BLAST FROM THE PAST
John Wade discovers weird automation from 45 years ago
LAUNCHED 1978
PRICE AT LAUNCH approximately £60 (camera and lens only)
GUIDE PRICE NOW £40-50 (with AEC)
Cosina was never up there with the likes of Canon, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus and Pentax. But the company sold a lot of 35mm single lens reflexes (SLRs) under other names. Some, though by no means all, of the cameras sold as Petri, Vivitar, Ricoh, Miranda, Exakta, Olympus, Voigtländer, and more besides, were actually restyled and rebadged Cosinas.
And of course the company made SLRs under its own name too – around 40 with both M42 screw and K bayonet lens mounts.
Launched when most SLR manufacturers were switching from screw to bayonet mounts, the Cosina CSM hung on to the old M42 screw, which today means it is compatible with a huge range of inexpensive lenses from numerous makers. First pressure on the shutter release stops down the lens and activates the meter, with LEDs in the viewfinder to signal correct exposure plus over- and under- exposure. The electronic focal plane shutter runs 4-1/1,000sec with a manual speed at 1/60sec. Everything is powered by two 1.5 volt LR44 or equivalent button cells.
So far, so conventional. But now meet the camera’s AEC adapter. The acronym stands for Automatic Exposure Contro
