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.
Camera
front closed.
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 -- -- --.
Camera front open. The flash is set automatically. Flash
guide number ~18 (m/ISO 100). The lens moves automattically to 35mm. The lens set to wide position, 35mm.
Lens moved out to its tele position.
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. View from below. Tripod socket. Battery compartment, takes a CR123 battery.
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.
