Kodak Ektar H35 vs H35N: Differences & Which to Buy

The Kodak Ektar H35 and H35N are half-frame cameras. They expose 18x24 mm instead of 24x36 mm, which gets you 72 shots from a 36-exposure roll. They are not made by Kodak but by RETO Production Ltd. in Hong Kong as a brand licensee. The H35N has the better lens, the older H35 the slightly faster aperture. And when it comes to developing, half-frame turns into a special case with a surcharge at almost every lab. This guide sorts out what you should know before buying and what can go wrong afterwards.

Table of contents

1. Who actually makes the Kodak Ektar?
2. What half-frame means in everyday use
3. Is the H35N worth the extra money?
4. Which film you should load
5. Six mistakes that cost you half a roll
6. Where to get a half-frame film developed
7. How to digitize the small negatives cleanly
8. What accessories are available for the Ektar
9. When another camera is the better choice
10. Conclusion

Who actually makes the Kodak Ektar?

The camera says Kodak. Someone else built it. On the official product page from Kodak itself, the fine print contains this sentence: “RETO Production Ltd. manufactures and sells this product. The Kodak trademark, logo and trade dress are used under license by RETO Production Ltd.”

This is not hair-splitting. If you need a spare part, want to make a complaint or need information on compatibility, RETO in Hong Kong is your point of contact, not Eastman Kodak. It also explains why the cameras under the Kodak name vary so much: they are products of an independent manufacturer that has licensed a brand.

Five quite different devices now go by this label. The prices come from the official RETO shop, as of August 2026.

The Snapic A1 is often confused with the H35 because both come from the same manufacturer and have a similar retro look. But it is a full-frame camera with motorised film advance and a real glass triplet, so it is a different device for a different purpose. What it can do and where its limits lie is covered in our review of the Kodak Snapic A1. In short: more camera, more money, no 72 shots.

The Ektar H35 in the colour “Sage”. At launch it came in five colours: black, brown, sage, sand and off-white. Photo: Ausgeknipst

What half-frame means in everyday use

A regular 35mm camera exposes 24x36 mm in landscape orientation. A half-frame camera exposes 18x24 mm in portrait orientation, which is exactly half the area, rotated by 90 degrees. A 36-exposure roll gives you 72 shots, a 24-exposure roll gives you 48.

Half-frame on the left and right, classic 35mm in the middle. Photo: Ashley Pomeroy, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

You hold the camera differently. If you want a landscape-format picture, you have to hold the Ektar vertically. For portraits and for anything that ends up on your phone anyway, this is more of an advantage, since portrait format is the standard there. With landscapes, it takes some getting used to.

The grain becomes more visible. An 18x24 mm negative has to be enlarged twice as much as a 35mm negative for the same image size. At postcard size you won't notice any of this. On an A3 print you will.

Your pictures come in pairs. On the negative strip, two half frames sit side by side in the spot where a single 35mm frame would normally be. That is why many labs scan them as a pair. If you use this deliberately, you can shoot diptychs on purpose, meaning two pictures that tell a story together.

Half-frame saves less money than the doubled number of shots would suggest. The film cost per shot really does halve, but the lab costs do not: they are charged per roll, and on top of that comes the half-frame surcharge. Calculated with a Kodak Gold 200/36 (from 7,99 € according to Geizhals) and development including scan for 15,95 €, you end up at around 0,67 € per shot in full frame. In half-frame, with a 5 € surcharge, it is around 0,40 €. That is around 40 percent less, not half.

Is the H35N worth the extra money?

The H35N came out in 2023 as a revised version. In Germany it costs around 60 to 69 euros, the old H35 around 54 to 57 euros (price comparison on Geizhals, as of August 2026). Here are the manufacturer specifications of both cameras side by side, taken directly from the official product pages.

Sources: the official product pages for Ektar H35 and Ektar H35N at RETO.

The most interesting point in this table is mentioned in almost no review: the newer camera is the darker one. f/11 instead of f/9.5 means roughly 0.4 stops less light. The glass element buys you sharpness, not brightness. Only when you switch on the flash does the H35N jump to f/8, and then it is half a stop brighter than the H35. So if you mostly use the new camera outdoors without flash, you are working with slightly less headroom than with the old one.

