Konica Lexio 70
The Konica Lexio 70 was introduced in 2000 and thankfully wasn’t the hope for the new millennium because despite having good specifications on paper it’s let down by a lens that creates images unsafe for viewing. Perhaps not quite that bad but I would include this camera in the Lo-Fi category along with plastic lens cameras just because of the distortion and ugly bokeh
A weird thing about the Konica Lexio 70 is that when it focuses the viewfinder framing changes with the lens focus movement, I can’t tell if the image is captured with the new framing after this change of view. Also a design fault with this camera is the lens cover on/off switch. It performs it’s on off function at the most inopportune time with the slightest movement of the lens cover.
You can see in the following image that the bokeh is horrible, as this is the only Lexio 70 I have to test I don’t want to make any presumptions but I will, I doubt it gets much better. It also has some weird pincushion distortion at the wide end that isn’t even across the frame. I found another persons set on Flickr had the same distortion so I believe it’s a characteristic of the camera. This appears most obviously with straight lines that become stretched upwards towards the edges. This may be caused by the aspherical elements in the lens and is much more dramatic than with a simpler lens design.
What I do like about it is that although it resets to full auto after powering off and on it does remember the last setting you had selected so that when you press the mode button it jumps to that one, which can be any of the eight over rides it provides.
As it affords a 28mm focal length at the wide end, which is somewhat rare in a point and shoot, it’s worth picking one out of the thrift store pile for a couple dollars. That is as long as you know the limitations.
