Lomography

The Canon AF 35 ML is a very easy-to-use camera dating back to 1981 and was a semi-pro compact.

image from webalice

The Canon AF 35 ML has a five element 40 mm 1.9 lens, which I’ve never seen before in such a camera (except for example the Yashica GSN, but that’s no comparison). It’s autofocus, has a built-in flash and auto-film advance. When you keep pressing the shutter, the camera keeps taking pictures, which you can use to make stop-motion movies or when photographing fast actions. The lens can also take 48mm filters. ISO goes from 25 till 400. It has a nice grip and runs on AA batteries which are readily available, nice!

As you can see, the results are quite nice. The autofocus sometimes has difficulties working, but most of the time it works ok, just check the icons (landscape, group or portrait) in the viewfinder that light up when the camera is focused. You can focus, press the button half, reframe and take the picture, which is a nice feature.

One big disadvantage is that the autofocus is loud. And I’m not talking about a little buzzing sound but about: bzzzzz, clack, bzzzz, clack (I don’t know what the second clack is for). And, to make things worse, when there’s too little light, the camera makes an annoying beeping noise, so everyone knows you’re taking a picture. Another thing that annoyed me is the button on the back which you can turn around to pick the battery control/on/off/selftimer modus. It moves around too easily and I encountered a lot of times that it just bumped to my sweater or in my bag and it switched to the battery control, which gives a fast beeping sound (irritating!).

Overall the Canon AF 35 ML is a good camera, with a nice lens and good autofocus. But the one thing that’ll probably make it end up in a closet somewhere is the noise it makes. Maybe I’ll give it another chance in summer when the low light beeping sound won’t be around.