My Ricoh Auto Half EF2 was won on an online auction for 1000yen (£4.97) nearly ten months ago. It has taken that long to get through the 48 shots from the 24 exposure expired Truprint 400 Color film. Being so long, I had no idea what images would be on it, and it turns out I took it to quite a few different places around the UK from Oxford to Bath, Bristol and some local towns.

The EF2 was the last iteration of the Auto Half series by Ricoh in the 1970’s, and features an f2.8 25mm lens, self timer, built-in flash and clockwork film advance. The automatic exposure is controlled by the selenium cell around the lens. It takes 2x AA batteries for the flash. It is quite a chunky thing with good grip, and certainly well made.

I am not a huge fan of half frame, but liked the look of the camera. I am quite impatient, so having to shoot so many frames on one camera gets boring after a while!

I shot most of the expired 400 ISO film at 160, until a point that I forgot that it was 400 loaded, and assumed it was 200 and changed the ISO to 100! Inevitably some frames were terrible. I did have to adjust the levels and saturation on most of them - which I don’t usually do.

Something that is immediately apparent is the poor quality of the very expired Truprint for half frame, although I am pleased that most frames came out ok. The tiny 24×18mm negatives are best viewed small so you cannot see the grain and softness! Surprisingly the darker scenes actually came out better than brighter ones, like the two above and below. The sunrise shot needed no editing so those colours were straight out of the camera.

You could argue that the incredible softness down the lane is due to the larger aperture as it was under the trees, but who knows as the camera is fully automatic. The scene does have good contrast though, and viewed on my phone screen looks really good. I am sure the camera would have wanted me to turn the flash on, but that doesn’t work anyway! When the scene is too dark a flash reminder appears in the viewfinder, showing you that the selenium cell light meter does actually work. When I buy a camera with selenium cells, I only buy one with a lens cap or case included to improve the chances of it still being active.

Another shot that looked really nice small on the phone screen, and my favourite from a walk around Bath early one spring morning. The city has some really cute little side streets away from the tourist crowds, who were already out and about at 8am!

From cute little streets to a cute little camper van… There is some common ground with the Ricoh EF2 and this Bedford Bambi (stick with me on this one!) - both look quite cool, but have major limitations. The size of the half-frame negatives means you have to use high quality film to get a good result - yes you are getting double the exposures, but you need to spend double the price for better film! I would rather shoot cheaper film in a full frame 35mm camera to be honest.

Although I like the styling of the Ricoh, I cannot get past poor the image quality, and there are better half-frame options.

All that is left to do it replace the perished light seal foam (even though there were no light leaks) and stick it on eBay for someone else to enjoy.

Half frame Ricoh EF2

Photographica London 2026

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