Summer 1933 as for a Leica ‘autofocal’ camera
Toronto. In the 1930s, the minicam rage was taking off, so how could you differentiate one camera from another? Leitz chose to call its camera an AUTOFOCAL camera in advertisements in various early 1930s magazines.
An example is this small ad from the June 1933 issue of American Cinematographer found on page 67 in the amateur section (check out the jaw dropping list price for a Leica Standard or a Model D with an Elmar 5cm lens …).
The term ‘AUTOFOCAL’ was used to mean that focussing any interchangeable lens would automatically adjust the rangefinder setting to match the two images. At the time, many cameras allowed the rangefinder to be adjusted to bring a subject into focus and then distance was read off and the lens adjusted to that distance – added steps since lens and rangefinder were uncoupled.
Today, the era of auto everything digital cameras and smartphones leave one wondering at what all the fuss was about. Autofocal, indeed.
Thank you to good friend and fellow PHSC member for sharing this piece of photographic history with us. It reminded me that I saw a similar ad years earlier in an old National Geographic magazine. That ad too called the Leica an ‘AUTOFOCAL’ camera.
