 The Groundbreaking FS-1. Available in your choice of black. Konica (Konishiroku)...the original Japanese photographic company, and the first of only two full-line manufacturers (meaning both equipment and consumables such as film, paper, and chemicals), with Fujifilm being the second. Often overlooked among the Japanese 35mm SLR manufacturers due to its small slice of market share, and running a distant third to Kodak and Fujifilm when it came to consumables sales during the last four decades of the film era, Konica nevertheless was very influential in both sectors well into the 1980s. They also played a large role in the enforcement of the JCII standards for all Japanese optical equipment sold for export from the mid-1950s - '90s, supplying the optical testing lenses used in the assessment process for all of the other manufacturers (many of which, ironically, went on to have more notoriety in the photographic community than Konica's own underrated Auto Reflex or AR Hexanon lens lineup). Konica had a reputation for innovation: they were part of the Japanese consortiums that developed the first metal-blade, vertical-travel focal plane shutters and improved rare-earth optical glasses in the early-'60s; then they introduced the first Japanese autoexposure SLR (the shutter-priority Auto-Reflex) in 1965, and subsequently added through-the-lens (TTL) metering to that in 1968 (the Autoreflex T). Fast forward to 1979, and the FS-1 would prove to be the progenitor of the final generation of Konica's AR-mount 35mm SLRs, while introducing more industry-firsts. But the seeds of Konica's SLR demise would unwittingly be sown simultaneously...
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 Nikon's Dynamic Duo - The Original Tele Touch (L35TWAF) & Tele Touch Deluxe (TW2) The 1980s were the heyday of the quality, yet relatively affordable, automatic auto focus (AF) 35mm camera. Competition was intense between manufacturers, and they were constantly trying to leapfrog one another in features and capability. Every year saw some kind of improvement until about 1988 or so, when the inevitable "race to the bottom" really started to heat up. Within this era, the years from 1983 to 1987 were arguably the high-water mark for quality and innovation, and some ingenious engineering. In this article, we are going to key in on a quirky category of cameras that served as a bridge between the original, fixed-focal-length AF point & shoots and the first P&S zooms: the temporary titans of P&S technology..the twin-lens (or bifocal) AFs. |
C.J. OdenbachSuffers from a quarter-century and counting film and manual focus SLR addiction. Has recently expanded into 1980's AF point and shoots, and (gack!) '90s SLRs. He even mixes in some digital. Definitely a sick man. Categories
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