Pentax Auto 110 - A splendid little camera

Would you believe that you can get a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera that fits in your pocket along with a few lenses, takes super sharp pictures and costs less than a video game? Well, you can. It’s the Pentax Auto 110. It’s tiny because it uses narrow 110 film which is loaded in a little cassette. When you’ve taken your 24 pictures you send the cassette away for processing. The film negatives are very small and this does compromise quality a bit. However, it also brings to the fore the filmic nature of the shots that you take. I doubled down on this by using Lomography “Turquoise” film which has a deliberately wacky colour balance.

The Deep as you have never seen it before

I’ve got a conventional colour film in the 110 at the moment and I fully expect the results to look completely normal.

The camera is lovely to use. It is mostly automatic, but you do have to focus. This is easy to do. The centre of the viewfinder has a lovely “split image” rangefinder. Just adjust the lens until the halves of the split image line up and you are good to go. The camera sorts out exposure. It will show a yellow light in the display if it thinks you need to use a tripod to hold the camera steady.

I think the scratches were caused by the cassette

If it gets too dark you can add a dinky little custom flash gun which screws onto the top of the camera and makes the outfit look even better. There are several lenses to choose from. The standard one works very well and is super sharp. If you are felling lazy you can even get a little motor drive which fits on the bottom and winds the film on for you. Talking of film, only one place makes it nowadays, but Lomography do have a nice range and the prices are reasonable. You can get 110 film processed at most decent labs.

I love the way that Pentax took a look at what was a point and shoot film format and said “You know what? We could make a single lens reflex that used this”. And then went ahead and did just that. The camera is super solid, made of metal and pretty reliable. Make sure that the twin LR44 batteries that power it are present and correct and you should be in business. You can test it by pointing it outside and it will go “click”. Then point it inside and take another picture and it should go “ker-lick”. Winding on without a cassette in does work for testing, but you have to wind on quite a bit to get the shutter to reset. Pro tip: cover the film window in the back if the camera with black tape to stop light sneaking in and fogging your shots from the back.

Hull City Centre looking good

If you want something to take memorable pictures with a surprising amount of detail and you only want to carry something tiny, I would strongly recommend this camera. They made loads of them and you can find them on auction sites easily enough. If you are feeling flush you might fancy buying one of the “kits” they used to sell which comprise the camera, flash, winder and a couple of extra lenses.