PentaxZoom 60

The Pentax Zoom 60 comes out of the peak of bubble-economy Japanese design, when every brand had a flagship compact and the engineering budgets to match. Catalogued as a autofocus compact, it pairs the Pentax Zoom 38–60mm with macro with a 35mm film path. A bit of background: one of Pentax's first zoom compacts, from 1987 — sold as the IQZoom 60 in North America, though the badge is often missing from the body.

Format

35mm

Year

1987

Lens

Pentax Zoom 38–60mm with macro

Shutter

1/30s – 1/250s

Min. focus

1.0 m

Flash

Built-in auto

Battery

1× 2CR5

The Pentax Zoom 38–60mm with macro covers wide-to-short-tele in one barrel — one lens, no decisions, point and shoot. Film supply is a non-issue: any 35mm cassette from any lab works. It takes the chunky 2CR5 lithium pack — slightly harder to find than AAs, but a single cell lasts a great many rolls. The built-in flash will fire whenever the meter decides it should, so learn the override before your first night out. Minimum focus is 1.0 m, close enough for a coffee cup or a face but stops short of true macro. One thing worth knowing before you load a roll: only 115 g on the scales: the short 38–60mm range kept the lens barrel tiny compared with the 105mm monsters that followed. Built for family events, holidays and anything where you'd rather reframe than walk.

Quietly underrated, the Pentax Zoom 60 is the kind of camera people brag about owning five years from now and ten times the price. Worth remembering: a 1991 revision arrived as the Zoom 60-X with a 6-element f/4.5–6.7 lens.

• §1One of Pentax's first zoom compacts, from 1987 — sold as the IQZoom 60 in North America, though the badge is often missing from the body.
• §2Only 115 g on the scales: the short 38–60mm range kept the lens barrel tiny compared with the 105mm monsters that followed.
• §3A 1991 revision arrived as the Zoom 60-X with a 6-element f/4.5–6.7 lens.
• §4A modest zoom range is an advantage optically — less glass to compromise, so results are cleaner than many 3× compacts of the same price.