A few years back I jumped on the half frame bandwagon and bought a Canon Demi EE-17. That camera is beautiful, well made and expensive and I enjoyed using it, but for one reason or another I didn’t use it much after initially writing about it and eventually sold it on to someone who would take good care of it.
Just before buying the Canon, I’d bought an Olympus PEN EE. The PEN range are the original half frame camera, designed to meet an impossibly tight budget price point and still provide high quality images. Olympus and Canon took half frame quite seriously, Canon taking the premium route and Olympus sticking to their budget guns until the release of the rather epic PEN F half frame SLR (a camera for those with deep pockets these days).
Why didn’t I use the PEN back in 2022? Well, the truth is I did and I made a monstrous amateur mistake. I didn’t check that the film was loaded and shot around 75 imaginary pictures on a roll that never moved. I then decided to go “all out” and buy the best half frame I could find and that’s how the Canon won the day and I consequently loaned out the PEN to someone for… nearly three years.
It was time to give it a decent run out and see what I’d perhaps missed the first time around, other than 70 images on an imaginary film…
Note to self, grass is not always greener
The Canon had it all – a battery powered light meter, manual focus, selectable shutter speeds, beautiful ergonomics and more. I enjoyed using the camera and appreciated the compact size, economy and decent optics. It had its fair share of issues, none more annoying than a really poor film door latch which had a nasty habit of popping open when there was a film inside. It wasn’t broken, just a flaw in the design meant you could really easily catch it on a pocket or similar and trigger the back to open. Although it had manual focus, it wasn’t a rangefinder so focus work was also guesswork based on judging distances, which is fine if you’ve got a reasonably high f stop, but in the semi-auto mode you haven’t really a clue what’s going on.
On the other hand, the Olympus PEN EE is a fully automatic affair once the film speed is set. The selenium cell meter is the only electronic component in the entire camera and this is used to make a simple selection between one of two shutter speeds. Other than that, you get a cute red flag when things are too bright or too dark and that’s your lot – pure simplicity. There is nothing left to do but point your camera at things and press the shutter button 72 times.
Having sold in their thousands during the 1960’s, there are countless PEN models available to buy today. They’re all fairly similar in terms of specification and it doesn’t really matter which version you buy if all you’re after is some half frame fun. Prices are still relatively sane and you can pick up the same camera as I used for around £25. Keep in mind that a plastic afterthought like the Kodak Ektar H35 which only has a fixed F8, 1/100th shutter is retailing for £50 and upwards, which is the very definition of insanity itself.
As I mentioned in my Vivitar Eco 35 v’s Disposables review, why anyone in their right mind buys any of these new film cameras today when there is a second hand market flooded with cheap and substantially better cameras by any and every metric is totally beyond me. This includes the inexplicably poor Pentax 17 which half the internet lost their minds about when they were paid / given free copies to use. You will not get better results out of a Pentax 17 than a Canon Demi nor even a PEN F – and the PEN F is leagues ahead in terms of materials and build quality. As a bonus you could buy three of them for the price of the Pentax…
Half frame, half a roll
The PEN EE selenium meter only works up with films up to ISO 200, so I loaded it with the only 200 ISO film I had left in the fridge which was half a roll of expired Foma 200. This is just about the right amount of film to use in a half frame, after cutting a new leader and actually checking the film was loaded properly this time, I managed about 31 shots which is the whole point in half frame – you get lots of frames for your money.
The shooting experience is as basic as it gets. The viewfinder is perfectly acceptable and clear for something so small and the frame lines are accurate unless you’re very close to your subject, then you get the inevitable parallax errors. The shutter feel isn’t too convincing but I didn’t lose any frames to accidents, even when carrying the camera around in a coat pocket for extended periods of time.
There are times when you expect the red flag of doom to appear and it doesn’t, opting instead to use the lower shutter speed of 1/40th of a second. You don’t know when this change is taking place, and it’d be handy to have an indication so you could steady yourself or choose not to take a shot which will suffer from motion blur or camera shake. I lost a few frames on the roll to these issues and the closest focussing distance of 3ft is a little optimistic. You can clearly see in pictures which have foreground and background objects that the further away things are, the sharper they get.
