Produced from 1996 until ~2005 when the Contax brand was officially shuttered, the Contax AX has a unique trick up its sleeve: it turns any manual focus lens that can be attached or adapted to its Contax/Yashica (C/Y) mount into an autofocus lens. The CONTAX AX is probably the most unnecessarily innovative film camera of the 1990s and traces its chequered lineage back to the early a prototype camera shown at 1980’s Photokina. The 1990s most obscure film camera: CONTAX AX The Contax AX
In short, welcome to my love letter to 1990s film cameras. It’s not a countdown in the traditional sense and quite a bit more than the “listicle” the headline above might lead you to believe you were about to read. What follows is my take on the 10 “best” film cameras released during the 1990s. What intrigues me the most is how that simple-ish challenge of running a strip of film through a camera has been addressed in so many different ways. On a smaller scale, film cameras through the ages provide us with insights into how the minds of designers and artists clustered in different parts of the world interpreted solutions to the challenges of universal interface and ergonomics – it’s fascinating. These cameras are mirrors to the fashions, cultures, thinking and attitudes prevalent at the time of their creation, from the Art Deco Rolleicords of the 1930s to the utilitarian simplicity of 1970s Canon and Nikon SLRs all the way to the insanity that produced 1996’s Polaroid PDC-2000/40 you see above. The look, the feel in the hand and the variations and interpretations of solving common problems, what’s not to love? There’s beauty almost everywhere but let’s just say that I’m glad Polaroid’s particular vision of future technology below didn’t become reality.įilm cameras provide us with a living history which we can use to trace the development of design, aesthetics, technology, engineering and manufacturing capability across more than 150 years. It’s no secret to regular readers that I’m a fan of most vintage film cameras – and more than a few which don’t yet deserve that term. The list follows below but please allow me a bit of a preamble…
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