Whether the extra sharpness is worth the higher price depends on your standards. My Favourite Lens describes the results of the H35N as surprisingly close to what a 35mm camera delivers. Casual Photophile judges the old H35 much more harshly: heavy vignetting, soft edges, little contrast, image quality on the level of a disposable camera. Both can be true. They are two different expectations of the same genre.

Video: “Kodak Ektar H35 vs Kodak Ektar H35N - Comparison” by 8storeytree. Both cameras side by side, with sample shots from the same situation.

Our recommendation if money is not a big issue: get the H35N. The star filter, bulb function and tripod thread are together worth more than the 10 to 15 euro difference, and the swung-in star filter doubles as lens protection. If you want to save money or can get a used H35 cheaply, you are not missing much: the old camera takes the same kind of pictures, just a little softer. For a camera whose appeal lies in imperfection, that is not a deal breaker.

Accessories cannot be swapped between the two models. The bodies are the same size, the lens fronts are not. About its own color filters from the H35N premium kit, RETO explicitly states “Filters do not fit on the H35 model”. The same applies the other way round to accessories designed for the H35. Only the underwater case from RETO fits both, according to the manufacturer. So before buying any accessory, check which of the two models it is made for.

Which film you should load

The Ektar has no light meter, no aperture selection and no ISO setting. Aperture and shutter speed are fixed. The only dial you have left is your choice of film. And the flash switch.

Photo: Friedrich Haag, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

What happens at f/11 and 1/100 s in which light:

Color negative film forgives overexposure much better than underexposure. That's why the higher speed is the safe choice when in doubt. A negative that's too bright can be recovered during scanning, one that's too dark cannot. ISO 400 covers most situations, ISO 200 is enough for a summer vacation, ISO 800 is the insurance for autumn and indoor spaces.

The YouTube channel Anjroo has summed up the most common questions after more than 400 shots with both Ektar models. Anjroo recommends speeds “between 200 and 400” and explicitly the cheap film rather than the expensive one, so Kodak Gold, Color Plus or Fujifilm 400 instead of Portra. The warning about exposure is brief and accurate: “all of your pictures are probably going to come out darker than you think.” This leads to the second piece of advice: use the flash much more often than feels right. And if a subject matters to you, simply take the shot twice. In half-frame, that costs you half.

If you rarely shoot, go for the 24-exposure roll. 72 shots sounds great until the film sits in the camera for half a year and last summer's pictures only come back in winter. A 24-exposure roll gives you 48 half-frame shots, still twice as many as usual. In exchange, you get through it in a reasonable time and see your results while you still remember taking the shots.

Which film suits which purpose and what ISO means in detail is covered in our basics article Buying analog film: which film, which ISO, which format. Our map of analog photo shops shows where you can get film locally in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Six mistakes that cost you half a roll

The Ektar has few controls, but each of them can cost you shots. These six points come up again and again in reviews and community reports.

Getting closer than one meter. The camera has fixed focus. Anything closer than one meter will be blurry, and the large depth of field won't save you there. Selfies at arm's length are borderline, selfies with a bent arm are lost.

Trusting the viewfinder. The viewfinder is a hole in the body, not a rangefinder, and it shows a different framing than the lens. Gregory Gross puts it this way: “The viewfinder's field of view is a bit smaller than what actually gets captured on film.” The closer the subject, the greater the offset. If you want to place a foreground element deliberately, expect it to end up somewhere else.

Using the flash too rarely. This is the most common reason for black pictures. The flash range is about one to three meters, not enough for group shots from five meters away. It also needs a moment to charge. Only once the indicator light is bright is it ready.

Shaking at 1/100 s. A fixed shutter speed of 1/100 s is not fast. Camera to your face, elbows against your body, breathe out, then press the shutter. It sounds trivial and is still the cause of most soft pictures.

Tossing the camera into your bag unprotected. Experiences differ here, and that deserves to be said. The tester at ExpertPhotography reports that the shutter button needs a deep press and never went off by itself: “it never went off while in my camera bag.” Our customers regularly report the opposite, especially when the camera sits loose among keys and headphones. Regardless, the lens stays unprotected, and acrylic scratches more easily than glass.

