Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I took my Canon A-1 loaded with JCH’s Street Pan 400 black and white film (ISO 400) to the November Cars and Coffee in Parker, Colorado but the 19 degree temperature had a decidedly negative effect on attendance and I only made about twenty-two images. As I await to finish the roll and publish my results in an upcoming #filmfriday review of Street Pan 400, I thought I would share my affection for this particular film camera.
Because of the influence of my friend Rick Sammon, my first Canon SLR was a used EOS 650 that I bought sometime around 1988. At that time, I was mostly a Contax shooter but quickly jumped onto s Elan 7E eye-controlled focusing SLR when it was introduced and ended up co-writing the Magic Lantern Guide to the Elan 7 and 7E. Later I picked up an EOS-1 IV but by the time the EOS D30 was announced in 2000 I was hooked and dove into digital capture.
So it was against this background in mind that I decided to get an EOS-1 film SLR when I re-jumped back into film photography. After looking around, I changed direction and decided to get a camera I’ve always wanted—the legendary Canon F-1. In my searches I found two kinds of F-1’s: cheap junk or expensive pristine models, especially the Lake Placid version that I’ve always wanted since my Lucy-and-the-football experience related to photographing the 1980 Winter Games. (It’s a long, sad story.) So then I started looking for an AE-1 eventually finding one in Osaka, Japan and writing about it here. But after shooting with the AE-1 I realized that the A-series camera that I really wanted —if I couldn’t have an F1—was the Canon A-1.
The Canon A-1 may be the A-series most advanced-level SLR and was manufactured by Canon Camera K. K. in Japan from 1978 to 1985. Mine was built in 1984. The camera employs a horizontal cloth-curtain focal-plane shutter that a range of 30 to 1/1000 sec plus bulb with flash sync at a puny 1/60 sec. Unlike other SLRs of its time, the A-1 was only available in black. The camera was the first SLR to to offer all four exposure modes: Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual, as well as an electronically controlled programmed exposure mode, although switching between modes was not as simple as the mode dial most of us are now familiar.
The A-1 accepts any lens that has the Canon FD breech lock mount that was introduced in 1971 or Canon’s New FD aka FDn mount, the lenses that I much prefer, that was introduced 1979. It can also use earlier FL lenses and some even older R or Canomatic series lenses but with reduced functionality.
How I Made this Photograph: I would have preferred to have used my FD 135mm f/2.8 lens to photograph this (what I think may be an) emotional scene but instead had the FD 50mm f/1.8 mounted on my Canon A-1, so this image was cropped substantially. The Fuji Neopan 400 Professional’s low grain and the high quality film scan are really apparent to me in how this image is holds up with a drastic crop. Exposure was unrecoreded. Sorry, I’m working on improving my film photography record keeping. This image was an homage to one of my own photographs that I made during the 1970’s in Lafayette Square in Washington DC, when I worked in that city. The original, I think is better. The Fuji Neopan 400 Professional was processed and scanned by The Darkroom in San Clemente, California.
How do I like this camera? Let me quote from my film review of Neopan 400 Professional: “I love this camera more than my other A-series Canon SLRs. It has some peculiarities but it’s these eccentricities that endear me to it. And build quality? I think this 38-year SLR is better made than a $5999 Canon R3 full-frame mirrorless camera.” Back in the day the US selling price for an A-1 body was $375 to $435 or about $1150 in today’s inflated dollars. Mine cost $125 from Japan via eBay and I use it with Canon’s Power Winder A2 that makes a delightfully mechanical sound that reminds me of an air-cooled Porsche engine.
*PostScript. Some readers have asked me about what it’s like to purchase a camera from Japan and if I thought that was a good idea to do so. Well, the process can be fun but will always be challenging if only because of language and cultural differences between Japan and the US. I created a video on this topic for my YouTube channel—Joe Farace’s Videos—and you can see it here.