The Pentax 17 vs the Kodak Ektar H35N
Is the Pentax 17 — a $500 camera — ten times better than the Kodak Ektar H35N — a $50 camera?
That’s the question I asked myself when in June 2024 Ricoh released the Pentax 17, a brand new half-frame film camera.
At first, I was skeptical of the Pentax 17. The sample photos I saw on social media didn’t blow me away. The tiny images looked like they were made with a plastic, Lomography camera. But then I remembered that images posted on social media are heavily compressed and don’t accurately convey the quality of which a camera is capable.
At the start of this experiment, my hypothesis was that of course! the Pentax 17 would be better than the H35N. It is a better-developed camera with more features, after all.
But how much better? This was the question I wanted to answer.
The results surprised me, but not in the way you might expect.
Read on to find out, or watch the YouTube video I made:
Context
The photography community had generally welcomed the Pentax 17 when Ricoh announced it, but a vocal minority criticized it because of its $500 price tag.
The refrain was that the price was too high for a half-frame camera, especially one without auto focus… especially one with a childish, Holga-like zone-focus system… especially one designed to introduce a younger, more social-media minded generation to the world of analog film.
Some critics couldn’t resist comparing the Pentax 17 (and its price) to vintage and recently-produced half-frame cameras like the Olympus PEN cameras (cheap), the Ricoh Auto Half cameras (cheaper), and even new half-frame cameras like the Kodak Ektar H35N (dirt cheap).
Because I’ve been working on a year-long photography project with the dirt-cheap Kodak Ektar H35N, the hubbub around the Pentax 17 got me curious to know if the $500 half-frame camera is ten times better than the $50 camera I am using.
I got my hands on a Pentax 17 and pitted it against my Kodak Ektar H35N. Over the course of a few weeks, I shot the cameras side-by-side. I already reviewed the Pentax 17 elsewhere, but now I wanted to compare it to the H35N on 1) how they handled, 2) build quality, 3) features, and 4) the quality of images they produced.
Before I continue, a caveat:
As Daniel Milnor likes to say, remember that I am one guy with one opinion. Take what you read with a grain of salt. I’m basing my opinion after using the Kodak Ektar H35N daily for 6 months and the Pentax 17 for only a few weeks.
“Now, hold on!” you might be saying. “Isn’t this comparison unfair? Aren’t you essentially comparing a Porsche to a Prius?”
I don’t think so. The two cameras are quite similar. The target audiences of the two cameras are the same, they have similar form factors, and they both shoot half-frame images. Plus, I wanted to do this test so that someone looking to get the Pentax 17 would get a sense of the competition and not fall for the hype if the results came in bad for it.
Handling Notes
Overall, the Pentax 17 has better ergonomics and handling over the Kodak Ektar H35N. And while I do prefer the tiny size of the H35N, the Pentax 17 feels a lot better in the hand. Its control dials, focus ring, and rewind knob are great to use.
I wish the Pentax 17 were a tad smaller. To be fair, it is on the small and light side. And while it does technically fit in a pocket — the back pocket of my shorts, for example —, its protruding lens and battery grip prevent the camera from sliding in and out easily. The lens cap pops off easily, which is annoying. Be sure to screw a 40mm filter on the lens to protect it. For more notes on the Pentax 17, see my review.
The H35N is more compact, fitting more easily in tighter spaces.
I love that the Pentax 17 is fully operational with one hand, something that is hard — if not impossible — on the Kodak Ektar H35N because of the placement of the film advance wheel on the bottom left side of the camera. I suppose this is only a small quality-of-life improvement, but it is something I’ve noticed as I try to take photographs while also pushing a baby stroller.
Build Quality Notes
The Pentax 17 is objectively better built. It is made with better materials. It feels better. It has magnesium top and bottom plates, and a leatherette surface on the front that is purely aesthetic. The viewfinder is surprisingly bright, clear, and nice. The camera lens is glass. If the rest of the camera feels to be made from a plastic material, it is at least a higher quality plastic than that of the H35N. It is definitely better engineered and designed than the Kodak Ektar H35N, which feels like a toy in comparison. But, for $500, I am disappointed the Pentax 17 wasn’t made with less plastic and more metal. While it is better than the H35N, the case does feel plastic and cheap compared to the Ricoh half-frame cameras of the past and many other digital cameras at the price point. The Pentax, like the Kodak, feel a bit hollow.
The H35N does have a glass lens and the camera is nearly wholly plastic apart from a metal front plate, a design element that is purely cosmetic.
Feature Comparison
Both the Pentax 17 and Kodak Ektar H35N are battery-powered. They both have a flash and bulb modes. They both shoot half frame. They’re both somewhat small. They both have glass lens elements.
The Pentax 17 has more manual controls with its (infantilizing) 6-zone focusing lens, mode and exposure compensation dials, and auto-exposure systems based on an adjustable ISO dial. Its aperture ranges from f/3.5 to f/16 and its shutter speed ranges from 4s to 1/350s.