If you have an H35N, you can swing its star filter in front as makeshift lens protection. That's exactly what the channel Anjroo does in its video. The H35 doesn't offer this option. Photo: Ausgeknipst

Forgetting the star filter. This only affects the H35N. The filter has no obvious indicator, and if it accidentally stays swung in, there's a piece of plastic in front of the glass element. That throws away exactly the advantage you paid for. Shoot It With Film explicitly calls this a weak point of the design.

Video in German: “analoge Fotografie | Die perfekte Kamera für Anfänger? | Kodak Ektar H35” by shhluu. Shows handling and results from a beginner's perspective.

Where to get a half-frame film developed

This is the part almost nobody considers before buying, and the part that goes wrong most often. Processing machines and scanners are set up for 24x36 mm. A half-frame film has twice as many frames, each half the size, in unusual positions, and the software has to go along with that first.

At the drugstore, it's a matter of luck. In the APHOG forum the verdict is sober: “it all comes down to asking and/or gambling”. The films are passed on from dm and Rossmann to large central labs, and whether someone there reads the handwritten note “half-frame” decides the outcome. There are reports where everything went well, and reports where the half frames were printed individually and crooked.

Specialist labs can handle half-frame, but charge a surcharge. They have to process the films differently, and most of them state this openly in their price list. A few concrete figures, as of August 2026:

One sentence on the film bag saves you the trouble. Write “Half-frame 18x24 mm, please scan individually, not in pairs” on the bag or in the order form, and ask briefly the first time before you send off three films at once. A test film at a new lab is cheaper than 72 images that come back as 36 double frames.

Excerpt from our lab map. Screenshot: Ausgeknipst, map data from OpenStreetMap contributors

We maintain an overview of all active film labs in the German-speaking region with mail-in and on-site filters: Getting film developed in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. What else you should look out for when choosing is covered in Finding the right photo lab.

How to digitize the small negatives cleanly

This is where the second trap lies. When a lab offers a “size L scan”, it usually means a fixed pixel count for a 35mm negative. Your half-frame image is half the size and gets correspondingly fewer pixels at the same scan level. Hence the advice from Spieker Film Lab to book half-frame as XL right away. Only then do just under 16 megapixels end up on the small frame.

With 72 frames per roll, photographing your negatives quickly becomes the most pragmatic route once you shoot regularly. The setup takes time once, and after that a roll is done in a few minutes. The catch is getting started, because camera, macro lens, light source and a flat film holder all have to work together.

A typical setup for photographing negatives. Photo: Ausgeknipst

How such a setup works in detail, which mistakes cost you sharpness and what the individual components need to deliver is covered in our guide Scanning film with a digital camera. If you'd rather have the lab scan your film, you can do so with a clear conscience. With half-frame, the scan level matters more than the method.

What accessories are available for the Ektar

Disclosure up front: we make accessories for the Ektar H35 ourselves and earn money from them. So first, here's what else is out there.

From the manufacturer itself. RETO offers an underwater housing rated to 5 meters for 17,99 USD that fits both models. The Premium Kit of the H35N for 89,99 USD also includes a cable release and two color filters, which only fit the H35N, though. A case and strap come with both cameras out of the box.

What's missing as standard. Both cameras come without a lens cap. On the H35N you can use the swung-in star filter as a stopgap, on the H35 there's nothing at all. Neither of the two has a filter thread either. So if you want to work with color, effect or UV filters, you need an adapter.

What we contribute. Our parts close exactly these two gaps, and they're made for the H35, not the H35N. The Lens Cap Pro also covers the viewfinder and shutter button, physically blocking the shutter release. The filter adapter takes standard 30,5 mm filters, the small, widely available standard size.

A standard 30,5 mm filter on the H35. Photo: Ausgeknipst

Our parts are designed for the H35, not the H35N. On the H35N, the star filter mechanism sits in front of the lens, so the front is built differently. We haven't tested the fit there and therefore make no claims. If you have an H35N and aren't sure, just drop us a quick question. That's cheaper than a return.

