Half A Cookie Is Still A Cookie Zine

 

If you've been following this blog, then you know that I like using the Pentax 17, a half-frame 35mm camera that was introduced in 2024.  I've put together a zine that has my insights on using the Pentax 17 and other half-frame cameras.  It's 6x9 inches, with 40 pages, including the covers.  Full-color and black and white photographs showcase my results from this great compact camera from Pentax.

You can purchase it from my Etsy store for $7.50 + postage.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/4459033552

A Developing Story

Film from the Arizona trip

Over the past few months, I have shot quite a bit of film.  Thirty-seven rolls on my October Arizona trip, and another 13 rolls during my November Ohio-Virginia trip.  That’s 50 rolls, and really raises my count for the year. Of course, the chickens come home to roost, which means that I have had to do a lot of film developing. The black and white film always gets done first - and while I tend to shoot a lot of different b&w films, there are some that I use more than others. Using only one b&w film does make the developing end simpler, but no, I am not that type. Therefore, the b&w developing takes longer since I have to work out the developer and time for each different emulsion.  The Massive Development Chart is what I use as a reference, as well as my developing notebook - which I’ve been keeping for almost 25 years. Lately, I have been using a lot of D-76, followed by Black White and Green, D-96, and HC110.  

On my recent trips I did shoot a lot of color film, even in medium format.  I used my Pentax 6x7 quite often during the Arizona trip, and I think the addition of a 3D printed right hand grip really makes the camera easier to hand hold.  I confess that I have not used the Pentax 6x7 very often over the past few years, and the Arizona trip was the most use it’s had in a long while. Most of the color shot on that trip was with my 35mm K-mount bodies, the Vivitar V3800 and the Pentax KX, and then the Pentax 17. As I was getting ready to leave for Ohio in mid-November,  I sent in the E-6 films to Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, KS, and the 120 C-41 to Reformed Film Lab in Florida.  The developed film returned shortly after I got home from the November trip. 

I developed the 35mm color film at home using the FPP Color kit for ECN-2 and C-41 films.  I use a sous-vide in a 5 gallon tote to keep the chemistry at 42°C.  I have 7 Jobo tanks that take 2 rolls of 35mm, so what I do is this: 

Number each tank and record what rolls are in each. Work from Tank 1 -7, hanging the film to dry in the same order.  Since everything gets the same development, it doesn’t matter what rolls are together, except that I do keep ECN-2 films separate from C-41, since I don’t want remjet particles polluting the non-remjet in the same tank.

For a developing session like this, I mix a fresh batch of developer.  The kits are said to be able to develop up to 25 rolls, but after 18-20 rolls, I mix up a fresh batch. At $20 for a kit, it’s still a HUGE savings over sending the film out for development. 

In looking over the lists of what I shot, here is the breakdown from the two trips:

Here’s the actual number of rolls:

1 Amber T800

2 Eastman 250D 

3 Fomapan 200

1 Fomapan 400

1 FPP Derevpan 100

1 FPP Retrochrome 400

1 FPP Svema FN64

1 FPP Xray

4 Fuji Acros 100

2 Fuji Color 200

1 Harman Phoenix 200 II

1 Ilfocolor 400

4 Kentmere 200

7 Kentmere 400

2 Kodacolor 100

1 Kodacolor 200

1 Kodak Color Plus 200

1 Kodak Ektar 100

3 Kodak Gold 200

1 Kodak Max 400

1 Kodak Tmax 100

2 Kodak Tmax 400

1 Kodak Tri-X

1 Lomo Color 100

1 Lomo Color 92

2 Lomochrome Purple

2 Lomochrome Turquoise

3 Rollei Retro 400S

The Lomochrome films were used in a Holga and my Rollei 35TE.  The Holga gave me some wonderfully wacky images, and the sharp lens on the Rollei definitely gave me some nice images, and with those color shifts from the Lomochrome - very surreal imagery.  Most of the 35mm films were shot in K-mount bodies - Vivitar V2000 for the b&w, and Vivitar V3800 and Pentax KX for color.  My Leica M2 shot a roll of b&w and two in color, my Pentax 17 1 b&w and 1 color, and my Pentax 6x7 for 120, with a few b&w rolls in my Lomo LCA 120, and of course, the Holga.

