Sizzle vs. Sausage

If you're not a follower of the photowebs, you may not be aware that there is currently a lot of excitement and speculative hoo-hah about the recent launch of – wait for it – the Pentax 17, a half-frame 35mm film camera with very restricted capabilities that will cost around £500. No, really.

I'm not about to review the thing, which strikes me as a bizarre attempt by Pentax to cash in belatedly on what must surely be a passing fad for film, with what amounts to an expensive remake of the most basic sort of point-and-shoot camera, last seen in the 1980s. I cashed in myself when I sold on my remaining 35mm compacts last year for what seemed to me like a lot of money (but rather less than £500 in total), although those were comparatively capable "full frame" cameras (Olympus XA and mju II) that I had used for many years as my family snapshot cameras. Given the quality, convenience, and sheer versatility of the typical phone camera, I can't see many people who are not essentially fashion victims choosing to burden themselves with any sort of film camera, not least because of the cost, delay, and likely disappointing quality of the end results (oh, those paper wallets of terrible 6" x 4" "enprints"...). Add to that the fact that there is an entire galaxy of unwanted but stellar film cameras out there to choose from, and you have to wonder what the Ricoh-Pentax team are on.

To be honest, I simply don't understand this enthusiasm for film. As I have written before several times, going right back to one of my earliest blog posts (Tears in the Stop Bath, 2009) it was a life-changing moment for me when going digital meant that I was finally able to abandon the darkroom – something I had endured as a necessary evil, at best – and best of all to save the large amounts of cash I had regularly been handing over for the processing of colour negative film. The nostalgia for film seems to me to be like a nostalgia for coal fires. Yes, sitting by a blazing fire can be an extremely pleasant sensation, but it's easy to forget the housework involved when it's a daily chore – humping in coal from the shed, clearing the previous day's ash from the grate, getting the fire going and keeping it going – and the fact that every other room would still be freezing in winter weather, and the whole house would feel chilly on cool days when the bother of starting a fire seemed excessive. Ah, what a joy it was to go to bed on winter nights between cold clammy sheets, and to wake up with frost inside the window! What a laugh when your unswept chimney caught fire, or a sudden downdraft puffed soot all over the carpet! Central heating? So much less fun!

No, what interests me is the (over)reaction. Usually sensible folk like Mike Johnston or Chris Niccolls seem to have been bending over backwards to be positive about this new Pentax film camera. To the point where people are actually saying things like, "I know it's pretty crappy, really, but I'm tempted to buy one just to encourage Pentax to carry on down this road, and make a good one next time!" What? Why would anyone donate money (and, call me a skinflint, but £500 still strikes me as a large sum of money) to a multinational enterprise for a product you neither need nor want just to encourage them to do better next time? Write them a bad review, guys, that's all the "encouragement" they need.

The most surprising aspect of the reaction, though, is the idea that, somehow, this oddly underspecified device – it has a slow fixed lens, zone focussing only, no manual settings, etc., etc. – has re-invented the simple fun of snapshooting. Although, actually, this may not be so surprising. If you read the camera reviews on PetaPixel and elsewhere, or even the musings of someone like Mike Johnston, you'll know quite how nerdy and obsessively detailed things have become. When it comes to digital imaging we've reached a plateau of excellence where, frankly, any camera at any price-point is better than you or I actually need. In fact your phone is probably better for most practical purposes. Now, these guys may claim to take photographs for fun and profit in their own time (although I have my doubts about that), but their day job is to compare autofocus speeds, screen pixel densities, menu options, button positions, and all the minutiae of present-day digital camera design, day in, day out. It surely has to be even more boring for them to write about than it is for us to read. So to be sent out into the street to review a new piece of photo-jewellery with the stunted functionality of a disposable camera must be quite a liberation; fun, indeed. But it's the sort of fun gadget, like a slow cooker or a spiralizer, that will be a short-lived enthusiasm for most, and end up in a cupboard, or on eBay.

Yes, digital cameras have become boring, having started out in a veritable Cambrian Explosion of innovative variety, now that they have all converged on a handful of tried and tested designs, all doing much the same things in much the same way. But so do fridges, microwave ovens, cars, power drills, hairdryers, and every other functional device and tool out there (although that Dyson bloke has done his best to shake things up). Clearly, when it comes time to buy a new camera the reviews have their place in weighing up one set of boring options against another. But if, like me, you generally buy second-hand kit, then the testimony of actual users counts for more; and even more persuasive is the hard evidence of the actual results they get.

The thing is that great photographs are never boring; you just have to have a boring camera (and, for digital, an even more boring computer and inkjet printer) to make them. Any old camera will do. Significant bodies of work have been made with actual toy cameras using film like the Holga and the Diana (see Nancy Rexroth's Ohio), and even with pinhole cameras, but that doesn't mean that using the same hardware as some successful artist you admire will endow your photos with the same fairy dust. Ditto an 8" x 10" view camera, an iPhone, or some eye-wateringly expensive DSLR. There is no substitute for having an eye for a picture, experience, imagination, access to your favoured subject matter, persistence, and above all a personal "vision" that aligns with and is enhanced by the characteristics of your chosen medium.

Someone out there, I'm sure, will buy one of these new Pentax cameras, make the essential investment in both time and money (and film processing, printing and/or scanning, will consume large amounts of both) and produce worthwhile work. Maybe the magic and "beginner's mind" inspired by a new toy won't wear off. Maybe the absence of choices – fixed lens, zone focussing, no manual settings, and so on – will stimulate rather than frustrate them. It's an approach that works for most of us, after all: I have to confess that I generally leave my cameras on "program mode" most of the time, myself (that is, when I'm not using my iPhone). But, please, everyone calm down: let's not confuse the sizzle with the sausage...