Electric Eye

Electric Eye was a post-war camera name for an integrated "electric" light meter. Common names were:

• "Electric Eye", for example in the abbreviation EE at Olympus
• “Magic button” on Agfa Optima cameras
• "Electric", "Electro", for example in Yashica cameras , for example the Yashica TL Electro X , the first reflex camera with a fully electronic light meter.

For the shutter, there were mainly automatically controlled or partially automatic solutions (aperture or time preselection). In other cases, an (EV) value had to be read off and set on the lens or two pointers in the viewfinder had to be brought into line ("tracking", example Bessamatic reflex camera ).

The integrated light meter was initially designed as a selenium element , similar to a solar cell . Later, photo resistors ( CdS technology) were used, which took up a smaller area and were more durable, but also made a battery necessary.

If the selenium cell surrounded the lens over a large area, one could actually speak of a certain "eye" resemblance, some viewfinder cameras had round CdS lenses on the front of the housing. In today's camera designs, they are often located within the filter thread or in the beam path.