Pentax Auto 110: The World’s Smallest SLR

Look what my brother gave me… The World’s smallest film SLR. It’s a Pentax Auto 110.

Pentax Auto 110. Apols slightly crappy pics; left Ricoh in a hotel room so tried using the camera on my Moto X. Not the best quality pics and a stupid interface that makes it hard to get the best out of it.

It looks like an SLR, right, but is super tiny. Here it is compared to an FTb.

Auto 110 vs FTb

The Auto 110 fits nicely into the hand. And is probably just about big enough to be useable.

However, despite being super-small, thanks to its depth it is less comfortable in a pocket than a GR1.

Features

It’s got no features. None. Well a shutter button, film advance and a focus ring on the lens. Film speed and exposure are automatic. Short of fixed focus you couldn’t get away with less.

But at least you see what you get through the viewfinder, which is surprisingly bright – not the pokey little thing you’d expect. And it has a nice split ring focusing aid.

Oh, one feature; you can swap lenses. I’ve only got a 24mm (50mm equivalent) and a tiny little Soligor 1.7x teleconverter.

The rub

How can it be so small… therein lies the rub. It takes 110 film cartridges. Which can only be had from Lomo: http://shop.lomography.com/films/110-film.

So… I’ve got to wait ages for the film to arrive… and then take some pics… and then wait ages to get them processed; the lovely Max Spielmann will process them, but they have to be sent away, and take ‘about 20 years’ to come back.

So compared to 35mm film (£1 a film from the pound shop, a couple of quid and an hour to process onto CD) it’s an expensive pain. Still, I can’t resist trying. So I’ve ordered some film and we’ll take it from there.

Uh oh… another rub

Just read something about the Auto 110 and film speed here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentax_Auto_110 …

Seems it only sets itself to ‘low’ (roughly 100) or ‘high’ (400). Which means the 200 asa film I just ordered may not work. Damn. Still I can use the film in the Agfamatic 2000 that my brother also gave me. Don’t you wish you had a brother that gives you interesting cameras?

The results

So, I ordered some film, took some pics. Got them processed. Not very good.

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