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The Pentax Espio 70 is a 35mm film camera of the mid-range to upper range series.
It was first released in 1992 when the digital market was not yet a market at all. It has a moderate zoom that covers 35-70mm in a small body. There was a date version, which is shown here. It was also released as Espio P and IQZoom 735. It has an incredibles vatiety of modes. Its main features are:

35-70mm F4.3-8 lens, 8 elements in 7 groups, autofocus with focus lock, min. focus 0,6m
Electronic shutter, 1/400-1/5, 1/2-as long as shutter button is pressed (!) bulb mode
Size 122x66x40,  Weight 235 gr. without battery
25-3200 ISO, automatic DX coding, automatic film advance, plenty of special modes: back light compensation, slow shutter speed (night) and bulb with or without flash, bulb as long as shutter is pressed, infinity mode, red eye reduction, self timer, dual frame self timer, auto tele and wide self timer, consecutive shoot, multi exposure, interval 3 and 60 minutes.


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Camera front closed.

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Camera back. Viewer with 2 LED for flash and AF. On/Off button. Wide/Tele lever. Film type window. Data back with several modes, including data off -- -- --.

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Camera front open. The flash is set automatically. Flash guide number ~18 (m/ISO 100). The lens moves automattically to 35mm.


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The lens set to wide position, 35mm.

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Lens moved out to its tele position.

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View from above  LCD screen. Red eye button, flash mode button, infinity mode button, self timer mode button. Mid roll rewind: hold the self timer button for more than 3 seconds until mid roll rewind blinks; keep pressed and press shutter button for rewind.
Shutter release button. Wide/Tele lever.

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View from below. Tripod socket. Battery compartment, takes a CR123 battery.

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Film compartment.

This camera is easy to use. Autofocus is responsive and works well. Putting a film is easy as well, you drop the film
, tear the film leader up to the mark and that's it. The camera winds it automatically. It has an incredible variety settings if needed, the menu is very easy to access on a big clear LCD screen.

The picture are sharp, but there are later Pentax compacts which are better, with more luminous lenses. It's a very good point and shoot camera with a moderate wide angle zoom lens, good picture quality, nice finish in a pocketable body. It sets the flash on from start and there is no general flash off mode, but a night mode and a backlight compensation mode. The backlight compensation flash off mode works quite well as flash off in case of. There are some special modes which are quite unusual: B means shutter open as long as you press the shutter, no limlit. A 60 minute interval shooting is rare. Several self timer modes, including an auto tele and wide mode, I have not seen yet elsewhere. Multi exposure is rare as well.

A nice camera, but Pentax made better models later, as they stayed in the film camera market well into the 2000s. However later models have less options.

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