Now that I’m done scanning all of the negatives, the editing and deciding which ones are the “keepers” come next.  B&W definitely requires less editing. With color films, there’s typically a lot more that needs to be done until I have something that I am satisfied with.  Spotting, adjustments to the color and so on, takes more time. In the end, I’ll have several hundred images on film that I will have to evaluate.  Still, film gives me something that seems “organic” and despite the work that’s required, I enjoy the process.  I have plenty of digital images from those trips, too, and while they require much less work, I don’t have the same feeling about most of them.  There is something about seeing an image on a piece of thin acetate that has a tangible bit of reality about it.  

Here are a few examples from the film I shot.  I’ll go into more detail in the captions.

On the Lewis and Clark Trail in Missouri.  Vivitar V3800, Ilfocolor 400. Oct. 12.

Coolidge, KS. What appears to be an old bank building. Vivitar V2000, Kentmere 400

Offerle, KS.  10/13/25.  Vivitar V3800, Kodak Max 400

Grants, NM, Route 66. 10/15/25. Vivitar V3800, Fujicolor 200.

Just past the Arizona Welcome Center, I-40. Oct. 15.  V2000, Kentmere 400, red filter

The oft-photographed GANO abandoned grain elevator near Kinsley, KS. Oct. 13, Pentax 6x7, Kentmere 400

Saguaro National Park, 10/18/25. Holga, Lomochrome Purple

Pima Air and Space Museum, 10/18/25. FPP X-Ray film, V2000, 85b filter

Lowell ghost town, S of Bisbee, AZ.  Pentax KX, FPP Retrochrome 400. A perfect film for this vintage scene.  10/17/25.

Chiricahua National Monument, Rollei Retro 400S, V2000, red filter.  10/19/25.

Bisbee, AZ.  Lomochrome Turquoise, Rollei 35 TE.  10/17/25.

Pipe Organ formation, Chiricahua Nat. Mon., Lomo Color '92, Pentax 6x7. 10/19/25

Shell and Chevy. Lowell ghost town. Pentax KX, Kodak Gold 200

I still have a ton of editing to do on these hundreds of images, and I'll be sharing more on my Flickr pages (mfophotos).

Grants, NM, Route 66.  Pentax 17, Kentmere 200.

Retrochrome Revisited

About a decade ago, I shot with a bunch of the Film Photography Project’s Retrochrome 320. At that time, the FPP was offering two types of Retrochrome as well as Wittnerchrome. All three were expired films that offered a different color palette at a time when Kodak was not even offering an Ektachrome option. The Retrochrome 160 and 320 were both expired industrial Kodak Ektachrome emulsions.  I did like the look of the Ektachrome 320 - it was a warm result with a nostalgic look.  

Over the past 50 years, I’ve shot hundreds of rolls of slide film and at one time, Kodachrome and various E-6 emulsions were pretty much the majority of what I was using. It was rare for me to shoot expired slide film, as I was doing a lot of nature/macro-photography, and I wanted my results to accurately depict my subjects.  My photography is a lot different now, and experimenting with odd emulsions is quite typical.  So, I was interested when Mike Raso announced that a new Retrochrome 400 was available from the FPP earlier this year (alas, now sold out).  I shot one roll with my Pentax 17 back in late July and early August, and the other roll was shot with my Pentax KX in Arizona during my October trip.  Both rolls were developed by Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, KS.  I asked for the option of just receiving them sleeved and not mounted, as I have no intention of showing them via a slide projector.  It makes the scanning process a lot easier, as well. Dwayne’s did a great job with the 120 and 35mm E-6 film that I mailed to them, and the turnaround time was a week. At $8.50/roll for 35mm E-6 (unmounted and no scans), it’s a great price. 

