Bill:
The E. Leitz company, Wetzlar, got in early, taking out it's first patent for
an Autofocus design in 1960. (Not sure just what it covered.)
At the 1976 Photokina, they showed their Leitz Correfot, an "assisted-focus"
camera built into the shell of an SL-2 body. You focused manually, but "Focus
is obtained by turning the focus ring towards one of two LEDs visible in the
viewfinder. When both LEDs are out, the camera is focused!" It was never
produced.
At the 1978 edition of Photokina, they showed another Leica Correfot SLR, this
time with a fully operational autofocus system. However, it used a servo-motor
connected to a modified manual focus lens via a gear that engages ridges
engraved in the focusing ring of the lens. In other words, it actually turned
the conventional focusing ring to effect automatic focusing. Again, the camera
was never produced.
In the fall of 1980, Leica showed a further improved Correfot at the
Minneapolis meeting of the Leica Historical Society of America. The camera
shown is now based on their new R4-Mot and equipped with a servo-motor driven
50mm f 1.4 Summilux-R lens, which provides true auto-focus operation. Low light
performance is quite good though focusing is slow by today's standards as the
servo-motor must run through several gears to gain the torque needed to focus
the lens.
As a result, the camera suffers from high power consumption. Power was supplied
by a battery pack made from the housing of a Leica R3 motor drive unit and
attached to the bottom of the camera. Its six batteries provide just one hour
of operation.
None of the Correfots, in any form, were never produced.
Some time after that, Leitz abandoned AF development and either sold or gave
(no one seems quite sure) their technology to Minolta.
There is some debate as to who introduced the world's first AF SLR.
Although never officially confirmed, it is rumoured that Nikon purchased
Correfot technology from Leitz to develop the very rare Nikon F3-AF,
introduced in 1983. However, it was a separate AF finder, which worked with
only two lenses, an 85 and a 200mm.
Minolta introduced their Maxxum 7000 two years later, in 1985, but it was a
fully integrated, AF camera, which worked with variety of lenses and also
featured the first in-built motor winder.
And there you have it!
David.
Hello Flexers,------
FYI, the first time I have seen any hardware that was involved in this
work.
The rest is history.
Bill
https://www.cultofmac.com/383779/leica-invented-autofocus-then-
abandoned-it/
