Japan · 4 lenses

Konica (Hexanon AR)

Konica traces back to 1873, when pharmacist Rokusaburō Sugiura began selling photographic supplies from his shop, though the company only took the Konica name in 1987. Its SLR lenses are Hexanons, with a cheaper line called Hexar. The AR bayonet arrived in 1965 with the Auto-Reflex, a camera that set the aperture itself once you picked a shutter speed, and the Autoreflex T a few years later moved that shutter-priority system to through-the-lens metering. That's why AR lenses carry an EE or AE mark on the aperture ring. The range ran from 21mm to 2000mm plus a 15mm fisheye, including a slim 40mm f/1.8 pancake. Konica stopped making AR cameras and Hexanon lenses in late 1988, merged with Minolta in 2003 and left photography in 2006.