You could squeeze 72 shots from a 36-exposure roll or any number in between with this weird twin-format SLR, but one false move with the lever and your photos were ruined!

The honor of being the first SLRs with automatic exposure control was shared by two little-known and short-lived French-made cameras - the Royer Savoyflex Automatique and the Focaflex Automatique of 1960. Both employed selenium-cell exposure meters and the basic “trap-needle” method of aperture control used by previously introduced point-and-shoot cameras. Surprisingly, no other SLR would follow in their footsteps until the Konica Auto-Reflex.

In 1965, Konishiroku introduced its Konica Autorex to the Japanese market. It was the first high-quality, widely available SLR with a focal-plane shutter and automatic exposure control.

With the shutter speed and film speed set, the camera selected the correct aperture, which it indicates by a needle over a scale in the viewfinder. However, the shutter release button was rather long, and the mechanism required substantial pressure, as it had to also move the trap-needle mechanism and transfer that setting to the lens, in order to make the auto-exposure system work.

The dual-format Autorex could switch from full to half-frame, even with film in the camera, and not skip a beat. A lever to the right of the lens moved a plates at both sides to reduce the film gate, changes the gear ratio of the film advance, and adjust the frame counter. Two reminder “teeth” would appear in the viewfinder to indicate a half frame, and the exposure counter would begin counting in half frames. So you could shoot 72 half-frame images on a 36-exposure roll, or any number in between, as you could switch systems as many times as you liked.

But... you had to use this lever with care. You had to wind the film first, before you flipped from full to half frame, and Flip first, before before going from half to full frame. Do it right, and you’ll have an 11mm gap in the negatives. Get it wrong and you’ll end up with overlapping images. I suspect it was this quirk that caused Konica to drop the feature in later models.

Within a year, the Autorex is brought to the rest of the world, now called the Konica FT-A (for Autorex) in Japan, the Konica Auto-Reflex in most of the world, and the Revue Auto-Reflex in Germany and a couple of smaller markets. (A small thing, but collectors will note that this original Auto-Reflex was the only one in a long series that used a hyphen. All later models were simply AutoReflex ones.)

The Auto-Reflex was not without its flaws. Notably, the shutter release is long, and somewhat stiff. Focusing was by a central, microprism spot, which many photographers found a bit more difficult than with a standard split prism in the middle. The camera was heavy, being of all-metal construction and weighed in at 998 grams with its standard 57mm f/1.4 Hexanon lens attached.

All this automation didn’t come cheap. When introduced, it retailed for $317.50 with the 57mm f/1.4 Hexanon lens and case included. That’s equivalent to
about $2,535 / £1,900 today, reflecting its premium positioning as the first production 35mm SLR with automatic exposure. Prices dropped by 1968 to $230 with the f/1.4 lens or $190 with an f/1.8 version.

Unfortunately, professional photographers looked at Konica’s Auto-reflex askance, as they were distrusting of automation in its early years. But the Auto-Reflex proved to be a well-made, reliable piece of kit, with excellent lenses. It started a revolution in camera design and was followed by a long line of auto-reflex models, all successful in the marketplace. The series ended with the TC-X in 1985.

In 2003, Konica merged its camera-making division with Minolta, becoming Konica-Minolta. They exited the consumer photography business due to heavy financial losses from the shift to digital and Minolta’s massive patent infringement loss to Honeywell. In 2005, they explored joint development of cameras with Sony, to save money, but Sony insisted on full acquisition. The purchase was completed on March 31 2006.

These days, Konica and Minolta may be forgotten names in the camera field, but they are still active in copiers and in quietly designing and making both lens assemblies and complete lenses for other camera makers.

Find out more about photography's past in David Young's book, A Brief History of Photography.

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Take a look at the best film cameras you can buy today, along with the best Hasselblad cameras and best medium format cameras on sale now. You can also read other articles in David Young's Classic Cameras series.