Pentax 17 vs Canon Dial 35 - Fight!

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It sure is a very handsome camera

Big news. Pentax have just launched their first film camera for a very long time. It’s called the Pentax 17 and it looks awesome. It takes 17mm (hence the name) high shots on 35mm film (that’s half-frame). You can get 72 shots from a single cassette of film. It has automatic exposure, a nifty wind-on lever and lots of shooting modes. The focus is manual (you choose from a number of different zones) but then it does something very clever to put the lens in a position that will maximise sharpness if that is what you want. It has a built-in flash and really looks the business. But I won’t be getting one I’m afraid.

The price is just too high, at nearly 500 pounds. Now, don’t get me wrong, for a brand new camera with this pedigree this is absolutely good value. It would have been very hard for Pentax to launch this thing at a lower price. They will have had to do lots of work on design and tooling just to get the thing out of the door. If you are the kind of person who wants to have a proper warranty and ongoing support for your film cameras this is for you. If it breaks you’ll be able to make it someone else’s problem.

However, I’m not quite like that. I prefer to get super-cheap old cameras and then see what I can do with them. For the price of a Pentax 17 you could get lots of Chaika, Olympus Pen, and Canon Dial 35 devices. And some of them might even work.

A dial and a dial

At the time of writing ebay are showing a few Canon Dial 35 devices for quite a bit less than a Pentax. I managed to pick up a fully working model and the pictures it takes are just lovely.

The university in fine fettle

The Dial 35 is manual focus and auto exposure - like the Pentax 17. It also has a very neat little clockwork winding motor. And it looks like something from both the past and the future. If you have the cash, absolutely get the Pentax. If you haven’t or want to have a more interesting journey, then I reckon you should lurk around eBay until a cheap Canon Dial 35 comes around.

Fixing Radioactive Pentax Lenses

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It got a bit dusty in the two days it was under the light

Back in the day, if you wanted to add a bit of zing to the rear element of your camera lenses, dropping some Thorium into the glass mix was the thing to do. Never mind that Thorium is radioactive, it changes the refractive index of the glass and improve sharpness. However, after a few years the Thorium in the glass undergoes radioactive decay, causing it to change colour and give pictures a distinct yellow tinge. I noticed this in some pictures I took a while back. And for the last few days I’ve been doing something about it.

For the last three days or so I’ve been shining an Ikea led lamp onto the lens. This lamp apparently gives out a fairly bit of ultraviolet light which triggers another stage in the radioactive decay process and causes the Thorium to turn transparent again. I think it has made a difference, but I’ll need to take some more colour pictures to find out properly.

Camera Comedy Capers

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I’ve started the images with the one that worked properly

It was a nice afternoon. So I suggested that we take a big 4x5 large format camera over to the Humber Bridge and take some pictures. And have an ice cream. So we did.

It didn’t go that smoothly. We had trouble fitting the film magazines onto the back of the camera because I’d forgotten how the fixings worked, and then I managed to take not just two, but three pictures on the same frame.

This would probably have worked if my shirt had kept out of the picture.

The capers didn’t end when we got home. I managed to load two frames into one side of the film holder in the developer tank, leading to some partial development and really interesting coloured marks on the negative.

I think the camera got shifted when we put the film in. We really should have both towers in the picture.

Oh well. At least the ice-cream was nice.

I am an idiot

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This one is almost artistic

A while back I made the mistake of sending the same film through the camera twice. At the time I vowed never to do that again. Well, that worked. Above you can see the results of doing it again...

The first pass was with a Canon Dial 35 and the second with a Canon AE-1. While it saves me a bit in film it has the disadvantage of leaving me with lots of unusable pictures.

Radioactive Lenses

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Some of the lenses in my cameras are radioactive. Not in a particularly dangerous way, although if you managed to swallow one or left it in your underpants for several weeks it might not do you much good. As the radioactive elements decay they turn yellow, which means that some of my pictures have a yellow/gold tinge that I don’t really mind that much. It gives pictures taken in Hull a nice “French Riviera” look. The solution, when I get around to it, is to shine a bright UV light on the lens and speed up the decay process and turn the yellow white again.

Rule 1: Point the camera in the right direction..

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This is actually of a group of people

Photography is hard. First you have to set the lens aperture and shutter speed. Then finally, you have to point the camera in the right direction. Took some pictures today using a camera which uses a “sports viewfinder” which is just a wire frame you look through in the right direction. I looked in the wrong direction and we now have a bunch of tree pictures we weren’t expecting….

Fun with colour film

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Local Blossom

Took a colour film in to be processed today. I like doing this. It is a bit pricy I suppose, but it is my hobby, so there. And apparently you can spend an awful lot of money on golf clubs (not to mention course fees) - so there’s that. Anyhoo, they came out pretty well.

Just some trees

Hull University Wilberforce building artwork

University library looking good in the rain

These pictures are from scans that I got when the film was processed. I think they look pretty good, although the physical prints look even nicer. They aren’t particularly high resolution but I’ve found it pretty much impossible to make better ones with my own scanner.

Bought an Olympus Pen EES from Japan

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Not bad for a fifty year old camera

It’s number one son’s fault. He told me about the Buyee site which lets you bid in Japanese auctions. I’ve been after an Olympus Pen EES (with manual focus) for a while and so I took a look. They had one on there priced at 27 quids. Very good condition and with a “working” exposure meter. So I bought it. The price is impressive for a camera like this; although I did have to pay another 27 quids for postage and packing.

