Rainy Days with the Canon Prima AS-1

Some cameras make you want to slow down, meter the light, think about your composition and carefully press the shutter.

The Canon Prima AS-1 is not really one of those cameras.

It looks a bit like a toy, feels almost suspiciously small in your hand, and basically says: put some film in me and go outside.

And that's exactly what we did.

The Canon Prima AS-1

The Prima AS-1 is a 35mm waterproof point & shoot from Canon, originally released in 1994. Depending on where you find one, it can also be called the Canon Sure Shot A-1 or Canon Autoboy D5.

When it came out, Canon described it as the world's smallest and lightest land-and-underwater camera. It's fully automatic, has a 32mm f/3.5 lens and can be used underwater down to 5 metres.

Basically, it's a tiny plastic-looking camera that you can take somewhere you probably wouldn't want to take your nice camera.

Rain? Fine.

Beach? Fine.

Swimming pool? Apparently fine.

Your expensive rangefinder? Maybe leave that one at home.

Shooting it

I've been shooting with the AS-1 for the past few weeks and the first thing you notice is how easy it is to use.

The shutter is quiet. The film advance is quiet. Autofocus does its thing without making a big deal about it. There aren't twenty-seven settings to get lost in. You point it at something, press the button and keep moving.

And honestly, sometimes that's exactly what you want from a camera.

The main dial gives you a few different ways to shoot.

Auto does a surprisingly good job most of the time. Backlit situations can obviously throw it off a little, but for general shooting I found the exposures pretty solid.

There's also a flash mode if you want to make sure the flash fires, and a no-flash mode that's particularly useful when you're shooting in low light or pushing your film.

I used the no-flash setting for a shot of a guy at dusk and it worked nicely. No unnecessary blast of flash, no turning the whole scene into a crime scene — just let the film do its thing.

The weird little macro mode

Then there's the setting I wasn't expecting to like as much as I did.

The AS-1 has a close-focus/macro mode for subjects between roughly 0.45 and 1 metre away, with the flash forced on.

I was expecting the flash to absolutely destroy anything that close.

It didn't.

The negatives actually looked surprisingly well exposed, and the portrait of the women on the escalator was shot using this mode.

It's a good reminder that these old point & shoots sometimes have more going on than you expect.

Built for bad weather

Obviously, the big party trick here is the waterproofing.

The AS-1 was designed to be used both on land and underwater, with Canon rating it down to 5 metres.

Sadly, I didn't actually get the chance to take this one underwater.

Which feels like a bit of a failure considering the entire reason this ridiculous little camera exists.

Maybe next time.

For now, though, it was perfectly happy getting dragged around in the rain, which is honestly where a camera like this makes the most sense.

You don't need to worry about protecting it from every little drop. You can just keep shooting.

So, is it any good?

Yeah.

It's not going to replace a Leica. It's not trying to.

The Prima AS-1 is fun because it gets out of the way. It's small, quiet, automatic and tough enough to take places where you'd hesitate to bring a more expensive camera.

And there's something really nice about shooting a camera that doesn't demand your attention.

You can concentrate on what's happening in front of you instead.

That's probably why these little point & shoots remain so addictive. They're not necessarily the technically "best" cameras. They're just cameras that make you want to take pictures.

And at the end of the day, that's kind of the whole point.

All photos by Chris Morgan.