In fairness, the lens is very good and a surprising amount of detail can be captured in such a small area of film. If you hold the camera steady, have good light and a landscape subject, then the final negatives are quite pleasing. When you introduce motion, that’s a different kettle of fish entirely, but then you’ve got to temper expectations with a maximum shutter speed of 1/200.
The PEN EE is yet another film camera which takes advantage of the huge exposure latitude of film and demonstrates very effectively that you can get away with an absolute rock bottom number of exposure settings and still come out with reasonable, recognisable images throughout an entire roll of film. Would it benefit from some focus, shutter and aperture control? Of course, and this is likely why some of these things were introduced in later models, but the beauty of this camera is its very lack of such options.
To go full circle for a moment, the design of the PEN EE is full of subtle, well thought out ideas. The all metal body is par for the course, plastic cameras were still decades away when these were released. Remember that this camera was sold at a rock bottom price point on launch but even so the build quality is superb and probably goes a long way to explain why so many survive today.
Compared to the Canon Demi which uses a traditional film door, the decision to have an entirely removable back and bottom of the the PEN EE was an inspired choice. Once the film is loaded and the lock given a half turn, there is no way on earth you are going to accidentally pop the back open and ruin your film. These small but significant design considerations make a big difference, especially for a camera that was destined to be thrown in handbags, luggage, pockets, glove boxes and so forth. The PEN EE is a robust camera with few things that can and do go wrong with them.
It is common to find these cameras with broken meters, some can be fixed and others can’t – it depends whether the selenium cell is still alive or not. Apparently they have a habit of dying if, ironically, they’re exposed to too much light for too long. How true that is… I’ve no idea. It doesn’t sound 100% believable. The other most common issue is a sticky shutter or aperture blade. Both of these can be fixed and in a camera so simple, these make an enticing first foray into camera repair so don’t be afraid to give them a go if you want to try your luck with a “parts or not working” copy.
Conclusions and learning
I finally found my way back to the Olympus after a few years and I can’t honestly say that my attitude towards half frame hasn’t changed much since my initial review of the Canon Demi EE-17. Half frame was born out of a desire to make photography cheaper at a time when film was still relatively expensive. Today we’ve come full circle – film is expensive once again and half frame photgraphy is enticing for just that reason. I can fully understand colour film photographers embracing the sheer value of 72 frames for the cost of 36. Development is the same price, there really are few catches.
Yet I still can’t bring myself to love the concept no matter which camera I use. Black and white film especially is still affordable and once you lose the cost argument, the reasons to use half frame come down to portability and that just doesn’t bother me to the point where I’d sacrifice better lens quality, larger negatives and so forth. Indeed, there are many small full frame cameras available, just how small do you really need?
I’ve used some pretty low quality cameras such as the Cosmic 35, Eco 35 and Opus Prime. I’ve also recently used the compact but much higher quality Kodak Retinette. I can honestly say I not only enjoyed using each of these cameras more than the Olympus, I got much better results out of at least two of them.
If you want top quality out of half frame images then you need a top quality scanning set up, and I mean top quality. Without a scanner or SLR/Macro lens that can resolve all the detail contained in these tiny negatives you’re going to end up fairly disappointed. Flatbed scanners in particular struggle with half frame negatives and that’s fine, but buying the correct lens to scan these images with your SLR will cost you an absolute fortune, not to mention the fact you’ll need decent negative holders and a lightbox to go with it. I understand people extolling the virtues of SLR scanning, but I will repeatedly point out that true macro lenses are hundreds of pounds, as are decent negative holders and lights. Suddenly, the whole economy angle of half frame doesn’t make sense.
Does this mean that the PEN EE is a bad camera? Of course not. It is a feat of engineering and designing to a tight budget. They’re desirable and fun little machines to use and if you love them, you really love them. It just turns out that I must be odd because they really don’t light my photography fire at all.
Should you buy one? Absolutely you should. For £20-30 you can have great fun, shoot some colour film on the cheap and maximise your investment in developing and processing charges. The lens is good and if you pay your local lab to scan your negatives or even do prints for you then I think you’re going to be very happy. Just for God’s sake, don’t buy a new half frame, none of them are worth it over any of the PEN range.
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