Pentax was once one of the biggest camera manufacturers, but that’s no longer the case. However, the company could be eying a comeback, only with an all-new line of film cameras. Get ready for nostalgia and film canisters, but we should leave the darkroom behind.
For those unaware, a company named Ricoh eventually purchased Pentax, which continues to develop and market digital cameras under the Pentax brand. Now, it looks like that parent company has a new plan, and if you love older cameras, it’ll be worth keeping an eye on.
This week Ricoh launched a new project for a “film camera” along with starting research and development of a new Pentax-branded film camera lineup. This isn’t just one camera, as the company wants to eventually release an entire line of options.
It’s a wild thought at first, bringing back old film cameras in the digital age, but it makes a little bit of sense. More and more people are going back to physical formats, whether that’s vinyl records or photo albums.
Plus, the younger generation loves old Polaroid cameras or anything with film, so this is Pentax potentially pleasing fans, both old and young. Ricoh even highlights a popular trend of taking photos with old film cameras, then digitizing the result and uploading it to social media.
We don’t know anything yet, and this is only a “project,” according to Ricoh. That said, in one of the announcement videos, Ricoh product designer Takeo Suzuki has an entire roadmap for what could be coming next. So again, we’re not sure if an all-new Pentax film camera will ever get released, but this is aiming in the right direction.
Who knows, maybe we’ll get a revived Pentax SP1000 for the modern age. We’ll have to wait and see.
via TechRadar
