There’s almost no reason to buy a Land Rover. They’re notoriously unreliable, prone to inscrutable electrical faults, devastating coolant leaks, and timing problems that cause pistons to meet valves in expensive, unforgettable ways. And yet, people love them. They are plush, gorgeous, capable, and commanding. There’s something about the way a Land Rover moves down the road that turns the most mundane drive from a chore to an enjoyable adventure.
The Pentax PC35AF is a lot like that. [eBay link]
It is by most objective standards a deeply unreliable camera. The battery doors are almost always broken. The sliding switch that opens the lens cover is often jammed, intermittent, or entirely nonfunctional. Shutters fail. Electronics spontaneously die. You can find endless forum posts warning prospective buyers to stay away.
And yet you’ll also find a devoted group of people who love the PC35AF, who’ve owned several, and keep fixing them, people who forgive the camera’s flaws because, when it works, it works so damn well.
[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]
Pentax PC35AF Specifications
- Lens: Pentax 35mm, f/2.8 (5 elements in 5 groups)
- Focus: Infrared active triangular autofocus with pre-focus
- Exposure Modes: Programmed auto-exposure from EV6 (f/2.8 at 1/8s) to EV17 (f/16 at 1/430s). Mechanical shutter with slow shutter warning LED and beep
- Viewfinder: Albada viewfinder with 85% coverage, auto-focus frame, picture frame, parallax correction frame, distance indicator needle, zone focus markers, lamps
- DX Sensor: None; ISO is set manually from 25-400
- Film Transport: Manual film advance (an add-on winder was sold separately); manual film rewind
- Additional Features: Self-timer, Built-in flash (guide number 11m at ISO 100), Tripod socket
- Power source: 2 x AAA batteries.
- Size: 129 x 69 x 46mm
- Weight: 320g
What is the Pentax PC35AF
Released in 1982, the Pentax PC35AF comes from an interesting moment in camera history. Autofocus was still new, and sometimes more theoretical than practical. The industry (and its customers) were long used to mechanical cameras made of metal, yet the computer and microprocessor revolution was well under way (ushered in by Canon and their AE1 of 1976). The PC35AF was born in a time when people liked reliable, metal cameras, but wanted smaller and more technologically sophisticated photo makers.
The core concept of the PC35AF was relatively simple, and one that nearly every successful camera maker would adopt as a matter of course throughout the 1980s, ’90s, and into the dawn of the digital photography age; it was a compact camera that handled well and prioritized ease of use. It was also Pentax’s first autofocus camera, using an infrared AF system to estimate distance to subject down to one of three approximate focus zones (the camera focuses to either 0.7 meters, 1.5 meters, or infinity).
Beyond this new (for Pentax) AF system, the PC35AF offered a fixed 35mm f/2.8 lens, a built-in flash, manually-selectable ISO (25 to 400, in reasonable increments), manual film advance, self-timer mode, backlight exposure compensation to + 1.5 EV, and fully programmed exposure. The camera was powered by two AAA batteries, and an optional accessory winder was also released.
Later versions, the PC35AF-M, added a motorized film advance and DX code reading, and the PC35AF-M Date added a data recording back allowing imprinting on the photo (date or time). These two models are so fundamentally different from the original, however, that the information here presented cannot be relied upon to evaluate these models. Let’s get back to the original.
[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]
A Tall Glass
Pick up a PC35AF [eBay link] today and the first thing you notice is the weight. This is not a featherweight plastic compact. It feels dense, purposeful, and reassuring in the hand; in other words, it’s heavy (for a compact). The grip is subtle but effective, and the body communicates, perhaps falsely, that it’s built to last.
Controls are minimal and refreshingly direct. There’s an ISO control, a simple flash control, and the aforementioned sliding switch that opens the lens cover and powers the camera on. There are no menus, no LCD panels shouting settings at you. You load film, set your ISO, and press the shutter button to make a picture. Advancing the film is handled with a thumb wheel, and rewinding it is done with a knob and lever on the bottom.
The viewfinder is bright and usable, with parallax-corrected framelines, basic focus confirmation, and low light alerts via LED and audible beep. It’s not luxurious, but it does its job.
The PC35AF uses an active infrared autofocus system with a minimum focusing distance of around 0.7 meters. In good light, it’s quick and reasonably accurate. In low contrast situations or close-range compositions, it can miss. With a 40+ year old point and shoot, we sort of have to expect a few misses.
