True P&S ?
True P&S ?
If you want a true P&S then look at the Olympus XA1 which has no battery, no zone focusing and all you can do is use a coin to set 100ASA or 400ASA, open and close the front cover and push the shutter button. You even have to load and unload it manually!
As far as I know the lens is set at f/4 and is a D Zuiko, so four elements somehow, around the lens is a solar power cell for the exposure and I guess it's a needle trap set up. At a glance it looks like any of the XA range but the shutter button isn't flat and red but a sticking up bit of round black plastic. And a red blob appears in the view-finder if there's not enough light. Plus you can take the A9 flash off it and throw it away easily.
Only trouble is finding a brochure for mine.
The real trouble is that I can never resist looking in charity shops and wasting a few pennies or even as much a two or three pounds on their old compacts and compact zooms. So I've had almost everyone that ever existed and given most back for someone else to play with. My favourites have to be the Konica A4 and Z-up's, Kodak T550, any Olympus XA or µ range (especially the digital µ 300 and µ 400), the large Canon SureShots, the Minolta Vectis range.
But as I go into the list, it gets obvious that we are talking about cameras with auto-focus and soi-disant intelligent metering and AF etc. So where do we stop and what do we allow. If zone focussing then why not "P" or "A" modes? And where does that brilliant piece of pure basic camera the Smena/Cosmic Symbol fit? Does the back-light switch on the XA and XA3 disqualify it? Or the superb spot metering of the µ-I and µ-II?
It's all fun, fun, fun when trying to decide on what to classify a camera as...
Regards, David
PS and what about the Olympus 35ED which is a basic P&S (P mode) with a coupled range-finder?