All of the frames were scanned with my Epson V700 flatbed scanner at 3200 dpi. Edits were made in Corel Paint Shop Pro.  

Pentax 17 - I loaded this roll into my Pentax 17 while on a trip with Graham Young into Maggie Valley, NC  on July 18.  I set the ISO to 200, but should have set it to ISO 320 or 400.  Still, the results are pretty good, and the bonus is that I got twice as many shots on the roll.  The film is expired, so I expect some grain and loss of shadow detail, but I think it looks pretty darn good.    Here are a few samples from that roll.

Pentax KX - This is the camera that I purchased at Monument Camera in Tucson in mid-October.  I used it for all the color film that was shot on the rest of my trip.  The lens is the 50mm f/1.7 SMC Pentax.  I set the ISO to 320. The first few shot on the roll were taken in Lowell, Arizona - a sort of ghost town S of Bisbee.  Most of what I shot there was done with my Pentax 6x7, but these images from the KX and on the Retrochrome really do have a vintage look to them, and were perfect for the subjects.  The rest of the roll was shot at the Pima Air and Space Museum grounds where there are a LOT of vintage aircraft that you can walk up to and examine.  Again, the nostalgic look of this film was perfect was these aircraft, and it held up well under that bright Arizona sun. I probably should have set the ISO to 400 with this film, but I really dig the look.

I have one roll left of the Retrochrome 400, and I’ll keep it in my film fridge for a future subject that will be appropriate for the look that this film gives me.  There is no doubt that a good transparency film provides some amazing images.  Just being able to look at a roll of developed E-6 film is quite nice — those little brilliant scenes on the light table are something. No inversion needed to see the image as it should be.    

A Modern Half-Frame Gem - Pentax 17

 

A little over a year ago, the Pentax 17 was released into the world.  This contemporary half-frame camera from Pentax seemed like an odd choice at the time. I know that I was skeptical of the camera, and I certainly wasn’t willing to plunk down $500 to just experiment with it.  Not being one of those “big-name” YouTubers, I certainly wasn’t sent one by Ricoh Imaging to test it.  Nonetheless, despite my initial skepticism, I felt that the Pentax 17 could be one of those cameras that are destined to be indispensable for some people.  

My love/hate affair with half-frame 35mm began over 20 years ago. I once owned an Olympus Pen D, which is a compact but sturdy little camera that I had acquired.  I think my biggest complaint with that camera was that it took forever for me to shoot a roll of film with it. It was also a bit fiddly setting the aperture and shutter speed, and the Selenium meter was not working.  At some point, I sold it.  It would be a while before I was tempted back into the half-frame world, and it was via a small camera called the Konica Eye, as well as it’s Soviet counterpart, the FED Micron.  The Micron is almost an exact copy the Konica Eye.  The Eye/Micron has a circular Selenium cell arranged around the lens, and while I shot with both cameras, the Eye was more reliable than the Micron.  I was discouraged by the film transport, though, and often got overlapping frames.  The FED Micron had some minor issues, as well, but no overlapping frames.

In 2020, I ended up with an Olympus PEN EE, which is pretty much a half-frame version of the Olympus Trip 35, with its coaxial Selenium cells surrounding the lens.  No batteries, no adjustments needed, just point and shoot.  With its 28mm f/3.5 lens, everything was in focus from 6 feet to infinity. Two shutter speeds of 1/40 and 1/200  took care of most situations. If anything, the PEN EE was the perfect pocketable camera.  Alas, it was only in my hands for testing.  Later, I tried out a Canon Demi and a Canon Dial, and both cameras suffered from reliability issues.  Since it takes a while to test any half-frame camera, it’s better to roll your own cassettes to 12 exposure rolls, so you get 24 frames.  

I’ve never tried using the lovely Pen F SLR, but I’ve held a few.  Beautiful cameras, but, there is no automation with them.  What Olympus should have done in the 1980s is make a half-frame version of the XA.  That really would have adhered to the original idea of the reason for the Pen.

