In 1982, the Japanese camera maker Konica introduced a compact camera which would become a bona fide sensation.
The Konica Pop wasn’t a completely new camera, but a revamped version of an earlier camera called the C35AF. The C35AF was the first mass-produced autofocus camera and was itself a revamped version of the C35 Automatic.
The C35AF introduced a number of features which would become benchmarks in autofocus compact design, including an integral electronic flash and an automatic exposure system which would choose the right shutter speed.
The Pop took the C35AF’s cues and simplified them further, reducing the shutter speeds to just one (1/125) and smoothing out the original’s pointy edges with a rounded plastic body. Press a button and the camera’s flash would pop up – giving the camera its name.
The Pop was aimed at younger photographers, and it was a massive hit. Between its unveiling in 1982 and 1985, more than 1.5 million Pops were sold. A revamped version released in 1985 – and available in a wider range of colours – sold another 1.5 million.
The Pop was proof that there was a huge market for simple, colourful compact cameras. Konica followed it up with the smaller, lighter Pop-10 and its bright red follow-up the Tomato, which was an even simpler design with ditched autofocus.
The Tomato showed that even in the age of autofocus – and by the 1990s autofocus was getting much quieter, reliable and accurate – fixed-focus cameras still had a large audience.
In 1993, Konica introduced a new camera to carry the Tomato’s baton. It would be one of the smallest 35mm compacts cameras released that decade, and embraced the kind of rounded, shiny template seen in other designs like Canon’s Sure Shot M.
The EU-mini was, like the Tomato, aimed at an amateur market that wanted a pure point-and-shoot camera. To save cost, it would do away with autofocus and instead have a fixed-focus, wide-angle lens. The Eu-mini featured a three-element 28mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/6.7: anything past three feet would be in focus, and that relatively slow maximum aperture meant a decent depth-of-field to be working with. No pop-up flash for the EU-mini – it comes with a small integral flash next to the viewfinder.
The EU-mini only had three speeds – 1/60, 1/125 and 1/180. The 1/60 was only usable when the flash fired; the camera’s auto-exposure system fired the flash automatically if it felt it was needed, with no ability to override. A CR123A battery had to be loaded into the large battery compartment on the bottom of the camera for it to function.
It was initially available in conventional black but also in electric blue and bright red; Konica’s own promotional material promised the little camera “draws attention not only to the crisp, perfectly exposed photographs it takes, but also to the photographer”.
The EU-mini’s lens is fine in the centre, though optical quality falls off sharply as you head towards the edge of the frame. This was a camera built for a casual market, and not one likely to be poring over lens resolution tables.
The small, almost pebble-shaped camera was a similar size to Olympus’s Mju, though it had a much simpler lens cover rather in place of the Mju’s sliding door, probably to keep the camera’s construction costs to a minimum.
Konica intended this camera to be a cheap compact for beginners, and they also apparently offered it as a customisable camera: there are several limited-edition models that made it into production – including for some of Europe’s most popular football clubs. Barcelona and Bayern Munich offered EU-mini sets in their respective strips, sold in a clear plastic gift box with a roll of Konica film. One Peanuts-inspired collector’s edition came adorned with cartoons of Snoopy; yet another took the camera’s EU moniker even further – gold stars on a purple-blue background, heavily reminiscent of the flag of the European Union. A coincidence?
These collectable editions are much rarer than the standard coloured models, and in the case of the football club editions are usually three times the price of a standard EU-mini.
The EU-mini’s plastic body is robust enough that many survive today. Fading LCD screens and the camera’s battery compartment lid – a large plastic panel whose clips may have snapped off due to brittling – are more pressing concerns.
Lomographers and fans of a disposable camera aesthetic who don’t want to be responsible for a pile of plastic waste after each roll might well find this quirky Konica to be worth investigating.
Read more:
- Review on Canny Cameras
- Profile on Camera-wiki
- Instruction manual on Butkus
- Profile on Collection Appareils
Many thanks to Sylvain Halgand of Collection Appareils for the use of the Bayern Munich edition photograph.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
