Analog photographer, self-taught digital camera repairman, and engineer Evan Dorsky bought the brand new Pentax 17 half-frame movie digital camera, and, like all enthusiastic repairman, he took it aside to peer what makes it tick.
“It’s 2024, and Ricoh Pentax simply launched a brand new movie digital camera, their first in a long time,” Dorsky writes on his Substack, Fortunate Field. The photographer has a protracted historical past with Pentax, having shot with the emblem since he first were given into movie. They have been additionally the primary cameras he took aside, making his newest Pentax 17 journey a pleasant full-circle second.
He preordered the digital camera as rapid as he may just and shot thru a roll with it as quickly because it arrived. Then, it was once time to take it aside and spot what was once within.
“Would the Pentax 17 resemble a contemporary shopper electronics instrument, or the handbook mechanical cameras from the ‘80s that impressed it?” Dorsky asks. He additionally felt that given how a lot care and a focus Pentax has given the challenge, together with bringing folks out of retirement to assist paintings at the challenge, that the digital camera deserved a birthday party of its design, each in and out.
“So I made a YouTube video,” Dorsky says.
His teardown could be very detailed, so he has damaged it down into chapters, which might be to be had on YouTube.
Dorsky says that taking the Pentax 17 aside was once “like an 80s generation mechanical digital camera, most effective more uncomplicated,” bringing up the digital camera’s use of usual cross-drive screws. He most effective wanted one specialised device, a lens opener, to take away a unmarried preserving ring at the digital camera’s best plate. Another way, it got here aside with out fuss.
At the within, it’s a mixture of outdated and new. Trendy parts come with 0 insertion pressure (ZIF) electric connectors, a 32-bit microcontroller, and a motorized lens meeting. However there also are old-school elements, together with a handbook movie advance, potentiometers for dials, and free-soldered wires.
“As I see it, Pentax controlled to include the advantages of modernized electronics generation (ZIF connectors for repairability, virtual electronics for a more practical design and decrease BOM value) whilst averting the pitfalls (over the top miniaturization on the expense of repairability, proprietary screws, reasonable plastic portions),” Dorsky explains, including that Pentax stored “the most efficient of the ’80s designs,” together with steel gears and nonproprietary screws. Pentax additionally have shyed away from one of the vital traumatic issues from the olden days, like springs that come out once any individual eliminates a preserving plate.
“Mainly, in the case of outdated and new, the Pentax 17 is the most efficient of each worlds!” Dorsky exclaims.
He additionally says the Pentax 17 is constructed to ultimate, however simple to fix. Talking of maintenance, Dorsky is these days running on a Pentax 17 restore file. Whilst that webpage is empty for now, knowledge will seem there when it’s to be had.
“It’s an exhilarating time to be a movie photographer!” Dorsky concludes. “I’m inspired that the present analog revival is huge and sustained sufficient to persuade a longtime digital camera producer like Pentax (Ricoh) to take a position so closely in movie.”
Symbol credit: Evan Dorsky