I have to admit, I've always had a fondness for quirky consumer grade cameras. After us kids were born my mother bought a Canon Sure Shot AF35M II to replace her aging Kodak Instamatic. That was my first experience with a 'nice' camera, and it kept working for a long time until my older brother borrowed it. This is not a review of that camera; this is a review of a much nicer and more unusual camera, the Canon Sure Shot Zoom XL.
Introduced in 1989 this was a fairly expensive premium grade point and shoot. It featured a 39-85mm f/3.6-7.3 S.C. coated lens composed of 9 elements in 8 groups that supposedly gave results as good as Canon's FD lenses. I'm not sure how many steps the zoom mechanism has but it's pretty seemless, giving you fairly good control over focal length (although, honestly how much accuracy do you need when your viewfinder only has 84% coverage). The viewfinder does, of course, zoom along with the lens as does the flash, which is neat.
It has a near infrared AF assist light that lets it focus comparatively quickly even in low light and on low contrast subjects. Unfortunately the lens isn't faster, but the flash does have a slow sync option so I'm sure you could do some nice things with it. The metering sensor is a three-zone variety and has a fairly wide working range.
It's possible to take pictures at 2 frames per second, but I assume the camera doesn't have any focus tracking ability to speak of; however, I suppose given enough light, depth of field would be deep enough that it wouldn't matter much.
The remote sitting in front of it in this picture actually stows away at the bottom of the camera. It of course allows you to get in the picture or to take pictures from a tripod without touching the camera. It also has an immediate release, a two second delay, and allows you to set three different focal lengths on the zoom.
In it's day, the Zoom XL cost about the same as what an EOS 700 body cost without a lens, or a little more than half what it would have cost for body and a similarly spec'd lens. It's not really a "compact" camera, but for someone not expecting to buy extra lenses and wanting a high grade camera that they didn't have to know a lot to use, the Sure Shot Zoom XL seems to have been a pretty good option.
Interestingly, I can't seem to find many of these here in the United States, aside from the one that some guy in West Slope is selling on Craigslist (thanks for the links, buddy). This one came from the United Kingdom, and I actually also won another one on eBay (labeled the Prima F, the typical European name for it) that came from Denmark with an old roll of film still in it.
After shooting a roll of AGFA Vista 400 through the camera I can certainly say that I'm impressed with the lens on this camera. It's not the sharpest zoom lens I've ever used, but it's certainly capable for being just a point and shoot. I'd say between this camera and the sought-after Sure Shot AF35ML you loose the f/1.9 aperture of the ML but not the optical quality; you do, however, gain a wealth of flexibility with the zoom and flash modes and even the included remote. It's also a bit quieter, but definitely somewhat bigger. Both have their pluses, but the Zoom XL is a pretty solid camera for what it is.
Here's a few pictures that I've shot with it, just for kicks.
Here's a few pictures that I've shot with it, just for kicks.
