Konica C35 AF

A Simple Autofocus Point & Press From The Age of Warhol

There is something magnificently optimistic about taking a Konica C35 AF to a summer fete, and by magnificently optimistic I mean roughly on par with bringing a spork to a knife fight. This was, after all, the world’s first autofocus camera when it wheezed into existence in 1977, a fact the Konica seems desperate for you to remember, because it approaches every single subject with the solemn deliberation of a man being asked to identify a wine. You point it at a child eating candy floss and there is a pause — a genuine, contemplative pause, during which entire civilisations could rise and fall — before it emits a small mechanical grunt of commitment and focuses, with tremendous confidence, on a bin nine feet behind the child. I spent a good portion of the Soho fete crouched near the tombola, murmuring encouragement to a plastic box the size of a sandwich, and I regret none of it.

And yet — and this is the maddening thing — when it works, it works with a warmth that no phone has ever managed to counterfeit. The Hexanon lens renders the whole sweaty carnival of it, the bunting sagging between lampposts, the man selling suspiciously homemade fudge, the small dog wearing a hat against its clear wishes, in colours that feel less photographed than remembered, as though the film had been dipped in someone’s fond and slightly unreliable recollection of the afternoon. You won’t know for a fortnight whether you captured anything at all, which is either a delicious throwback to a more patient age or a form of mild psychological torture, depending on how the fudge sat with you. I choose to call it romance. The Konica, grinding contentedly in my pocket, appears to agree.