Metering is fully programmed and generally conservative. It handles even lighting well and produces negatives with plenty of latitude. Backlit scenes can trip it up. However, there’s a +1.5 exposure comp feature. Remember to flick that whenever you’re shooting into the sun and you’ll have a higher hit rate.
This is all fairly standard stuff. If the PC35AF has a single exceptional feature, the thing that keeps people repairing battery doors and scavenging donor bodies, it’s the lens.
[Sample images in the gallery were provided by longtime collaborator Dustin Vaughn-Luma and are published here with permission.]
[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]
Many compact point-and-shoots of the era boasted a 35mm f/2.8 lens, and many of them are quite good. Pentax’s 35mm f/2.8 is certainly among the best. It’s sharp. Not “pretty good for a compact” sharp, but genuinely sharp. In good lighting conditions it delivers crisp center resolution with strong contrast and just enough falloff to feel organic. There’s a punchiness to the images that scans beautifully and prints even better.
And Here Come the Lemons
Longtime readers will know that I’ve been running a camera shop for over a decade now, and while this is certainly anecdotal evidence, it’s also true that the number of PC35AFs that have arrived dead may better be expressed in scientific notation. Even examples which do happen to work often come with accompanying flaws that render them hard to use.
Battery doors crack and snap with alarming consistency. The plastic used simply wasn’t meant to survive decades, and the camera’s use of common AAA batteries means that many have been stored with the batteries in situ (acid). The power switch that slides open the lens cover is infamous for sticking, failing to engage, or refusing to close. The shutters often fail. The electronics age out. The sad truth is that these cameras can (and often do) become inert bricks overnight, so that buying one today is a gamble. Buying one that works perfectly and continues to work is a small miracle.
But assuming we can find one that works, the PC35AF can make a lot of sense, if you accept its limitations and understand the perils of ownership. Knowing how to fix things will help. It excels as a walk-around camera. Street photography, travel, casual documentation of daily life, this is where it shines. The lens encourages getting close, the 35mm focal length feels natural, and the camera’s overall simplicity lets you focus on the moment.
Just don’t expect it to be your only camera, and don’t expect it to last forever. That said, it may become your favorite thing with which to make photos.
Ten Great Point and Shoot Film Cameras From $25 to $99
For every expensive, over-hyped point and shoot camera there are ten or twenty others that are damn near as good at one-tenth the price. Here’s a list of a few that we’ve personally enjoyed.
[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]
Final Thoughts
The PC35AF is not a rational purchase. There are more reliable point-and-shoots. There are smaller film cameras. There are cameras with faster and more accurate autofocus, and many others which simply offer more features. For example, any Canon Sure Shot from the 1990s – they made a million of them.
But there is something undeniably interesting and enticing about the Pentax PC35AF [eBay link]. Very few point-and-shoot cameras look this good, feel this old school, and deliver images this consistently satisfying when everything goes right. It’s a camera that may test your patience, but one that rewards your loyalty with stunning photos.
Which brings me back to Land Rovers. At the end of 2025, I found a Land Rover sitting dead outside a $2-million home. The LR4 had suffered the classic and well-documented timing chain failure. The chains skipped, the pistons smashed into the valves, and the engine was effectively scrap. I can’t usually afford a Land Rover, but I managed to weasel this one from the previous owners for just $800. Over the course of two agonizing months, I disassembled and rebuilt the motor, supercharger and all. It was a hell of a lot of work. It was frustrating. I bled a lot.
But it was my wife’s dream car, and now that it’s running, it’s one of the best cars I’ve ever driven, an incredibly sophisticated machine that does things other cars simply can’t (or don’t, because their designers are smart enough to keep things simple).
When I ask my wife how she’s liking it, she smiles (almost swoons) and says, “It’s a dream.”
“That’s good.” I smile, but I know that someday soon I’ll be under it again, turning a wrench, wrestling with a belt or replacing an alternator or a valve block or a rear strut, or some other complicated, expensive component. I’ll pull a muscle and slice a knuckle, and mutter once again that “I should’ve bought a Toyota.”
And that’s the Pentax PC35AF. Horribly flawed, foolish to own, a terrible, terrible camera. And yet, every time its shutter fires, unquestionably great. The heart is a fickle thing.
Buy your own Pentax PC35AF on eBay
Follow Casual Photophile on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]
