Hi, this is true for the best-known Japanese camera makers. One should remember, first shutter-priority AE on a 35mm SLR with changable lenses was the German Voigtlaender Ultramatic (1961), a leafshutter SLR. Also the Zeiss-Ikon Contaflex SuperBC (1965) offered this, together with TTL metering.
The first focal plane shutter SLR with this feature was IMHO the Konica Auto-Reflex (1965) with bayonet mount. CANON with the AE, 1976) was the first real successfull adoption of this concept to the market. Next was CONTAX, allowing aperture-control with their lenses (MM). Pentax was a firm believer in aperture-priority AE at that time, offering no aperture control lenses before the SMC-A series (1983; SuperA). They were well behind Minolta as well. Even the flagship LX missed that feature, while concurrent high-level cameras already had multi-automatics. Nikon was very conservative in this respect too. This had to do with limitations in their baynonets as well. The FA was their first System-SLR with shutter-priority AE (1983 too) Thanks for the correction (wrong translation of the German "Blendenautomatik") cheers, Frank http://www.taunusreiter.de/Cameras ___________________________________________________________ Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de
