Sears 35rf

I figure I've talked about the high end so I suppose I should talk about the low end as well.

This is the Sears 35rf, possibly from the late-70s or early-80s, but I'm not really too certain about that.  It's a store-brand clone of the Ricoh 35rf which I understand is a simplified version of the more nicely constructed Ricoh 500G, but the lenses used in all three cameras are the same.

With a 40mm f/2.8 lens this is no Canonet QL17, but I found this camera at a thrift store for $4 which included the working Sears brand flash.  Made mostly from stamped steel and plastic, this little camera certainly feels...um...inexpensive, but operationally, there's not much to complain about and it 's much lighter than a QL17.  Unlike the Canonet the light meter still functions when you're shooting manually, but there is also a shutter priority mode in which the camera indicates via match-needle the aperture being selected.  Fortunately the camera uses a standard 1.5V alkaline battery which is easy to come by.

The rangefinder patch is on the dim side, unsurprising given the inexpensive nature of the camera, but it's at least reasonably accurate when you can see it.  The focus throw on the lens is fairly short so there's not much use for terribly accurate focusing anyway, and with a maximum f/2.8 aperture you're not going to be getting super shallow depth of field to begin with.  The brightlines are also kind of difficult to see in dim lighting, but they're not really that accurate anyway so you're not loosing out on much.  The lens isn't bad, at least up to compact standards, but it's nothing all that special either.  The ASA rating only goes up to 800, so if you were wanting to push some HP5 to 1600 or shoot some TMZ3200 to compensate for the slowish aperture you'll have to deduct a stop or two from the indicated value.

All of this sounds like I'm pretty negative on the camera, but I'm really not.  No, the rangefinder experience is not up to Leica standards--does anyone honestly expect that from these pocket rangefinders--but it's perfectly usable and probably preferable to your basic AF 1980s compact cameras.  In fact, what so impressed me about this camera, was that in something smaller than a Walkman (the sort that plays cassettes rather than MP3s), and probably cheaper too, you had a camera that gave you all the manual control that you could expect from a much larger and more expensive SLR type camera.  Yeah it was cheaply made, but it was a cheap camera.

Anyway, for awhile when I was in college this was my go to travel camera and it rode along everyday in my bag, and made a couple trips to Chicago and St. Louis with me.  I was never unhappy with it, but ultimately I replaced it with an Olympus Stylus Epic mostly for the built-in flash.

Examples:

Canon Sure Shot Zoom XL

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.