I confess I'm not familiar with Miranda.   My first camera was a Brownie box camera that used 620 roll film, but my first "thinking" camera was rangefinder my dad bought at the Army PX in Germany around 1951.  It wasn't anything expensive but I learned how to estimate distances and estimate light, as it also had no meter.  Today's photographers have heard of the F16 Sunny day rule and couldn't estimate light if their light depended on it. 

But like everyone else, slowly but surely I gave in to all-dancing electronics, as one photo reviewer some twenty-plus years ago so quaintly described the current cameras overtaking the older cameras of those days.  However, before digital I didn't even get into autofocus.  The early systems were not good.  I finally had to get autofocus when I couldn't take snapshots anymore because my eyes took too long to focus on non-standard subjects, and by then it was time to get a digital camera as well.  Today I find modern autofocus systems very good, but I still use manual focus at times, and even for fine focus override, fortunately my DSLR lenses let me manually adjust them without damaging motors, and with a nice diopter arrangement I get nice sharp pix.