Spotlight: Olympus Stylus

The Olympus Stylus (known as the Mju in Japan) is a fully automatic, full-frame 35mm point-n-shoot from 1991. This thing is seriously small - it can fit into the front pocket of my slim-fit shorts, with my wallet already in there! The Stylus has gotten ridiculously expensive within the last few years, so I was pretty pumped to find one at an estate sale for the small sum of $20. While most estate sales and flea markets have caught on to the popularity and value of film cameras, you can still usually find 35mm point-and-shoots for pretty cheap, as many people still believe them to be useless. Every once and a while you can snag something valuable for peanuts.  

The main reason why the Stylus is so sought after is because of its lens: a sharp 35mm f/3.5 prime. There are versions of the Stylus that feature zoom lenses, but the fixed focal length models such as this one are much more popular with film enthusiasts (and fetch a lot more $). 

Operation of the Stylus is fully automatic. There is no exposure compensation feature -- you can't even manually change the ISO to trick the camera into over or under-exposure (the light meter relies on DX coded film). You do, however, get a good selection of flash modes. By default, the camera is set to auto, where the camera will decide for you whether the scene needs flash or not. Auto-S mode eliminates red-eye in color photos by emitting a mini rave's worth of flashes before the main flash. Fill-In mode is used to fill in harsh shadows when photographing outdoors in bright light, or if your subject is back-lit. I used this mode the most while photographing my baseball team outside in harsh afternoon light. You can also just turn off the flash entirely. 

I was impressed with how fast the Stylus starts up once you slide open the lens cover. It's pretty much instantly ready to take a photo! The flash is also immediately ready to go when used with a full battery. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows -- because the lens moves in to focus after you fully depress the shutter button, there is a noticeable delay between when you click the release and when the shutter actually fires -- about 1/3 of a second. This is obviously not a problem when photographing still subjects, but capturing any kind of movement can be frustrating. Because of this slight delay, a lot of my baseball action photos were taken just a liiiiiittle bit too late. Focus seems to be pretty accurate for a 90's camera, and all of my exposures (with and without flash) came out looking nice. 

Overall, I enjoyed using the Olympus Stylus. Its teeny tiny size is its most impressive asset to me. I would routinely slip the camera into my pocket and forget it was even in there! Below are some photos I made with my Stylus. The film is long-expired expired Arista II 400. 

Spotlight: Canon AF35M

 

Last weekend I lucked out at the flea market and picked up this Canon AF35M for a measly five bucks! Needless to say, I was elated. 

Released all the way back in 1979, the AF35M is Canon's very first autofocusing camera. It uses an infrared system that works pretty well, even in low light. While not all of my photos came out sharp, the majority were acceptable, and for 1979, I consider that a win. 

I love early autofocus point-n-shoot cameras like this, because they usually had fast prime lenses, not like the plethora of 90's point-n-shoots with boring slow zooms. The 38mm f/2.8 lens on the AF35M is a great focal length for a fixed prime-- not too wide and not too tele. It's pretty dang sharp, too, if the focus is on point. 

Loading the camera is a little awkward. Auto-load wasn't a thing yet for electronic cameras, so you still have to stuff the film leader into a take-up reel. Film also isn't automatically advanced to the first frame when you close the camera, so you gotta manually fire off three shots or so (until the frame counter reads 1). Also, the ISO must be set manually via a dial on the front of the lens -- no DX compatibility here! The camera can handle film speeds between 25 and 400. 

Once the camera is loaded and your ISO is set, the camera is very simple to use. It's a point-n-shoot, so exposure is completely automatic, with no manual override. I suppose you could change the ISO on the front of the camera to intentionally over or under expose, but the ISO dial does not turn easily, so it'd be a pain. Exposures, both with ambient light and flash, turned out basically perfect in my experience, so I wouldn't worry about the lack of control. Like, seriously, this 40+ year old point and shoot exposes more accurately that my DSLR. 

Exposures are made by pressing the massive shutter release button on top of the camera. The shutter can fire between 1/8 and 1/500 of a second. If you half-press the shutter, a red light will come on in the finder if the camera thinks the scene is too dark for handheld operation. There is also a distance scale in the finder, but it's almost useless. When you fire the shutter, a little indicator shows you the distance the lens focused at. While this is cool, I wish it happened BEFORE the picture was taken, and not after.  So, you'll have a good idea if the camera missed focus, but only AFTER you wasted a frame of film. The Nikon L35AF later fixed this issue by showing you the focus indicator when the shutter button was pressed halfway, before exposure. The AF35M's scale is better than nothing at all, but still disappointing.  

The viewfinder with focus point, distance scale, and frame lines

The camera will try to focus on whatever the center icon in the viewfinder is pointed at. If you want to shoot an off-center subject, it's a little tricky. You have to flip down the self-timer switch, press the shutter button to pre-focus, recompose, then finally press the shutter button again. This process is cumbersome, and pretty much requires you to use a second hand. There is also no way to cancel the exposure or change the focus once the shutter is pressed for the first time. Oof. 

Once an exposure is made, the camera automatically winds the film to the next frame with a charming "UURRRR!" noise. This camera is by no means quiet! At least the camera does not wind until you take your finger off the shutter button, so you can control when the camera screams. At the end of the roll, you must rewind the film by pressing the sprocket release on the bottom of the camera while simultaneously holding down the rewind switch on the top of the camera. It's a true test of dexterity! During rewinding, you are treated to a different, but equally pleasing "WUHoooWUHoooWUH" sound. The frame counter counts backward during the rewind phase, which is fun to watch. 

The only other feature to talk about is the flash, which does its job well. It's activated with a little switch on the front of the camera, which causes it to pop up and into action! It takes about four seconds to charge up with a pair of fresh AA batteries. Like I said before, the flash exposures turned out perfect. No blown out faces, even at close distances. 

While Canon's AF35M certainly has a lot of eccentricities, I found most of its issues excusable given it's one of the first autofocus cameras... ever. These point-n-shoots were primarily designed for capturing family moments, so that's what I did with mine. I mostly shot pictures while hanging out with friends and family, as well as the process of moving my brother-in-law into his new apartment.