Lens cap Basic, protects the lens only (EUR 19,95) · Lens cap Pro, also covers the viewfinder and shutter button (EUR 23,95) · Filter adapter for 30,5 mm filters (EUR 25,95) · Value set, cap Pro and 3x filter adapter (EUR 49,95)

Whether you need this is up to you. If your shutter has never gone off on its own and you carry the camera in its included pouch anyway, you need neither the cap nor the adapter. The adapter is mainly worth it if you want to experiment with color filters or a diffuser. With a fixed aperture and a fixed shutter speed, the filter is the only creative lever you have left.

When another camera is the better choice

The Ektar line has a narrow range of use: bright light, short distances, no expectation of control. If you recognize yourself in one of the following statements, you should look elsewhere.

“I want half-frame, but with a proper camera.” The Pentax 17 is the only newly built half-frame camera with automatic exposure, zone focusing and a bright 25 mm f/3,5 lens. In Germany it costs from around 449 euros (Geizhals), which is six to eight times the price of the Ektar. In return, it takes pictures under overcast skies without a flash.

Photo: MIKI Yoshihito, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Video: “Film Wars: Pentax 17 vs Kodak Ektar H35N” by Amateur Photographer TV. A head-to-head comparison between the expensive and the cheap new half-frame design.

“I want half-frame, but cheap and made of metal.” The used market is full of half-frame cameras from the sixties. The Olympus Pen EE series is the best known, along with the Canon Demi, Ricoh Auto Half, Yashica Half 17 and the Russian Agat 18k. Many of them have automatic exposure and a faster lens than any Ektar. The price you pay is the usual risk of buying used: gummed-up shutters, dead selenium cells, crumbling light seals. A good overview comes from analog.cafe with “10 Half-Frame Film Cameras for Under $500”.

Olympus Pen EE-2, the classic among half-frame cameras. Photo: Banffy, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

What to look out for when buying used, so that your bargain doesn't turn into a repair job, is covered in Buying a used film camera: where to look, what to check, what to pay.

“I don't care about half-frame, I just want a small camera.” Then a used compact camera from the nineties is almost always the better choice. The Olympus AF-10, Minolta AF-E, Canon Sure Shot and dozens of similar models have autofocus, automatic exposure and apertures of around f/2,8 to f/3,5. That means they let in three to four stops more light than an Ektar. For 40 to 80 euros you get a much more flexible device, though without a warranty.

“I want something new with more ambition.” Besides the Snapic A1 from the same maker, the Lomo MC-A is the second serious newcomer of recent years, with autofocus, manual control and a metal body, but also at a very different price. Our assessment is in the Lomo MC-A tech check.

Yashica Half 17, built around 1965. Photo: Thomas Backa, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons

Conclusion

The Ektar H35 and H35N are not good cameras in the technical sense, and they don't pretend to be. They are cheap, light, robust enough for a backpack and, in sunshine, deliver pictures that look the way many people imagine film photography. The 72 shots per roll lower the threshold for pressing the shutter at all. For a camera you take everywhere, that is worth more than better optics.

If you buy one, plan for three things: an ISO 400 film, using the flash more often than you expect, and a lab that can handle half-frame. If you want sharp, controlled pictures under overcast skies without a flash, you are better off putting the money into a used compact camera or the Pentax 17.

The continuously maintained collection on the topic of half-frame can be found at the Half Frame Club, including a dedicated review of the H35. You can find our accessories for the H35 in the shop, and the other buying guides and tutorials in the blog overview. If you own an H35 or H35N and have discovered something that is missing here, write to us. These guides thrive on people correcting what we have overlooked.

Sources

• Official manufacturer information: Ektar H35 and Ektar H35N at RETO Production Ltd.
• License notice from Kodak regarding the H35N
• Casual Photophile: Kodak Ektar H35 Review
• My Favourite Lens: Kodak Ektar H35N Review
• Shoot It With Film: Kodak Ektar H35N Review
• PetaPixel: Kodak Ektar H35 Review
• ExpertPhotography: Kodak Ektar H35 Review
• Gregory Gross: Kodak Ektar H35 Hands-on Review
• 35mmc: Announcement of the Ektar H35N
• Camera-wiki: Ektar H35N
• APHOG forum: Half-frame developing via the drugstore
• analog.cafe: 10 Half-Frame Film Cameras for Under $500

Yours, Vladi