Cosina AF 35: The "Autofocus Experience"

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One month ago I was surfing on the internet looking for new cameras and searching information about camera history, and my eyes were caught by a really nice camera: the Cosina AF-35 “Visitronic”. The brand Cosina made me immediately think to the history of LCA (as the Cosina CX2 inspirated the conception of the legendary Lomo Compact Automat…) and attracted me of course. But I was also very interested in the “autofocus” system from a late 70’s (apparently 1977-78) camera called “Visitronic”.

The autofocus system named “Honeywell” or “Visitronic” was first introduced on compact cameras by Konica in 1977 on the C35-AF camera (for more infos about this have a look at http://www.collection-appareils.fr/konica/html/konica_C35_AF.php) and then used by Cosina.

Well, I decided to buy this Cosina and was really curious to see the results of this Visitronic system. The results were a good surprise as almost all my shost were really sharp and with great colors and contrast, The 38mm Cosinon lens made a great job coupled to this visitronic system!

The camera is a viewfinder (with the particularity of the “pop up” viewfinder, you just need to push a little button and the hidden viewfinder comes out!) with an electronic flash and lightmeter (going from 100 to 400 asa). To use the camer is very very easy: you just need to select your film speed and…. that’s it! Of course, if you don’t want the AF system to be used, you can turn to the manual mode by selecting 4 little icons (who look really close to the classic LCA viewfinder icons) from 1m to infinity or even the B pose. The exposure/aperture settings are set automatically, and they’re a bit unusual, because it goes from f:2.7 at 1/64s to f:19 at 1/360s, but it’s a wide range of combinations to have a lot of your shots well exposed!

I’m really happy that I found this little gem, and I think this Cosina will take a good place in my important camera collection! :))

written by vicuna on 2008-10-27 #gear #review #cosina

5 Comments

  1. poitr
    poitr ·

    What a great camera and GREAT SHOTS!

  2. superlighter
    superlighter ·

    oh no! one other camera to add to my collection! great images!

  3. butter
    butter ·

    WOW! I have one of these that I found in an antique store and it totally works but I've never run any film through it. These shots are great! Will have to try mine out...

  4. vicuna
    vicuna ·

    Thanks!! Really a good camera, really happy to have bought it!! :))))

  5. dogma
    dogma ·

    Oh this one reminds me elikon electro

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