I have to admit it was a particularly stubborn streak in me that lead to buying and using this meter. I’d been reading lots of material by my idol Ansel Adams, and was going through a phase where I equated results with equipment – hence a Weston Meter that wasn’t even calibrated in ASA/ISO!
One of the first integrated Auto Focus 35mm SLRs offered – possibly the first. There had been other attempts where the A/F system was fully enclosed within the lens, but in this heavily modified version of the ME-Super, electronics within the camera body used contrast detect sensors to determine correct focus.
The QL17, QL19 and QL25 are all essentially the same, differentiated only by their f/1.7, f/1.9 and f/2.5 45mm lenses. This was very much the mainstream of cameras in the ’60s.
The AE-1 marked the introduction of micro-processor electronics to photography. For the first time microprocessors calculated exposure and timed the shutter, which in this case was still a fairly traditional horizontal cloth design.
The Canon A-1 was the first camera to offer micro-processor controlled, programmed auto-exposure, where both aperture and shutter were determined by the camera.
