Over the past year I've put over 10 rolls of film through this little camera and the more I use it the more I fall in love with it. Despite its rough launch, its reputation has been recovering as more and more people had actually used the camera themselves. To me, Pentax 17 is the kind of camera that looks bad in paper but is actually a pretty solid camera. Here's why:
- Build quality
I always hear people say it's plasticky. Yes, it's true, but only to some extent. Only the top and bottom plates are made of metal, aluminum to be exact, while almost all other parts are made of plastic. However, this does not mean that the build quality is bad. As a matter of fact, I think it is one of the most well-built cameras I've ever used(I own cameras like Leica M6 and Nikon F3) All the buttons, dials, feel clicky, well-dampened and very smooth. The film door, latch don't wobble at all and the controls feel pretty solid. Another bonus from the material is that it's pretty light. No it's not the most pocketable film camera size-wise, but you can comfortably pack it in almost any bag and you won't get dragged down by it.
- Image quality
To be honest I was decently surprised by just how well this lens performs. I have shown some of the pictures taken with this camera and as you can tell the image quality isn't bad at all. Even when you zoom in on some of the half frames you can still get pretty good detail, especially on finer films like Kodak 50D. On top of that, this lens actually renders color beautifully. I wasn't really expecting anything when I learned that it's a three lens elements design but they proved me wrong.
- Focusing, controls, and the fact that it's a half-frame.
Zone focusing was uncharted territory for me before I got the 17. It did take some getting use to but eventually I got the hang of it and it's a walk in the park ever since. The focusing ring on the lens is pretty smooth to turn, intuitive to use, and can be seen directly from the OVF, which is a big plus and it's something that I've never seen with other cameras. Out of the 80 or so shots per roll I take, my hit rate would probably be something like 78/80(yes this camera can shoot up to 80 shots per roll), with the two being mis-firing the shutter or forgetting to force the flash or something like that. It's a fun process and it's hard to mess it up if you learn some very basic rule of range finding. For example, for the "flower" icon, which is the micro mode for this lens, all you need to do is to pull the strap tight and position the other end of the strap right in front of your lens, and place the subject right where the strap ends, that would be your micro focusing point.
This camera also gives you enough manual controls for you to mess around. ISO setting, exposure compensation, flash manual control, a bulb mode(never used it) as well as a pseudo aperture priority mode which locks your aperture to 3.5. This really opens up a lot of creative potential with this lens and on top of all that, you need to manual wind to the next frame. And the winding mechanism is so fine-tuned and feels really satisfying.
And now the elephant in the room, yes it's a half-frame. Yes the image quality is gonna be inferior if you compare it to a 35mm film camera. But none of these take away the fact that it's a fun little camera and it really gets you involved in the process of deliberately creating a image, not to mention it produces amazing images(80 of them). Also, I think half-frames create this very dynamic connection between two images.
No cameras are perfect though. I do have some complaints about this camera, most prominently the shutter delay. The lens will travel to its designated position after you press the shutter, not after you set the focus point, which would take like 0.2 seconds or something like that. I had some blurry shots because of this and my solution to this is just to hold the camera a little bit longer after press the shutter and I never had this issue again. Besides that, I really enjoyed using this camera.
All in all, while this camera can be a huge disappointment for some, it's become my personal favorite in 2025 and I would love to shoot more pictures with it in the future.
P.S.: If you want to get more than 72 shots per roll, after closing the film door, wind your shutter 2 times and you may start on the third stroke. On the manual it says you need 5 or 6 strokes but in reality you can start shooting at the third one. I can easily squeeze 78-80 shots per roll with this technique.