Earlier this year, I tried one of the half-frame Ilford color cameras,  and I was pleasantly surprised at my results. Still, they are limited in what conditions they can be used. But for what they are, they do well.  I’ve not tried the Kodak H35, because it’s barely above a disposable camera, and if I am going to buy a reloadable half-frame, it's going to have to be a better camera.

So, that’s my experience with half-frame cameras -- until April 2025.  I was at the Beers and Cameras and FPP meetup in Bowling Green Ohio,  and had a chance to sit down with Trev Lee and talk with him about the Pentax 17.  He’s been using one for about a year, and has come to find that it’s the “take-everywhere” camera.  That conversation convinced me that I should take the plunge, so I sold my Fujica GL690 a few weeks later, and used the funds to buy a Pentax 17 with 3 rolls of HP-5 from Focus Camera at the price of $475, including a discount.  A few days later, it arrived, and I have made a few hundred exposures with it so far. 

There are lots of early reviews on YouTube, and you can search for those to see other users’ opinions. My experience with this camera has been quite positive.

First of all, opening a box with a brand-new camera inside is always a bit of a thrill, and especially so if it’s a film camera.  Even more so if it’s a Pentax.  The last time I purchased a new camera from Pentax was 1982, and it was a Pentax MG SLR.  So, 43 years later, here I was, unboxing a new camera from Pentax.  Everything was well-packed, and the camera even came with a fresh CR-2 battery.  The only thing that I would have preferred is that the Pentax 17 come with a neck strap, not a little wrist strap. The strap lugs are small, but I found an old camera strap with perfectly sized connectors.  You don’t need a big strap - this is a very lightweight camera.  

The small manual covers most of  the functions and use of the camera quite well.  Going to the Ricoh website is also quite useful in understanding the controls -This is an automatic-exposure camera, but you can control the exposure compensation via a dial, up to +/- 2 stops.  The ISO range is marked from 50 to 3200, an appropriate range for most users, but by using the exposure compensation dial, I could use an ISO 12 film. In fact,  this camera offers more features than any other half-frame camera that I’ve used. Operating Modes

The Pentax 17 mode dial has AUTO as the main setting, and you can leave it at that for most of your photography. Note that there are three zones on the mode dial, one in white markings, AUTO, and one in orange markings. The white zone has P, a crescent moon, BOKEH, and B.

• P= Standard Program mode
• crescent moon - slow speed shutter without flash
• BOKEH - maximum aperture priority
• B = bulb mode for time exposures
• Orange P = Daylight sync for fill flash
• Orange crescent - Slow-speed sync - flash fires with slow speed shutter

Having these options as settings on a dial are so much better than having a small button to push for an LCD to show the changed settings.  It’s obvious that a lot of thought went into making this a truly analog experience.  

Focus

You merely have to set the zone focus, and as this is a 25mm f/3.5 lens, it’s going to have pretty depth of field, giving some leeway in focusing from .25 meters to infinity.  The icons on the lens barrel are easy to set the focus:

• Flower - Close-up, macro, and I mean really close-up, about 9” away!  The framelines in the viewfinder show what you’ll cover.
• Knife and fork - close-up (tabletop photo) - 1.6 to 1.8 feet 
• one head - 3.3 to 4.6 feet.
• two heads - 4.6 to 7.2 feet
• three people - 6.9 to 17 feet
• mountains - 17 feet to infinity

Pretty good range of zones, and if you are just walking around with this camera, keeping it at the mountains setting will suffice for a lot of the images. However, having that close-up ability is a wonderful thing. Note that when you press the shutter button, the lens automatically extends/contracts as the exposure is made.  There is no manual focus, so this makes sense. 

