What was the single most important advance in modern film cameras?

[StuartMoxham]

<p>I would say probably AF, back when the EOS 600 was a hot new camera I eagerly upgraded my Practica BC1 electronic to an EOS600 mainly for the auto focus. The accurate matrix metering was a nice bonus. Today my "new hot camera" is a Leica IIIa kind of funny how things change.</p>

[Robin Smith]

<p>TTL metering, auto aperture SLR lenses</p>

[alan_rockwood]

<p>Lots of possibilities, but I think my choice is auto focus.</p>

[dave_redmann]

<p>Probably auto-focus, but lenses whose irises stop down just a moment before the shutter opens are great too--they make an SLR viewfinder much brighter and focusing (whether manual or auto) much easier / more accurate.</p>

 

[rossb]

<p>The Nikon F100</p>

[william_c._waterbury_jr.]

<p>Sorry got here late, I must agree with Colin on lens coating. Today I still have many older lenses that predate multi-coating and even a single coating and use them in certain cases for effect, but true and accurate light transmission to film, when I got my first MC lens in 74, was for me truly the day that the science of photography came alive. thanks</p>

[vince-p]

<p>The invention of 35mm film camera (using 18x24 motion picture film but doubling the frame size). Work began on this in the teens but the first world war delayed its development. The recognized modern proto-type was, I believe, 1922, that great year of high Modernism (Ulysses, The Waste Land, Corbusier's "Vers Une Architecture," etc) designed by the originator of the project, Oskar Barnack of Leitz in Wetzlar Germany. Camera went into production in 1924 and hit the market in 1925. Known now as the Leica I. Rangefinder focusing and interchangeable lenses soon followed. </p>

<p>It's been a 35mm world ever since; or until digital. It's the frame for how we saw the 20th century anyway. </p>

[vince-p]

<p>After that the second most important development was computer assisted lens design, I suspect. </p>

[john_narsuitus]

<p>Roll Film vs. Sheet Film</p>

[Frank Petronio]

Probably Kodak for figuring out the workflows for each generation of films and processes... from the mail-

in processing to making slideshows to making inexpensive color prints to one-hour processing - most of

that was figured out by Kodak and it became the standard of its time. Right up to the RAW digital and

color profiled inkjet workflow we use today.

[scott_murphy5]

<p>Meter coupling lenses for exposure measurement on SLR's that allowed you full aperture metering.</p>