INTRODUCTION

The Canon New F-1 is a 35mm film SLR camera made in Japan by Canon between 1981 and 1992.

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PERSONAL NOTES

The Canon New F-1 replaced the F-1n in 1981 as the top of the line professionnal Canon camera.

If you know me, you know that I mainly use Nikon cameras for my contracts. This is simply because the first SLR I personally bought had a perfect fit with my hand and eye, it happened to be a Nikon. I used many Canon as well, Digital SLRs, point and shoot, SLR and evel old rangefinders.

Back in the days, cameras were manual, there were no automatic or even semi-automatic modes, you had to use an external light meter to set your camera right.

At some point in time, semi-automatic modes appeared, we then had access to shutter priority or aperture priority modes. Program mode or fully automatic were not there yet. Neverthwless, many manufacturers chose to offer the aperture priority on their cameras, Nikon was one of them, while a few others, like Canon, offered the shutter priority mode on their cameras. So if yu were an artist, you usually chose a Nikon, and if you were covering action or sports, you had to get a Canon.

Nowadays, every cameras have all these modes, you can choose any brand of camera now, and do all types of photography with any of them.

So, like all other old Canons I tried, I expected the Canon New F-1 to shoot in shutter priority mode. But no... The New F-1 with the prism I've got is offering aperture priority. Pretty nice! You can also use shutter priority if you add a motor drive, which makes sense at shutter priority is oftened needed for action or sports, where you also need a fast frame rate.

I have to say that the Canon New F-1 is a really nice camera. It feels good in my hand, solid, the dark paint has a very nice grippy feeling. The finder is bright, and is illuminated. Also, that illumination can be configured. The matte screen is of high quality with both split screen and microprisms.

The Canon New F-1 is a nice surprise, a very good camera, to my experience, it's on par with the Nikon F3, from the same era.

CONCLUSION

The Canon New F-1 is an awesome manual focus SLR camera, probably the best FD lens camera ever made, try it out.

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