LEDs in the Viewfinder

The viewfinder has frame lines for normal distance and parallax-corrected frame lines for closeups. There are also two LEDs at the edge of the eyepiece - Pay attention if they are blinking:

• Solid Orange LED: Indicates the flash is fully charged and ready to fire. 
• Blinking Orange LED (with or without blue):
• Blinking Orange & Blue: May mean you haven't advanced the film or the battery is low. 
• Blinking Blue Quickly: Low light warning; you might need to use the flash or you have the lens cap on. 

• Blinking Blue Slowly: Indicates a close-focus situation. 

Ricoh/Pentax engineers thought this out quite well.  I think alerting shooting with the lens cap on is going to be the most used feature!  

The film advance lever appears to be nearly identical to the lever used on the Pentax Auto 110 SLR - short  easily advanced.  The on/off switch surrounding the shutter button is also a great feature.  On the rear of the camera to the right of the viewfinder  is a small opening for a 2.5mm plug.  This is for the remote switch for using the camera in Bulb mode.  While Ricoh lists the CS-205 remote switch for this, at $50, that’s quite pricey.  You can buy a generic one for less than $15 that works just as well, and with a longer cable.

A nice touch is also including a film reminder slot on the back door of the camera.  It sure beats taping a note on the back of the camera.

The Pentax 17’s filter thread on the front of the lens housing is 40.5mm - a somewhat odd number, but maybe not, if you have used any Leica rangefinder lenses.  In a previous post, I show how you can use a 40.5 to 49mm adapter, or you can look for a 40.5 to 46mm or a 40.5 to Series 6 adapter to use series  filters. 

After using this camera for a few months, and seeing the resulting images from it, I totally appreciate the design.  The grip/battery cover makes it easy to hold the camera, and all of the features combine to make this little camera a joy to use.  I’ve shot it with several rolls of C-41 and a couple of rolls of different b&w films, and all of the resulting images have been very good. It takes a bit of time to become used to the vertical format, so if you want a landscape orientation, you rotate the camera vertically.  It’s not a  big thing, though.  The half-frame format has always been that way, and once you get used to the portrait orientation, you get a different perspective, too.

If you have large hands, this camera might not be for you, but it fits my hands really well.  Shooting with it is quite easy, and the short throw of the film advance is perfect.  Some people have complained about how easily the mode dial can accidentally be turned, but I have not had any problems with mine. Being able to switch to slow shutter without the flash is a great thing.

Overall, the Pentax 17 is a great little camera that can be your daily companion.  The lens is SHARP, and finally a half-frame camera has a lens that can produce decent enlargements. If I have any criticisms, it’s not about the camera, but the manual.  It does give you the basics to operate the camera, but there is next to no information in it about the LEDs.  I’m a very experienced photographer, and I can see where an inexperienced person would be confused by them and not seeing a full explanation in the manual is disappointing.  You will find that information on the website, though.

Some have balked about the price on the Pentax 17.  Well, it’s a new camera.  If I were to compare what a Pentax MG cost me in 1982 in today’s dollars, it would have been over $1000.  This is a well-made camera, and while yes, it’s got a plastic body, so do most all the other cameras today. The $500 price point isn’t a deal-breaker.  Yes, you can tell me how cheap a used PenD or other half-frame camera from the 1960s/70s  is today, but they are not this camera. 

I don’t know if Ricoh/Pentax will produce another film camera after the Pentax 17 - which is a unique camera.  But if they do, it ought to be a K-mount SLR.  Whatever OEM made the Vivitar V3800 SLR (possibly Cosina) could certainly produce the next Pentax 35mm SLR.

About the images that follow - All have been developed by me, and scanned on my Epson V700 scanner at 3200 dpi.  In scanning with the 35mm holders, it's easiest to just let it scan as the thumbnail images show, and then you are left with a series of diptychs, or 2 frames of 17x24 in each image.  You can then crop and "save as" framexxx-a and framexxx-b, still keeping the original scan.  That's far easier than going into "normal view" and selecting each frame to scan manually. That takes too much time and is a PITA.  If you are "scanning" with your digital camera, do whatever you want.

Here are a bunch of images from my Pentax 17.  Enjoy!

example of a diptych