Chip off the Old Bark

[tbutler]

I think the way this pic was taken is almost more interesting than the pic itself. :)

These days, autofocus is just a part of the way cameras work, and everyone assumes it's there. But it's actually a (relatively) recent invention; the first autofocus cameras didn't come around until the end of the 1970s, and they were essentially point-and-shoot cameras.

The first 'true' autofocus interchangeable-lens SLR camera was released by Pentax in 1981, the Pentax ME F:



Unfortunately, it didn't work all that well. The autofocus motor was built into the lens, and you had to power the lens with AAA batteries; it was heavy and bulky. To make matters worse, the autofocus depended on sensors built into the camera body, and performance was poor. The camera and lens quietly slipped into obscurity.

But while the autofocus part doesn't work on any modern camera, the lens itself uses a standard Pentax camera mount and can be used in manual mode. When I was just getting serious about interchangeable-lens cameras, the camera repair guy I'd started working with had a copy of this lens, and I was curious enough about the history to pick it up. It was still bulky, heavy, and inconvenient to use, so I hardly used it, but I loved owning a piece of camera history.

I took it out of storage recently after a discussion on Digital Photography Review, to see if I could do any better with it after a fair amount of added experience on my part. The image quality is surprisingly good - nothing wrong with the glass in this lens! Sadly, it still wasn't that fun to shoot with, so it's going back into storage. I'm still glad to be reminded of it. :)