Frank,
Contax MM arrived in 1985 (the C/Y mount is older, but the MM feature
was introduced with the 159MM in 85), well after Nikon's AI-S lenses
(late 70's, arrived originally with the EM, didn't hit the full lens
line until the very early 1980's) and first multi-mode SLR, the FA in
1983. But the first Nikon to offer shutter priority in a System Camera
was the F2S in 1973, not the FA 10 years later. The F2's Shutter
priority did require an extra accessory though.
The LX was not missing any distinct features. The equivalent bodies
(Canon New F1, Nikon F3) all offered Manual Exposure and Aperture
Priority AE only. Until the arrival of the EOS 1 and F4 around 1988,
Program mode and Shutter priority AE were firmly mid-range features, and
not found on the full pro bodies.
-Adam
Frank Mechelhoff wrote:
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
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