In 1978 the time had come. The Japanese manufacturer Pentax presented the smallest and most compact analog SLR camera with interchangeable lenses: the Pentax Auto 110 saw the light of day. This light in turn banished the Pentax  on pocket film - also called 110.

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You can still use this camera today, because pocket films are still available for purchase (as of 2021). Even with pocket films that have expired 20 years ago, I have had good experiences. I am happy to accept color shifts or thicker grain :-)

The time and / or aperture cannot be set; the camera does this automatically. The film cassette of the pocket film informed the exposure meter about the correct film speed. All you have to do is pull the trigger lightly. There is an LED diode in the top right of the viewfinder. If it lights up yellow, it means that the shutter speed is longer than 1/45 sec. is or is below - there is a risk of blurring . A green diode indicates: everything is clear, enough light is available. Now you just have to focus, this is as easy as with a 35mm SLR camera.

Press the shutter release and the picture is in the box - in this case in the cassette. Now you press the quick release lever twice and you can go on!

There are a few suppliers of adapters for your Pentax Auto 110 lenses for use with an MFT camera on the Internet. It is important that you use an adapter that offers an iris diaphragm. The lenses for your Pentax camera do not have a built-in aperture! I recommend stopping down at least 1-2 f-stops so that you can fully use the performance of the lenses.

The adapters usually offer a stepless aperture adjustment. Using the shutter speed with the aperture fully open (adapter fully open) and the slow closing of the adapter, you can calculate the approximate aperture. The practical thing is that all lenses offer the initial aperture of 2.8 !!

Example:

Adapter completely open 1/500 sec. / F / 2.8

now you turn the shutter lever and the times change too

1/250 sec. - this would now correspond to aperture 4 ... keep turning ...

1/125 sec. - this would now correspond to aperture 5.6 ... keep turning ...

1/60 sec. - now you have set an aperture of 8 ... and so on ...

More information is available here.

About two years later, Pentax improved the Auto 110 and introduced the Auto 110 super model.

In contrast to the first model, Pentax made the following improvements:

- the quick release lever only had to be operated once

- The camera has been given an exposure correction button (+1.5 f-stops)

- She received an on / off switch and a self-timer.

All accessories can be used on both cameras. In addition to the lenses, this includes the winder with a handle; it offers a serial speed of 1.5 frames / sec. as well as the two flash units:

AF 100P as well as the somewhat larger and more powerful AF 130P.

Lens hoods, filters, bags, lens pouches and carrying handles rounded off the system and are still used today.

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The lenses are really tiny and light  - but because of their performance they are actually suitable for adapting to mft cameras! Here they completely distinguish the image format! I myself use these lenses on an Olympus OM D 10 MKII.

Pentax offered a total of 6 lenses for its camera.

These were:

PF 2.8 / 18mm pan focus , sharpness from 1.75m to infinity without the possibility of focusing

2.8 / 18mm (corresponds to approx. 35mm for small pictures)

2.8 / 24mm (corresponds to approx. 50mm for small pictures)

2.8 / 50mm  (corresponds to approx. 100mm for a small picture)

2.8 / 70mm  (corresponds to approx. 50mm for a small picture)

2.8 / 20-40mm (corresponds to approx. 40-80mm for small pictures)

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Take a look at my YouTube video. Here I introduce you to the camera and towards the end of the video also the adapters.