The Next New Compact Film Camera

So many of us photographers seem to have an insatiable appetite for camera gear. For some, it’s G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome), while others are honing their photographic experiences into a seemingly futile and almost never-ending quest to trade up to the perfect camera. For a rare few, they have found their gear and are sticking to it.

Instead of spending time online reading gear reviews and news, they are outside using it. Those few satisfied photographers are not here wallowing in rumors, speculations, and gear announcements like we are. We’re here because we want to learn new techniques and get a jump on what may be coming down the pike.

2024 was huge for film photographers looking for an everyday carry film camera. Pentax surprised us by releasing the half frame Pentax 17, and then a few months later, Mint made good on their promise of breathing new life into the classic Rollei 35. All of a sudden, those of us who have spent years combing through eBay listings for unblemished and reliable compact film cameras turned our attention to the big-box camera stores selling new film cameras (complete with 2-year warranties!).

Why Shoot Film Casually?

As a product photographer shackled to my computer by a tether cable and weighed down by hard drives and cloud storage, film cameras have injected new life into my photographic enthusiasm. The last thing I want to do after editing thousands of images in Capture One and Photoshop is spend any more time at a computer working on personal photos. So I liberated my film cameras, and in turn, they liberated me—not because of internet trends or celebrity endorsements, but because of my desire to unplug. I’ve even embraced the higher cost of slide film just so I don’t have to scan and convert negatives; I just look at the film strip with a loupe.

But I keep cycling through film cameras because nothing seems to satisfy my wants or concerns. I have owned everything from Leica M cameras with pancake lenses to Yashica and Contax cameras that I sold because I was worried they would become expensive paperweights, to the Konica Big Mini that died after a week of use. I panic-sold my perfectly good Olympus XA over fears of its fragility but then broke the meter on my Rollei 35 out of misguided confidence in its sturdiness. The retractable lenses on 40-year-old cameras fail, the LED screens die, the light seals crack, and batteries can be rare and hard to find. Why wouldn’t I want something new and modern?

The New Kids On The Block

Enter the Pentax 17. When the Pentax 17 photos leaked online ahead of its launch, I must admit I thought they were fake. But as reality set in by way of the official press release, the camera seemed to make a lot of sense. I had been quietly predicting that half frame would be the next big thing, given its Instagram-friendly vertical dimensions and ability to stretch a roll of film into 72 frames. Kodak even released the all-plastic Ektar half frame camera 2 years earlier. But this was the first truly new idea for a film camera in almost 20 years. As fun as the Pentax 17 is (and as solid and good as it feels in the hand), it’s hard to see it as anything but a first step into a new, resurrected market. My personal reaction was, “call me in a year or two.”

Mint followed by unveiling the reimagined Rollei 35AF a few months later.  Though at first glance it looks like the classic Rollei 35, the new Rollei 35AF is larger and does not have a retractable lens, with little detail on the lens construction outside of the founder of Mint thanking “a couple of retired Pentax engineers”. While a new LiDAR autofocus and built-in flash are certainly welcome additions, the Rollei 35AF retains some of the quirks of the original, like the notoriously finicky film loading and rewinding process, 1/500 top shutter speed, and left-hand winder. This leaves me wondering why they chose to focus on nostalgia over innovation by mimicking the original Rollei 35 when they could have just made a new film camera tailored to the modern shooter in a package of their own design.

So What’s Next?

Fortunately, enthusiasm over the Pentax 17 and Rollei 35AF have kicked down the door for more film cameras to come through, and now that the market is proven, 2025 already promises a few new releases. FilmNeverDie’s NANA camera, the lovechild of a drugstore disposable and a Contax T2, has already begun shipping after a successful Kickstarter campaign, with more deliveries of their metal-housed, fixed lens/speed, camera shipping by next year. The most exciting of all is the Jeff Bridges backed WIDELUX•X, a meticulous recreation of the original fully mechanical swing-lens panoramic Widelux camera.  But that camera is neither small nor practical. And while I'm almost certainly going to buy it, it probably isn’t the camera I’ll take everywhere.   

What Should Come Next?

Of all the premium point and shoot film options, the original Ricoh GR has captured my heart.  Whether Kai Man Wong is singing the praises of the original film version, or Benj Heisch is recommending the recent digital version, the Ricoh GR formula has been a tried-and-true design for almost 30 years thanks to its compactness, sturdiness, and snappiness. But again, age has caught up to the current vintage offerings.  If the LCD screen is actually working, it wont be for much longer. The motors are starting to fail on a lot of cameras, and as of 2014 Ricoh has stopped servicing them. Has there been a better time in the last 20 years to re-release the classic GR?   

Recently Hashem McAdam, of Pushing Film, released an interview with Pentax management where they discussed their desire to create counterculture products because they feel it is better to excel at being niche than swim upstream with the larger competition. This was the impetus behind the Pentax Film Project and the decision to go half frame. “If we just copy the old [designs] it’s easy but I don’t think it [will] work,” says Tomoki Tanaka, General Manager of Pentax. If you google the “Pentax Film Project,” you will see a giant “Ricoh” logo at the top of the page, now that Ricoh has been Pentax’s parent company for the last 13 years. It stands to reason, then, that if Ricoh ever entertained the idea of reviving the Film GR, it would be Pentax’s film division leading the charge—the same department that has no interest in reviving old designs. So my hopes for a film GR rebirth were dead before the camera had a chance to rise again.

But then I realized, it’s not the premium late ‘90s aesthetics that make the Ricoh GR so cool; it is the design ethos behind it. The GR was the perfect film camera for that moment in time. Getting bogged down in the details of nostalgia would create something like the new Rollei 35AF, which is a great offering but not what I'm personally looking for. I don't need a new film Ricoh GR; I just need something that has the soul of the original GR. I'm looking for the perfect camera for this moment in time. We have to hope for Ricoh, Pentax, Fuji, or whoever to come up with a camera that is to 2025 what the GR was in 1996… Elegant, discrete, solid, and innovative.

At the end of the day, putting aside any gripes about the current crop of film cameras, the future of film photography is as bright as it has been since the day the last roll of Kodachrome was processed. This isn’t just a sign that there’s still a market for new film cameras; it’s also proof of a growing appetite for film itself, helping to convince the boards of Kodak and Fuji to invest more money into developing more of the existing film stocks, creating new ones, or reviving dead ones. If we've learned one thing from all of this, it is that in the digital age there is plenty of room for the film renaissance. Now we just need the perfect camera to go along with it.