that, you can also mount a flash and an auto winder. Pretty cool for a camera this size.
Later with the Pentax Auto 110 Super, 3 more lenses launched - 18mm panfocus lens with fixed focus, 20-40mm (40-80mm equivalent) zoom lens and a 70mm (140mm equivalent) telephoto lens.
Apart from that, you can also mount a flash and an auto winder. Pretty cool for a camera this size.
The experience
Logistics
Well, I got this camera for Ebay, the entire 1978 kit for 58 euros. It's quite a steal considering the full kits usually go for 100-200 euros. It did come with some caveats though.
The camera came with some old batteries still inside and they sadly leaked. But I cleaned the contacts, replaced the batteries and it works like new. The lenses also had some haze but a microfiber cloth and some lighter fluid worked wonderfully. Not a bad deal at all.
As for film, Lomography still produce and sell 110 format film. Their 110 film is technically produced by Kodak and Orwo but sold under the Lomography name. It's relatively easy to find and affordable. Depending on where you are, you might run into issues finding labs that will develop it but if all else fails, there's still self development or you can send it straight to the closest Lomography lab and they will develop it for you aswell.
The camera came with some old batteries still inside and they sadly leaked. But I cleaned the contacts, replaced the batteries and it works like new. The lenses also had some haze but a microfiber cloth and some lighter fluid worked wonderfully. Not a bad deal at all.
As for film, Lomography still produce and sell 110 format film. Their 110 film is technically produced by Kodak and Orwo but sold under the Lomography name. It's relatively easy to find and affordable. Depending on where you are, you might run into issues finding labs that will develop it but if all else fails, there's still self development or you can send it straight to the closest Lomography lab and they will develop it for you aswell.
Handling
The camera is definitely tiny but it fits well into your hands. It's probably the most stable when you hold it in both hands, using the right one to wind the film and press the shutter and the left one to focus. But if you really need or want to (and your index finger is long enough :p), you can easily do everything with one hand.
The camera comes with a wrist strap attached and it can be replaced with a shoulder strap if you prefer. But I prefer the wrist strap and for a camera this small, it's much more convenient.
Loading the film and batteries isn't hard. The batteries are in the back of the camera in a separate holder. You put them in the right way, slide in the holder and that's it. 110 is a cassette based film format so just... pop the cassette in and there you go. Wind it until the back window shows number 1 or until you feel resistance and you can shoot.
Image quality
So... as I mentioned before, this thing has 6 element lenses. And being such a small format, they're among the sharpest for the format. 110 film itself is grainy and quite low res (roughly 6 megapixel equivalent in digital terms) so you could even say those lenses are quite an overkill. The coatings aren't the best but they usually do a decent job of getting rid of glare. You will still see blue lens flares if you point it at something bright though.
The camera has automatic exposure that works extremely well. The light in the viewfinder is intuitive and the meter always picks perfect exposure.
And the manual focus gives you some control over depth of field and you can get some tasty shallow DoF images.
The film also does a lot to the final images. You are gonna get a more natural and higher resolution result out of the Kodak produced stocks (Tiger 110 and Orca) compared to the ORWO stuff, which is more expressive and has stronger grain.
Still, the images look wonderful, have a great atmosphere to them and you can easily get 4x6 format or a bit bigger prints out of this.
Conclusion
This camera is awesome. If you're looking for a lot of manual controls over exposure, this ain't it chief. But if you just want a tiny 110 format camera that takes great high quality images and has manual focus, it's definitely worth it. It's such a solidly built camera and I love it. Can't say much negative stuff about it. It's such an interesting piece of history that works surprisingly well.
Comments
Displaying 0 of 0 comments ( View all | Add Comment )