Canon Sureshot A1 Underwater
written by fash_on
on March 10th, 2009
, 8 comments
(6 votes)
image from here
Not sure how or why I came across this on eBay, I think I was looking for underwater cameras or universal underwater bags suggested by someone here. Anyway I got this for about $30 plus $20 shipping; I’m told they were about $300 when new, I was attracted to it’s good looks, it looks well designed and interesting. It takes pretty good pics with a slight blur on the edges, and has Auto Focus (smart) and Auto Exposure. Film speeds can be 25 to 3200 iso DX coded (yes! 3200, hard to believe but true).
The On/Off dial is probably the best feature, it rotates thru Off, ON with auto red eye flash, Flash ON, Flash OFF and Macro (always flash on), so it’s very simple to choose how you want to shoot. With flash OFF, the shutter speed can go down to 2secs at F3.5, great for low light/night shots, especially with the self timer. The Macro setting has to be held down while you fire the shutter, so it’s not really practical to work this with the timer which would be better (less camera shake) but probably was more designed with underwater uses in mind. The metering range is 1/250 at F22, to 2secs F3.5, but remember these are all selected automatically by the camera Auto Exposure. There’s a film window so you can remember what film is inside (if you have GAS you know this problem ;) Underwater range to 5m/16ft, and it floats in water. The Viewfinder has parallax guides for macro and panorama guide too, also Auto Focus guide in the center (only) and focus-lock is possible for re-composing.
There seem to be a few different versions of this cam, mine has 2 extra later features, Date Back and Panorama. The Panorama just cuts off the negative top and bottom (see icicles pic) so both of these features are kinda redundant. The manual was printed in 1993. I’ve seen a WP1 (waterproof1) also that looks identical?
A word of warning perhaps? I was so into the dial and twisting it back and forth (trying to see if the lens moved for macro focus – it does!) I did break that dial, but I did get it fixed for $50 at a local camera repair service, well worth it – this cam is really great!
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