Canon Sure Shot 35mm point and shoot film camera with 38 mm f/2.8 Lens

Product Information

The Sureshot Multi Tele is a very simple camera with only 7 buttons and a latch to play with. You can’t change the ISO, you can’t change the shutter speed or aperture, you can’t even turn off the flash (but electrical tape comes in handy). However, there are a couple interesting things you do have control over on this. Okay, enough of that. There’s plenty of cameras I’d rather have. Hell, there’s plenty of other cameras I do have that are far superior, but there’s none I care so little about. That’s unique. No other camera of mine holds that distinction. There’s not a camera I’d rather be carrying if I drank a bottle of Jameson and fell into a swimming pool (purely hypothetical). I’d be delighted I had my Canon Sure Shot Max and not one of those high end compacts. Kodak 400 TX Kodak 400TX Viewfinder – 0.42x magnification Albada-type finder with frame-lines, parallax correction frame-lines, and AF indicator Slotted take-up spool. Advances automatically with built-in motor when the shutter button is pressed.

So why is it then that the Canon Sure Shot Supreme isn’t commanding mega money? It has that sharp 35mm wide aperture lens. It’s quite nice to use. It’s tough. I haven’t heard any reliability horror stories. Well, I don’t really know. Maybe I’ve just discovered something the rest of the world hasn’t latched on to yet. Or maybe it’s that there are hundreds of the things out there flooding the market. To be honest, I don’t really care. I spent very little money on it. If I drop it and kill it it’s not the end of the world. If I’m ahead of the curve the value will only go up. Either way, I have a simple to use and reliable performer I really quite like that should serve me well while riding on the continent. That, I think is a win / win situation.In general, I found the Zoom XL’s focus to be fast and reliable insofar as I could easily tell if the camera thought it had focused or not, and its success rate was pretty high at just over 90% so about 3 or 4 shots on a roll of 36 were out of focus (and this includes focus missed due to possible camera shake or subject movement post-focus, but also includes some where the camera definitely messed up big time). This is not as high as an SLR but is nevertheless a very respectable performance for a point and shoot. I think the success rate is due to the spot AF being calculate from quite a narrow central region, which makes focus and recomposing very straightforward. The names seem interchangeable and can be confusing, but they’re really immaterial. Underneath, the cameras are all the same. If you see this and don’t want the flash, you can release the shutter button, press the handily-placed no flash button on the front to turn it off, and focus again.

After doing a lot of reading and listening to photography podcasts I knew that the prices for compacts had gone mad recently. In fact I’m way late to the party. Any chance of getting a cheap Yashica T4, Olympus Mju ii or Contax T2 are long gone. But, I thought there must be something out there still that had a nice fixed focal length, a wide f2.8 max aperture wrapped in a tough plastic shell. After all, these seem to be the characteristics people are looking for in a compact of a certain vintage. The camera’s handy mode dial features a Flash Off mode, Flash On mode, Red Eye Reduction Automatic mode, and Underwater Macro Zone Focus mode. These modes all operate as would be expected by veteran Camera-likers™. Newcomers should remember the following Pro-tips™:The second part to the history of the Sure Shot A1 is the Canon Sure Shot range of cameras. By the late 1970s, compact cameras had well established themselves. In 1979 Canon released the original Sure Shot, also known as the AF35M and Autoboy.From this original model, the subsequent models were updated and in some cases had their own sub range. Some included fixed lenses, some zooms, some were high end models, some very basic lower end and some with date and panoramic features. When shooting underwater, things are a little more complicated. To start, the Auto mode should not be used, because the Red Eye Reduction feature will lead to longer exposures than is necessary. When shooting under the waves use Flash On mode in pools and when the water is relatively clear, or Macro mode when subjects are within the appropriate distance. If there’s excessive particulate in the water, your photos will likely turn out terrible in any mode, but the manual suggests using Flash Off. The A1 is also known by quite a few other names around the world, including Sure Shot WP-1, Autoboy D5 and Prima AS-1. It is not quite clear why Canon took this approach, as most of the models are identical with some optional differences. Not all claim to also be waterproof to 5m, but this may also be due to classifications of the word waterproof in different countries, which may have contributed to the name differences. In 1997, Canon released the next version of the Owl. The name stayed the same, which didn’t help alleviate that confusion, although these models can be identified by the control dial added to the front. In Europe, the model was helpfully named the Prima AF-8. Furthermore, it doesn’t have a very good lens either. With an f/4.5 maximum aperture, it’s slow for a start, but it’s also quite soft. I knew this from a bit of low level research I did about it before I started shooting it. I found this short review which talks of a soft lens – this didn’t put me off though, in fact, it just added weight to my ability to forget about trying to achieve “high quality” results, and instead gave me the impetus to just snap.

The lens is a fixed 32mm f/3.5 (6 elements in 6 groups) with 3-point AiAF system auto focus, though it becomes fixed focus when the underwater setting is enabled. The focusing range is from 45cm (1.5 ft) to infinity, but adjusted to 45cm to 1m (1.5 to 3.3 ft) in underwater/macro mode. It has a programmed shutter which ranges from 1/250 thsecond to 2 seconds. Colour photography of the submerged world made its debut in 1923, when botanist W.H. Longley worked with photographer Charles Martin who generally took pictures on non-moving subjects. He had a picture featured in the July 1927 issue of National Geographic of a hogfish. It has a 38mm lens with an aperture of f/2.8 which is fast for a point and shoot camera. This means you can get great bokeh in your photographs, and take sharp images. That’s how the Sure Shot AF-7 viewfinder works, the same way as on countless other basic film cameras.SPC for full-auto program EE. Metering range of EV 6 – 17 (at ISO 100). Film speed range of ISO 50 – 1600 (with DX code). There’s a 3-step autofocus system – hence the AF in the name – and a minimum shooting distance of 2.6 feet, or 0.8 metres. Secondly, and this is my biggest issue with the Canon Sure Shot Supreme. The shutter button is very numb. To focus on a subject requires the button to be half pressed and this isn’t too bad. but to then fully press the button to take the shot takes a lot of pressure and sometimes you miss the shot because of it. It’s a real shame. It just has no feel to it.

At 70mm sharpness is still pretty good, but clearly not as sharp as it was at 50mm, and the SLR lens is noticeably sharper than the Xoom XL It’s hard to see at this small size but the SLR lens begins to get the upper hand again at 70mm

History

The Canon Sure Shot Owl / Prima / AF-7 has a 35mm lens with a maximum aperture of f4.5, and a minimum of f11. As you may expect from a point and shoot camera of its time, it’s a triplet lens, meaning it has just the three glass elements.