The Online Photographer

Just wanted to mention, apropos the previous conversation, that it looks like Pentax is taking into account the desires of younger people in designing its Film Project—and I think that's a good thing.

I'm "Generation Jones," beginning to age out (just passed retirement age, just started taking Social Security)—I bought numerous film cameras new, and was even formally trained in how to be a still film photographer. I had been photographing for years by the time digital became a gleam in Steve Sasson's eye.

I do think that the first all-new premium film camera following the digital transition will be news—big news—as the vast hoard of left-over film cameras grows ever more antique and fragile, and the people able to service them leave the field or enter age-appropriate retirement. Film Leicas, an appropriate and fortunate survivor, are certainly premium, but have design roots going back to the 1950s and are hardly all-new. It has to happen sometime, given that film photography in enjoying a modest resurgence. So the first such camera to appear will almost automatically be a landmark.

But it's not me and the likes of me who need to be satisfied; it's Gen Z and Millennials whom Pentax ought to be listening to, and whose wants, desires, and concerns should to be served. That's as it should be; it's a good thing.

Truth be told, if "my ship comes in," as they say, I would build a little house with a darkroom in the basement and take up film photography again. I honestly would. But that's unlikely to happen, and unless it does I won't be buying any film camera Pentax cooks up anyway. So I'm not the target market, either—not if they're smart.

So it's as it should be. "And all shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be exceeding well*." —Mother Julian of Norwich

Mike

*I know the quote from T.S. Eliot's "Little Gidding," the last of the Four Quartets:

And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Little Gidding, by the bye, is a town in Cambridgeshire in the East of England. I have roots there if you go back far enough—I'm descended from the Ferrars and Colletts of Little Gidding through John Collett (or Collet, ) of Bourne, Cambridgeshire, and Little Gidding, 1572–1659, and his wife Susana née Ferrar (also spelled Farrer and Farrar—note the plaque below). And an ancestor of his was Lord Mayor of London not once but twice, in 1486 and 1495. My grandfather was the last John Collett in our line. My great-grandfather John D. Collett got the birthdate wrong in his privately printed book The Genealogy of the descendants of John Collett Born 1578 [oops!], Died March 29th 1659 of Little Gidding and London, England and United States of America. I have of a copy of that now exceedingly and perhaps deservedly rare book around here somewhere, stuffed with notes and clippings from my great-grandfather's further genealogical researches post-publication. I also have a dye-transfer print made from a Kodachrome slide of John D. Collett by his son, exposed in a Zeiss camera my grandfather brought home from Europe in the 1950s; he would have traversed the ocean on one of the great liners, something he and my grandmother did many times. I have the camera too, and ran a roll of film through it once. The lens was very sharp in the middle but fell off in quality away from the optical axis. If you must know.  :-)

The little church that so inspired Eliot still stands in Cambridgeshire. Here's my many-times great-grandmother's plaque on the wall there, with an account of her formidable brood:

"Here also sleepeth Susana, wife to John Collet Esq by whom she had issue 8 sonnes & 8 daughters. She was ye only daughter of Mr Nicholas Farrar of London Merchant & sister to John Farrer Esq late Ld of this manor who died ye 9th Oct 1657 aged 76 years."

I don't know the name of the photographer. I got the information from the Church's website.

Hmm, I think I just wrote a second, unrelated post as a footnote! About olden people, in a post about young people. Oh well, such is blogging. Seinfeld "Newman" voice: Blogging!

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Featured Comments from:

William Lewis: "Ah, probably a Tessar on the old Zeiss camera then. That's the signature look for them—knife sharp in the center, smoothing out to, at their best, a buttery look on the edges. I love a good Tessar lens and have a number of them in different formats for different cameras."

Mike replies: Then you'll appreciate this. I have a Tessar cross-section (also called a block diagram) on my business card.  :-)

John C: "I'm going to make a prediction and say that the first of the new Pentax film cameras is going to look a lot like the digital MX-1. I think It will be similar in size and have similar lines. It will be a fixed lens compact with a prime lens somewhere between 28mm and 35mm. Most likely 28mm. Not an SLR, not through the lens viewing, so a viewfinder compact. Scale focus or autofocus with premium optics both in the viewfinder and the objective. It may be aimed more at the Japanese market which would appreciate such a camera more than the US market. It think it will be a camera that Daido Moriyama would use.

"A couple of other posters have mentioned the difficulties of sourcing gears and machinists and the like (mechanisms in a digital electronic world), so I think this will be a step in a incremental development project. We'll see."

ian scholey: "Little Gidding is just 10 miles from where I live in Cambridgeshire. I have a few images of the Church after I visited, inspired by an artist who lives close by—Carry Akroyd. Her painting of the church can be found here."