17 (Half Frame)

I bought the Pentax 17 in the summer of 2024, shortly after it was released. I have always been a bit of a Pentax fan, and this was a new film camera… I had to check it out.

With more than a year of use, I’m still glad I purchased it. It is not a perfect camera. It has some deficiencies and quirks, but overall, it does what I want it to do — take happy snaps. That’s all I want this camera for. I take it with me when walking the dog, or on fishing trips. It’s great when space is really tight, or when you really can’t afford the weight of a carrying a bigger camera.

The camera shoots two vertical frames (about 17x24 mm) in the space of one normal 24x36 film frame. That gives you 72 shots per roll if you shoot the 36 exposure films, or 48 snaps on a 24… It is auto exposure only with a compensation dial, and a couple of auto modes. The built-in flash is decent for close-up party snaps (think under 10 feet).

It is not auto focus. Instead, it has focus zones, which you have to set before taking the pic. This is definitely one of the quirks of the camera. I have found I leave it mostly in the distant (mountain) setting, and it does a good job for most scenes. If I’m shooting people closer in, I will set the focus on one of the group settings (the icons with one, two or three people). It’s intuitive for the most part, but soooo easy to forget to do!

I have not used the close-up macro settings much. A couple of times and pics are sharp when in focus but like most macro stuff, the depth of field when close is thin, and getting the focus perfect (without seeing the focus through the lens) is tricky…

The 17 has some odd auto settings, such as the “Bokeh” mode. I think this is supposed to weight the auto exposure towards a more open aperture to create out of focus backgrounds, but honestly, I have not seen this mode to be very useful. I think it is more a marketing ploy aimed at the bougie hipster crowd ….

Straight “P” or the blue “Auto” does 99 per cent of the work for me. Like I said, this is a happy snapper — not something I choose for stuff I really want to do get right.

My biggest gripe with the camera is that the auto setting dial spins waaaaaay too easy, and inevitably gets knocked to Bokeh or B or Night Mode without me seeing it happen. Hard to know how that affects the pics in every instance, but I prefer a camera to stay where it is set. The accidental shift happens mostly when advancing the film. The lever is close to the dial, and fat fingers get in the way.

Half frame negatives print OK in the enlarger up to 8x10 inches. The grain is more visible for sure, but at that size, I have no complaints. I shoot a fair bit with the 17 happy snapper, and am happy to have it with me…