Konica Autoreflex T3

The Autoreflex T3 does most of what a Nikkormat or a Spotmatic does, the brass and steel are every bit as good, and it sells today for a good deal less because the Konica name carried less prestige than the bodies it competed against. People who shoot one tend to hang onto it.

The body is mechanical, which is the part that matters fifty years on. The Copal Square S metal shutter fires from one second up to 1/1000 without a battery, and the only thing the two CdS cells need power for is the meter. The wind lever feels smooth and short, a refinement over the earlier T and T2. The shutter release has a stub of a stroke that breaks clean. The finder is the strong part: selected aperture runs along one edge, shutter speed sits at the bottom, and a match needle reads the meter, so you can work the whole exposure without taking your eye off the scene. That was not common in 1973.

What sets it apart from the Pentax and Minolta crowd is that the T3 is shutter-priority. You pick the speed, the meter picks the aperture, and the lens cooperates because the AR mount carries an EE setting that hands control back to the body. The center-weighted reading is honest in flat light and middling in backlight, like every averaging meter of the era. The glass is the reason to put up with an orphaned mount. The 57mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.7 Hexanons are well regarded, sharp standard lenses, and they tend to sell for less than comparable Nikkor or Takumar primes, helped by the AR mount being long discontinued.

The honest weakness is the battery. The meter was built for 1.35 volt mercury cells that have been banned for decades, and a modern 1.5 volt alkaline or silver-oxide drop-in shifts the readings off as it discharges. You can shim a hearing-aid zinc-air cell, send the body out for a meter recalibration, or just stop relying on the needle. Light seals are the other tax. Most T3s on the used market need a five dollar foam refoam, which is an evening with tweezers, not a repair bill.

Once the mercury-cell problem creeps in, an incident or spot reading from the Zone Light Meter app does the job the aging meter no longer can. Set your shutter speed, read the scene, dial the aperture by hand, and the T3 works as a clean fully mechanical SLR with a finder that still shows you what you set. It is one of the more underrated mechanical SLRs of its generation, and a cheap way into a body that punches above its used price.