Fuji Fujica ST701

Stand in a doorway at dusk with a bare bulb behind your subject, the sort of backlight that sends an averaging needle into a panic, and the ST701 settles down fast. Fuji put silicon photocells in this body in 1970, two of them flanking the eyepiece on an FET circuit, while most makers were still wedded to CdS. Silicon does not lag in the dark or sulk after you swing across a hot light source the way a cadmium cell does. You center the needle, you shoot, and when you pan off the bright spot the reading recovers right away. For 1970 that responsiveness was genuinely ahead of the field. Fuji has a fair claim to being first to drop CdS for it.

It is an M42 screw-mount SLR, which is the most cross-compatible mount of its decade. Takumars, Super-Takumars, Yashinon, Mamiya-Sekor, any 42mm threaded lens you can find spins right on. The kit glass was single-coated Fujinon, usually the 55mm f/1.8 or the faster f/1.4. Later EBC-coated M42 Fujinons, the multicoating Fuji became known for with the ST801, thread on just as well, but EBC was not an ST701 feature out of the box. The screw-mount tradeoff is the usual one. You wind the lens in through several turns, so fast swaps are off the table, and the meter is stop-down only. Flip the switch, the aperture closes to working value, the finder dims, the needle settles. People raised on bayonet bodies find that ritual tedious.

The build is dense and all metal, no plastic skin, heavier in the hand than its size suggests. The shutter is a cloth focal-plane unit running from a full second to about 1/1000, with flash sync at 1/60. The release has a short clean throw, and the mirror returns briskly without the wallop of a bigger SLR. The finder is decent and centered on a microprism collar for focus, though it runs small by later standards, and the stop-down dimming makes critical focus in a dark room a squint. Loading is the plain hinged back. Nothing clever, nothing to break.

Who carries one now. Students, first-roll shooters, and people who want into the Takumar lens world on a budget. The ST701 reads as the smart cheap pick. It does roughly what a Spotmatic does, with a faster meter cell, for less money, because the Fuji name carries less weight on the used shelf. That underdog status is most of its reputation.

The honest weakness is the meter battery. It runs on two 1.35-volt mercury cells (RM-400R, E400), and the world banned those. The body has no voltage-regulation circuit, since it was built around the steady 1.35 volts mercury gave, so a modern 1.5-volt alkaline reads high and drifts as the cell drains. Adapters and zinc-air cells get you closer, but it stays a known headache. When the needle is not trustworthy, a reading from the Zone Light Meter app places the shadows where you want them on a backlit or high-contrast scene, and you transfer it to the dials by hand. Everything else here ages well. Serviced shutter speeds hold, the body shrugs off knocks, and the silicon eye, fed the right voltage, still nails a backlit frame.