The H35N has a fixed f/11 (f/8 with flash) aperture. It has a fixed 1/100s shutter. It has a threaded tripod hole and a gimmicky star filter you can slide over the lens. Yet the lack of features and manual controls on the H35N is part of its appeal. Those who pick it up want a camera they don’t have to think about using. They just want to snap and go. That’s what I was thinking at least; I’m not new to film photography, but my use-case is a low-stakes photo journal/diary. Capturing fleeting moments took priority over thinking too deeply about exposure, focus, and depth of field.
That being said, the manual controls on the Pentax 17 aren’t at all onerous.
Image Quality Tests
The image quality test was the main test I wanted to perform. This is the most important point of comparison, in my opinion. All of the features of the Pentax 17, its handling, and its build quality wouldn’t mean much if it couldn’t produce images that are better than what a cheap toy camera can produce.
Below are a series of test shots using two film stocks: Kodak Gold 200 and Ilford HP5+.
Test Using Kodak Gold 200
I chose Kodak Gold 200 in the first test because 200 ISO is the sweet spot in the Florida summer for the H35N due to its fixed aperture and shutter speed.
In this test, I didn’t shy away from using the special features (focusing, Bokeh mode, P mode, etc.) on the Pentax 17.
The captions reveal which frame belongs to which camera, or check the file name.
If you want to see these photos zoomed in, watch the YouTube comparison video I made.
Test Using Ilford HP5+
After doing the first test, I wanted to do another using Ilford HP5+ black-and-white film. The reason being: I wanted to level the playing field as much as possible.
The images below were all shot using the Pentax 17’s “Auto” mode, which the user manual describes as “Pan focus program” mode. The Pentax 17 website states that the camera has “a pan-focus mechanism with a fixed focus point, while the flash unit automatically discharges in poorly illuminated locations. This mode allows for more casual and effortless picture-taking, without worrying about camera operations.” Thus, the “Auto” mode effectively makes the Pentax 17 a point-and-shoot camera, just like the H35N.
With the black-and-white photos, all the frames on the right were shot with the Pentax 17. All the frames on the left were shot with the Kodak Ektar H35N.
A Note On Processing
My local lab here in Orlando, Florida developed and scanned the photos. I did not edit the images apart from adjusting the levels on the over-exposed “Edge of a Pool” photo. I resized the diptychs to be 2,000 pixels wide and exported them in Adobe Photoshop with the jpg quality on “low” to save bandwidth. The negatives, obviously, contain a lot more information than what is visible in these photos. Again, watch the comparison video I made if you want to see these photos in more detail.
Reflections
Do you find the photographs produced on the Pentax 17 better than those shot on the Kodak Ektar H35N?
I do.
The Pentax images are a lot sharper from corner to corner and have nicer contrast, all of which makes sense with a nice glass lens coating. These images are accurately exposed. The negatives contain more detail thanks to the better optics. The field of view is narrower on the Pentax 17 than on the H35N, but not by much.
Whereas the H35N’s weaknesses get exposed in color film, its weaknesses actually make the black-and-white images look more interesting and less clinical. That’s my opinion, at least.
Shooting Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO film with the Kodak Ektar H35N overexposes photographs shot in the full sun. This makes sense. I live in sunny Florida, and the camera has a fixed aperture (f/11) and shutter (1/100). This might not be as big as a deal as it sounds, as HP5+ has a lot of latitude and the exposure can recovered in post if you have good negatives and scans.
The Pentax 17 is obviously more versatile in different lighting conditions.
The Pentax 17 is being marketed to the younger, smartphone generation. But if the smartphone generation will post their images primarily onto social media, and social media is known to heavily compress images that people spend very little time looking at, one wonders if the target audience will actually benefit from the sharp lens in their film-to-social use case. This is to say nothing at the small scale at which most images are viewed nowadays.
Conclusion
So, is the Pentax 17 better than the Kodak Ektar H35N?
Yes.
But of course the Pentax 17 would be better than the H35N in build quality, handling, and image quality, wouldn’t it?
The images produced by the Pentax 17 are sharper across the frame. And the exposures come out as you’d expect, with little-to-no need for adjusting levels and curves in post. The contrast of the images are nice. And the creative controls (dials and focus settings) make the camera leaps and bounds more enjoyable to use than the H35N.
This is what I expected from a better camera.
But is the Pentax 17 ten times better than the Kodak Ektar H35N?
Taken wholistically, maybe! I’ll let you be the judge.
But if this test shows anything, it is not that a more technically capable camera is better than a toy camera. Rather, it shows how capable the cheap point-and-shoot H35N really is at a price that is appealing for anyone looking to get started with analog photography without breaking the bank. Especially when posting to social media — an act that compresses images that are destined to be viewed on tiny screens. Slap some black-and-white film into the H35N and you’ve got some vintage film vibes for cheap. After all, isn’t this what these cameras’ target audiences are looking for anyway?