I had just sold a camera, which meant I had money in the ‘pot’…and then I saw this. I had never heard of it and definitely not seen a camera of this hue before. Look at it…
Luckily for me, it wasn’t very expensive. Although I am fairly certain that if I had seen the red version, I would have been tempted to pay more.
It was released in 1983 and was the first Fuji camera to have a drop-in loading system. That is the DL in the title for us foreigners. In Japan, it was known simply as the Auto Mate; no descriptive acronyms for them.
As you can see from the photos, you can choose to load either 100 or 400asa film. Actually, all you are doing by changing this is to switch the speed between 1/100th and 1/300th. It has a 38mm focal length with an f4 minimum aperture.
It is a zone focusing camera, but what is important to note is that each time you turn it off, the zone chosen resets back to the middle symbol. By not realising that, a few of my shots were out of focus. I had set it to the ‘mountain’, and it reset to the ‘people’. When I did notice and set it correctly, the shots were nicely focused.
The DL also features auto advance and rewind, which is powered by two AA batteries. My example sounded a little worse for wear at first. I put in some fairly new batteries, but not fresh, and it really sounded like it was struggling to advance the film. It eventually died in my hands. However, I wasn’t sure at first, as it was very quiet for an 80s motorised camera. There is a moving indicator on the back that indicates when the film is in motion. I looked at that carefully after pressing the shutter and on rewind.
So I put in fresh batteries, and it came back to life, but it still sounded weak. I was sure the film would show evidence of overlapping, but it didn’t. The processed film had evenly spaced shots, with small gaps.
Here are the results of my only film, an Exeter 400 developed in Pyro, shot in Liverpool.
The last two shots were taken near my house to finish the film. The leaf photo was to check the flash, as I forgot to take one using it before. You can see where the camera reset the focusing away from infinity.
Now, I say the only film as I have already passed the camera on to someone else. As I was heading back to the train station, I dropped in at Real Camera. One of the people behind the counter was enamoured with the DL, so I suggested a swap. I send the camera to him (I hadn’t finished the film at that point), and he sends something in return, a surprise. So that is where the camera is, heading to Liverpool. I will let you know what I get in return.
I had the “older brother” of this camera, the DL-100, for a hot second during the beginning of my film camera obsession in 2020. (In fact, it was the second camera I got.) The DL-100 was autofocus, and would tell you which of the three zones it focused on, but after you took the shot. The photos were decent from the one test roll, but it was bigger and noisier than hoped, and there were also light leaks. And due to the “drop in” nature of loading, there’s no way to “open” the film door to see what was going on (and I was early enough in my journey that I didn’t want to bother.) So off it went. I had another Fuji compact that was from the 90’s, but its autofocus was borked.
I wondered about the drop in loading system and what if the rewind broke. How would you get the film out? Luckily my rewind worked though. You might like this one, it is super quiet.