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half-frame cameras

A Pentax 17, back open, beside a roll of 35mm film. Photo Gnangarra, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Half-frame cameras

11 traced influences · 5 sources

dig half-frame cameras

What it took directly

  1. documentedThe Pentax 17 took from Takeo Suzuki's proposal for a new Pentax film camera, first met with silence"When camera designer Takeo Suzuki first suggested to his bosses at Ricoh Imaging that they make a new Pentax film camera, he was met with an awkward silence." Fiona Wilson, Monocle (issue 180, February 2025)
  2. documentedThe Pentax 17 took from the Ricoh Auto Half of the 1960s, and the Pentax Espio"Suzuki had some older cameras in mind for inspiration – the Ricoh Auto Half from the 1960s and the Pentax Espio – but there was no existing mould for this new camera." Fiona Wilson, Monocle (February 2025), reporting Takeo Suzuki
  3. statedThe Ricoh Auto Half (1962) took from the Ricoh Auto 35 of 1960, the first electric-eye camera developed by a Japanese company"In 1960 it released Ricoh Auto 35, the first electric-eye camera developed by a Japanese company; and then in 1962, rolled out the more advanced and handy Ricoh Auto Half—a half-frame, fully automatic camera" Ricoh, "Company History"

What it learned to do

  1. documentedThe Pentax 17's film-advance lever learned from the one person at Ricoh who had worked on film cameras"Sanada took advice from the one person at Ricoh who had worked in film cameras and then dedicated himself to perfecting the length of the lever and the satisfying sound as it winds the film forward." Fiona Wilson, Monocle (February 2025)
  2. statedThe Pentax 17's dials and lever learned from the Pentax brand's heritage of manual film photography"The design of the PENTAX 17 was inspired by the PENTAX brand’s heritage, incorporating manual operations unique to film photography" Ricoh Imaging, PENTAX 17 product page
  3. statedThe Pentax 17's vertical frames learned from the smartphone photo"It produces vertical-format pictures with similar ratios to those captured by smartphones, and with the distinctive image quality created only by a film camera." Ricoh Imaging, PENTAX 17 product page

The tradition it sits in

  1. statedThe Pentax 17 comes from the family half-frame cameras of the 1960s and 1970s"“Half-format cameras were big in the 1960s and 1970s when every family only had one camera – they were just more economical,” says Suzuki." Takeo Suzuki, Ricoh Imaging designer, to Monocle (February 2025)
  2. statedThe half-frame camera comes from the Olympus Pen, which set off the 1960s–70s half-frame boom"The Pen was a compact mix of innovative ideas that triggered the half-frame camera boom of the 1960s and 1970s." Olympus, "Olympus History: Pen Series"
  3. inferredThe Pentax 17's half-frame format comes from the success of Kodak's Ektar H35 with young film shooters from 2022"The Kodak-branded Ektar H35 was a huge success when it launched in 2022, allowing cash-strapped young photographers to take twice as many shots" inferred — Kosmo Foto's Stephen Dowling sets the Ektar H35's 2022 success beside Pentax's surprising half-frame choice ("Pentax never made a half-frame camera"); neither Ricoh nor Suzuki says the Ektar H35 shaped the decision in these sources

Where the whole form comes from

  1. statedThe Olympus Pen comes from a price target: a camera that could sell for ¥6,000"The first-generation Olympus Pen camera appeared in 1959. The design process began with the concept of creating a camera that could be sold for ¥6,000 yen." Olympus, "Olympus History: Pen Series"
  2. statedThe half-frame format comes from the 35mm frame, cut in two"The PENTAX 17 is a half-size format in which two pictures (17mm x 24mm) are captured within a single 35mm-format frame, meaning that you can double the number of pictures that can be captured on a single roll of film." Ricoh Imaging, PENTAX 17 product page

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