FILM STARS Autofocus – who needs it?

In the pre-autofocus era of the late 1970s and early 1980s manual-focus single lens reflexes (SLRs) reached their peak. It was a time when electronic shutter wizardry, sophisticated metering and attractive yet functional design came together with top-quality lenses to produce a series of world-beating cameras. Once you get used to twisting a focusing ring while watching a rangefinder, many of these can still make worthwhile investments today. Let’s begin by taking a look at two cameras from each of the Big Five makers back then – Canon, Minolta, Olympus, Nikon and Pentax – with one aimed at the consumer end of the market, and the other at professionals.

Canon

Consumer: Canon T90 (1986)

The first cameras in Canon’s T-series were strangely designed, plasticky and, these days, forgettable. The last in the series,