Kodak S500AF

The Kodak S500AF is a Brazilian-made 35mm point-and-shoot from the late 1980s. It's a compact, auto-everything camera with a sliding front panel that covers the lens when not in use. Production dates are uncertain. Sources place it around 1989-1991, with one seller specifically dating it to 1989. Kodak Brasileira made it, and one collector calls it a "somewhat rare" find.

The design is straightforward. It has a black body, a red shutter button, and a top plate that reads "S500AF, PREWIND, DX PROGRAMMED CAMERA, MICROCOMPUTER CONTROL." The "AF" in the name means a basic autofocus system, though nobody has documented how the focusing works. The lens is a 35mm f/3.5 Ektanar. Film advance and rewind are motorized, and there's a built-in electronic flash. Film speed is set by DX coding, and one Brazilian source gives an ISO range of 64 to 1000. The sliding front door is worked by a switch atop the camera, in front of an LCD panel. Closed, it covers the viewfinder, lens, and meter cell. One Flickr reviewer called it "The Ugly Stick" and suggested it looks better with the front panel shut.

Power comes from two AA cells. There are no manual overrides. This is a pure auto-everything snapshot camera, and it appears to have been sold that way.

Documentation is thin. No original retail price, dimensions, weight, or flash specifications have surfaced, and no official Kodak manual or product literature appears in the record. What exists are seller listings and user photos: a working example with flash on MercadoLivre in Brazil, a "good" condition unit on craigslist in British Columbia, and another on Yahoo!拍卖 in Taiwan. A Brazilian shop on Lomography shows it shooting Fomapan 400 film, so it works in practice. Prices seen: $95.00 at PhotoCo Camera House and R$ 479,00 at a Brazilian seller.

Known specs: