The Pentax Espio 120SW is a late 35mm film camera. It was
first released in 2001 when the digital market was already expanding.
It has an impressing zoom that covers 28-120mm in a small, lightweight aluminium body. It
was quite expensive, got some good reviews at the release, but in general there are few
reviews altogether. Its main features are:
28-120mm F5.6-12.8 lens, 6 elements in 5 groups, autofocus with focus lock, min. focus 0,5m Electronic shutter, 2-1/360s, 1/2s-1min bulb mode Size 111x59.9x41, Weight 190 gr. without battery 25-3200
ISO, automatic DX coding, self-timer, automatic film advance, infinity and spot AF mode, self timer
Camera
front closed.
Camera
back. Viewer with flash and AF LED. Wide/Tele switch. Film type window.
Camera front open. The flash is set automatically. Flash
guide number ~15 (m/ISO 100). The lens moves automattically to 28mm. The lens set to wide position, 28mm.
Lens moved out to its impressing tele position, 120mm which extend the lens to nearly 9cm from the body.
View from above. LCD
screen. Flash mode and focus mode buttons. Shutter
release and On/off, self timer and remote lever. View from below. Tripod socket. Panorama switch, Mid-roll rewind button. Battery compartment, takes a CR2 battery.
Film compartment.
Camera in original case.
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 some manual settings if needed,
the menu is very easy to access on a big clear LCD screen.
The
picture are sharp. There are
optical limits between size, zoom and max. aperture, you have to
choose. With ISO 400 film you can compensate easilythe loss of max.
aperture. It's
a very good point and shoot camera
with a quite wide angle zoom lens, good picture quality, very nice
finishing in a pocketable body which is not bigger than other
cameras with no or less zoom. Seen the 120mm zoom it's extremely small. It sets the flash on from
start and there is no general flash off mode. However night photo and
flash off mode works fine, even in daylight.
A nice find, it's not expensive for its impressing zoom and its high quality finishing.
