Canon A35F
One of the reasons to like this camera is that while it has automatic exposure it is still manual rangefinder focusing. That appeals to me, in fact the first camera I bought for myself was the Minolta X700 a manual focus SLR at a time when autofocus cameras were everywhere. In some cases I don’t mind turning certain aspects of making pictures over to the camera when I know how its going to behave anyway, but letting the camera choose what is in focus seems to be giving up too much. Even today I mostly use spot focus with my DSLR and recompose.
Back to the Canon A35F which looks a lot like a Canonet or a QL17 with a built in flash. One downside of this automatic camera is that it will lock the shutter if the light level falls too low, I would rather have an underexposed image than no image at all. This happens at EV9 with 100 ISO film (1/60 @ f2.8) a place I often go photographically, so that does limit its usefulness. You can always turn on the flash I suppose and go for that 1980’s party flash look. Speaking of looks I like the all black of the camera, so many of the other rangefinders I have seen from this time have the silver black two tone look, making the A35F actually stands out. It looks better than the Canon AF35 that came out the next year as well. So it sits between these two designs
Bring on the pictures!
