Canon Sure Shot AF35ML

So here's another Sure Shot from the collection, but a more basic and more sought after one due to it's bright f/1.9 aperture lens.

This is a Canon Sure Shot AF35ML with a fairly nice--and fairly uncommon for this level of camera--40mm f/1.9 lens.  This was the second Sure Shot from Canon so that places it at about 1981 and the same vintage as cameras like the New F-1 and the T-series FD cameras.

I suppose this camera might be thought of as the spiritual sucessor to the Canonet line and something like the QL17 G-III...well, probably it'd be more correct to say something like the QL19, but whatever.

It's autofocus of course, and there's not really any settings that you can control other than the ASA, which only goes up to 400 on the earlier models, however, some later Taiwanese built models went up to 1000.   It's worth mentioning that the ASA 1000 models lack an 800 setting, and since the low-light autofocus isn't improved on these later models, I really question the usefulness of the higher speed setting. 

In the viewfinder you'll find reasonably bright frame lines in addition to little pictograms that light up to sort of let you know the approximate distance that the camera's focused on, and so far I've found it to be pretty accurate (maybe two shots per roll are misfocused, but some of that's surely operator error).

Exposure is generally good, focus is fairly fast, you can even shoot continuously at about 1 frame per second.  It has AF/AE lock as long as you hold the shutter button halfway, so you really do have pretty good control over the final result as long as you take a second to think about what you're doing.

Some comments on the internet say that this is a loud camera, and I'd somewhat have to disagree.  It's not really that much louder than most cameras with a motordrive of the era, and most SLRs aren't much quieter given the sound of the mirror slap.  I suppose if you're used to the near-silent clicking noises of most current digi-pocket cams it is a little loud, but if there's any other ambient noise it's not really that bad.  That said, there is one annoyance that I've found when shooting in low-light without the flash being popped up and that's the warning buzzer telling you that you should use the flash.

The lens is fairly sharp for a point and shoot's lens, but certainly consumerish in its rendering of out of focus areas.  It doesn't seem to flare too badly and does appear to be well coated.  There are filter threads (43mm if I remember right), and the metering cell is located within the lens barrel, so if you wanted to use filters, or maybe a polarizer the camera would automatically compensate exposure.

Here's an (not very good) example showing the out of focus areas:

Anyway, I like the ML a lot.  I think I'd easily say I like to use it more than my Canonet if for no other reason than I like that it uses AA batteries and not those expensive and awkward to use Wien Cells.  Having a built in flash is actually pretty nice as well.

And more 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.