The service is very good. The Japanese seller of the camera sends it to the Buyee warehouse in Japan where it can be stored for up to a month. If I bought any other bits and bobs they could have been sent there too and then all combined for shipping. As I was just buying the one camera I had it shipped out as soon as possible. It took four or five days to arrive and the whole process was very smooth. I’ve had orders from ebay which have taken longer. The order didn’t attract any import duty and I was able to use the Japan Post website to track the package all the way to being out for deliver by Royal Mail Parcelforce.

The camera arrived today and (of course) doesn’t quite work properly. The exposure meter isn’t working and the aperture is stuck at F22. But I don’t mind. It will take pictures (although I’ve yet to develop them). Even if I have to spend a few quids to get it fixed or brave going inside and fixing it myself I’ve still got a camera in extremely good condition. The site sells a huge variety of stuff, some of it at very interesting prices. I don’t think I’ll be buying things every week, but it is nice to have the option if I want to get something which is a bit out of the ordinary.

Making Spanners with ChatGPT

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Close but no cigar

As part of the fixing of the Canon Dial camera I needed a spanner to remove the dial spring winder. The spanner is a bit special because it needs to fit between the winder and the camera body. Ivan was kind enough to make me one out of brass, but it turned out to be a little bit too thick. So I thought I’d 3D print one. I’ve been impressed with how tough PETG prints have turned out, and the spanner doesn’t have to be particularly strong, so I was hopeful this might work.

And, since I’m lazy I thought I’d ask ChatGPT to produce the spanner design as a Python program I can run inside FreeCAD. I asked the question and out popped some Python. Which didn’t work. There then followed around fifteen minutes of me explaining why the supplied design was wrong, followed by ChatGPT then producing a differently wrong result along with an explanation of how it had fixed the faults that were still there.

Eventually I gave up and wrote the design in about five minutes or so. These things are very clever, but if they get it wrong it seems that sometimes it stays wrong whatever you do.

The spanners worked a treat, although I had to make a really thin one

Canon Dial 35 Cleaning

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Those tiny little dots in the plastic bag in the middle are the screws that hold the winder in place

I’m not sure if people really want to know the saga of my Canon Dial 35. But it’s my blog. So there.

Anyhoo, today I thought I’d get to the bottom of the the sluggish way that the camera was winding on after each photograph. I was able to take the winder off the bottom of the camera and use a whole bunch of cotton buds to clean muck off the inside. I then added a tiny bit of oil (too much oil is a really bad thing in cameras like this) and then put it all together.

And it works. Go me. The wind on is now very smooth and positive.

Achievement Unlocked - Working Canon Dial 35

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The camera takes half frames across the film

My latest new (to me) camera arrived today. It’s my third Canon Dial 35. An it looks like third time really is a charm. The camera works quite well, although the clockwork winder does chug a little bit after a few frames. The light meter works perfectly for me - I just gave the terminals a bit of clean and off it went. The pictures are lovely and sharp.

The pictures are half the size of standard 35mm ones but this does mean I’ll get twice as many shots on each film.

And now I have to find a new obsession.

A working Canon Canonet

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This is becomming my test shot for new cameras…

I put a film into “Mr Sticky Shutter” today and took him to the University. He is one of my 20 cameras and he shows quite a bit of promise. His shutter is a bit sticky, but only at the slower speeds that I hardly ever use. But the good news is that he looks excellent and everything else, including the light meter, works fine. And, as you can see above, the lens is very sharp

Brickwork is very good for testing the detail that a lens can resolve

Not bad for a sixty year old camera

Adventures with a Changing Bag

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For the last few days I’ve been working on an article about using a Minox camera. I’ve managed to prove two things conclusively:

  1. You can 3D print a light tight cassette to hold Minox film.

  2. You do need to put something in the light trap to stop light getting onto the film.

This means I’ve been spending a while with my hands in a light-proof bag, rolling up film and putting it into tiny cassettes. I was happily doing this the other day when the doorbell rang. I was alone in the house at the time and half-way through a rather tricky cassette load, so I had to walk to the door with my hands in the black bag, find the keys and then open it to reveal two people who asked me if I wanted them to save my soul. Or something. I replied politely that I’d settle for having the films in the dark bag saved and bade them farewell.

I’m kind of hoping they will go back to base with tales of a strange, wild-eyed man who lives at our address and answers the door with his hands in a large black bag. With a bit of luck they’ll skip our house next time.

20 Camera Man

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..all photographed with a phone…

It turns out I’ve not bought 19 broken cameras. I’ve actually received 20. I’ve tested each one and they are all broken. I’ve given them all names.

  • Mr Sticky Shutter

  • No Rewind Boy

  • Just Dead

  • Weird battery guy

  • Stuckee

  • The Battery Flattener

  • The Dangly Back Kid

  • Sir NoClick

  • The one that winds forever

  • The one with the stuck frame counter

  • Flash but no trousers

  • Missing buttons

  • Shiny but bust

  • Only clicks, never whirrs

  • Nothing moves

  • Chinon less wonder

  • Is this the end of Ricoh?

  • T’would be nice if this worked

  • Shiny but that’s it

  • Mr. Dial

The Canon Dial that I really wanted does more than my previous purchase, but there is still something broken about it. I’ve been looking at the repair manuals for these cameras and they are packed full of parts which are easy to break and hard to mend. So for now the quest continues….