Minolta Hi-Matic AF2

Screw a yellow filter onto a Minolta Hi-Matic AF2 and you don't have to touch anything else. The CdS cell sits in the lens front, behind the 46mm filter thread, so it reads through whatever glass you mount, and Minolta's manual says exposure compensates by itself. On a program-only camera that matters. Without it, a filter means guessing at a factor and fudging it through the film speed dial.

Minolta's own company history dates the Hi-Matic AF-2 to March 1981, and Casual Photophile notes it sold for $248 that year. That was real money for a camera that gives you no direct control over shutter speed or aperture. What you paid for was distance and exposure handled for you. The active infrared autofocus works from 1 m to infinity and holds focus on a half-press of the release, so you can lock on a face, swing it off-center, then finish the press. A metre is the limit, though. No close-ups of the cake.

The lens is a 38mm f/2.8 of four elements in three groups, and its 59 degree view suits people at a table and doorways on a street. As 35mmc points out, 46mm is not an especially common filter size. A cheap step-up ring to 49mm fixes that and lets you borrow filters from the Minolta SLR lenses you may already own. Put the step-up ring together with a meter that sees through filters and you have a compact where a small filter kit actually earns its place in the bag.

Exposure is a single program running from 1/8 at f/2.8 (EV 6) to 1/430 at f/17 (EV 17). Flash pictures are always made at 1/40, with the aperture coupled to the autofocus distance, so the camera works out the flash exposure from the focus reading without you doing any arithmetic. Don't expect fill flash at fast speeds in bright sun; it is 1/40 every time. The film speed dial covers ASA 25 to 400, and for ISO 1000 print film the manual tells you to set 400 and let the negative's latitude absorb the rest. Advance and rewind stay manual. Minolta later sold the AF2-M with motorized transport, but on this body your thumb works the lever and nothing whirs between frames.

Two AA cells power everything, and when they sag the shutter locks instead of making a bad exposure. Spares come from any supermarket. The real weakness is the bottom of the program. Below 1/8 at f/2.8 the camera has nowhere to go, so a dim restaurant or a street after dusk usually means reaching for the flash. Before you spend a frame at night, a reading from the Zone Light Meter app tells you whether the scene still sits inside that EV 6 to EV 17 window, or whether it's time for the flash or a faster roll.

It still turns up often on the used market. The argument for this one over any other early autofocus compact lives mostly at the front of the lens, in that filter thread and the meter cell tucked behind it. For someone walking around in daylight with black and white film and a yellow or orange filter, that is worth more than a motor drive. Anyone who works close, or mostly after dark, will run into its limits within a roll.