Amateur Photographer – 13 July 2019

subscribe 0330 333 1113 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I 13 July 2019 53

Tony Kemplen on the É

Tony Kemplen’s love of photography began as a teenager and ever since he has been collecting cameras with a view to testing as many as he
can. You can follow his progress on his 52 Cameras blog at 52cameras.blogspot.co.uk. More photos from the Espio 160: http://www.fl ickr.com/
tony_kemplen/sets/72157631341545360/

Pentax

Espio 160

Tech Talk

No sniggering at the back! The

Espio 160 and its comically

long telephoto lens

‘It does have the

facility to make

double exposures’

A

s a rule, I don’t feel
much love for the
myriad fully automatic
zoom compacts from
the 1990s. Granted, they gave a
degree of fl exibility to the casual
holiday and family photographer,
but they don’t offer much to the
enthusiast. In the course of my 52
cameras in 52 weeks project

• which is now, rather
  embarrassingly, approaching week
  500 – I’ve used several of them.
  With one exception though, I’ve
  only put a single fi lm through each
  one. That exception is the Pentax
  Espio 160, which has accompanied
  me on a number of trips.
  Pentax used the Espio name (IQ
  Zoom in the USA) from the late
  1980s through to 2003. Over
  the course of time, the range of
  the zoom lenses increased: the
  fi rst model was 38-60mm,
  maxing out at 48-200mm on the
  Espio 200. The later models are
  noticeably chunkier than the early
  ones, but with their mainly plastic
  construction, they’re not
  too heavy to take
  along for a day of
  sightseeing.

As the name suggests, this

particular model has a maximum

focal length of 160mm, and my

inner schoolboy has to suppress a

snigger when the comically long

telephoto lens emerges from the

body. For all its swagger, the

maximum aperture at

160mm is only f/12,

and this, even with

the fastest

shutter speed of

1/400sec, is a

recipe for camera

shake. Paradoxically,

the lightness of the

camera makes it

even harder to keep

it still enough to

use in anything

but the

brightest sunlight. Like many

compacts from this era, the Espio

has a panoramic mode, in which a

mask is engaged at the fi lm plane,

with matching shaded areas

appearing in the viewfi nder. This

feature allowed the production of

10x4in panoramic prints, which

enjoyed a brief spell of popularity

in the 1990s. When you turn the

camera on, a fl ashgun pops out of

the side, though it can be switched

off if you don’t need it.

The turn of the millennium saw

car boot sales awash with cameras

like these, the average snap shooter

quickly moved over to digital, and

unlike an earlier generation of

precision-made mechanical

cameras, these zoom compacts

were of no interest to collectors,

so were unceremoniously

offl oaded to charity shops and the

like. I don’t remember exactly what

I paid for mine, but it wouldn’t have

been more than a couple of quid

• a sobering thought when you
  consider that in 1996 it would
  have been sold for the equivalent
  of over £600 at today’s prices.
  Most cameras of this type are
  fully automatic, affording little
  scope for creative experiment, and
  by and large the Espio 160 is no
  exception; it does however have
  two relatively unusual features, a
  ‘B’ setting, and the facility to make
  double, or indeed multiple
  exposures. I took advantage of the
  double exposure option on a trip
  to Barcelona, where I made this
  image (above) combining the
  silhouette of a sculpture by Joan
  Miró with the Moorish detail of a
  former bull-fi ghting arena.

A camera with a maximum focal length of 160mm

is of no interest to collectors, except one perhaps

A double exposure image taken with

the Espio 160 on a trip to Barcelona

© TONY KEMPLEN

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