So who were these for?

[RLangham]

It's a great feature, really, one of the best features of the A-1. Put it on program, turn off the display, and focus on the image without distractions.

In conditions where you're sure it won't dip below the lowest speed you can shoot by hand at, I guess, but I have trouble surrendering that much control to the camera, especially with an unweighted averaging meter

 

[AgX]

The F3 is a pro camera and was significantly higher priced than the A-1. The Canon New F-1 was priced more similarly to the F3.

You can always use google books to read Popular Photography magazines from the 80s, the price lists are there on the ads.

But were the price relations amongst japanese cameras the same all over the world? One may think so, but I am not sure.

 

[RLangham]

But were the price relations amongst japanese cameras the same all over the world? One may think so, but I am not sure.

One can be sure that within one country the final sale prices, taking into account discounts and varying overhead, were not always the same from one high street retailer to another.

 

[AgX]

In the 1950’s a computer was a room full of women working adding machines.

By 1955 already both parts of Germany had digital computers at optical works, by the end of the 50's such was standard at all major optical works.
There calculations were so massive that the respective womanpower was lacking.

 

[AgX]

One can be sure that within one country the final sale prices, taking into account discounts and varying overhead, were not always the same from one high street retailer to another.

No, in great parts of Europe (East and West) retail prices either were prescribed by authorities or typically prescribed by manufacturers. (A major topic at west-european photo-retail.)

 

[4season]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I think electronic-laden automatic cameras were seen as a very good thing: Even Leica got into the act, with their R3 and earlier R4 SLRs sporting the world "electronic". Who cared about traditional manual, mechanical cameras with cloth shutters: They were old news, and rangefinder cameras seen as lower-end products, with Leica M production nearly grinding to a halt.

Browsing big store ads in the back of 1970s issues of Popular Photography, I seem to recall USA Nikon prices (via Erenreich Photo-Optical Industries, the official USA agents at the time - think they were bought out and became Nikon USA?) weren't much different from Leica and were significantly higher than other brands, though by the mid-1980s they had become very competitive with products like the value-priced FG.

 

[RLangham]

No, in great parts of Europe (East and West) retail prices either were prescribed by authorities or typically prescribed by manufacturers. (A major topic at west-european photo-retail.)

In America the market on most goods is free to a fault. Even liquor!

 

[AgX]

In West-Germany manufacturer prescribed prices ended by law for most goods in 1974.
Though the west-german photo-industry skipped such prescribing already in 1970.

 

[Donald Qualls]

had you been around in the late 1970s, chances are your home would have had one shared wall phone provided by the phone company, no computers, no video games, no VCR, a single 15" - 24" TV set capable of receiving a half-dozen stations if you were lucky. Your personal entertainment might be an AM/FM/cassette portable.

I graduated high school in '78 -- we had three phones, one on the living room wall, one upstairs in my bedroom, and one in my grandma's "mother in law" apartment. And by the late '70s, you could buy your own phone if you chose. That TV is right, though (analog with a vacuum tube for the picture, BTW, 525 lines interlaced at 30 frames/second and 4:3 aspect ratio); we could get four channels most of the time and a fifth when conditions were right -- but one of the reliable four was fringe, full of snow and hard to get the vertical hold locked in. And I didn't own a cassette machine worth putting music into until after I was done with 8-track in 1982. My high school ran video tape on reel-to-reel (used to pirate educational films with a B&W video camera) through the '70s, and I used a computer in '75 -- but it was 35 miles away, connected at 110 bps to the Navy surplus teletype in the physics lab. I never saw the actual machine.

 

[Dennis-B]

In the 1950’s a computer was a room full of women working adding machines.

By the mid-1950's, women running comptometers were almost consigned to obsolescence. IBM and Burroughs, among others, had introduced their accounting machines which largely replaced the comptometer. The comptometer users gradually became keypunch operators, since the input to accounting machines, especially those made by IBM, was pretty much numeric in nature. When I first went to business college (1966), we had to learn how to program accounting machines, creating custom reports for the accountants, before we "graduated" to COBOL. The IBM's were very flexible, and allowed us to create reports in which data could be generated through a wired panel as well as cards. And we could even generate output cards (document originating) for input to the next cycle (balances forward, etc.) However, most of the keypunch input by then was strictly computer oriented, and the old IBM accounting machines mostly bit the dust by the mid-1960's. Card input, however, remained well into the 1980's. When newer input was needed, we had purchased terminals for input to the mainframe. The computer room bosses could then monitor "keystrokes/hour" as a method of judging work flow.

The original comptometer operators not only became the keypunch operators, but they also wound up as accounting clerks in later years as card input went obsolete.

 

[RLangham]

By the mid-1950's, women running comptometers were almost consigned to obsolescence. IBM and Burroughs, among others, had introduced their accounting machines which largely replaced the comptometer. The comptometer users gradually became keypunch operators, since the input to accounting machines, especially those made by IBM, was pretty much numeric in nature. When I first went to business college (1966), we had to learn how to program accounting machines, creating custom reports for the accountants, before we "graduated" to COBOL. The IBM's were very flexible, and allowed us to create reports in which data could be generated through a wired panel as well as cards. And we could even generate output cards (document originating) for input to the next cycle (balances forward, etc.) However, most of the keypunch input by then was strictly computer oriented, and the old IBM accounting machines mostly bit the dust by the mid-1960's. Card input, however, remained well into the 1980's. When newer input was needed, we had purchased terminals for input to the mainframe. The computer room bosses could then monitor "keystrokes/hour" as a method of judging work flow.

The original comptometer operators not only became the keypunch operators, but they also wound up as accounting clerks in later years as card input went obsolete.

I got to meet a real PDP-11 once... they let me bootstrap it with some help from the museum tour guide.

 

[BradS]

I got to meet a real PDP-11 once... they let me bootstrap it with some help from the museum tour guide.

I had one in my apartment when I was in college.

EDIT: My room mate and I bought a pallet of surplus stuff from a nearby government contractor (General Dynamics). Unfortunately, we did not have nor could we afford any peripherals - like a terminal, so, it was just a fun conversation piece.

 

[RLangham]

I had one in my apartment when I was in college.

One of the later, more miniaturized submodels? Either way that's cool. Did it run Unix?

 

[BrianShaw]

I got to meet a real PDP-11 once... they let me bootstrap it with some help from the museum tour guide.

We had a PDP-11 and a fleet of PDP-8’s when I started my career. Mine was high-end and had four 8-inch floppy drives! I think a modern hearing aid has as much, or more, computing power. LOL I used a 390 baud modem to communicate with the IBM 360 mainframe. I think my boss had a faster modem... 1250 baud maybe.

 

[BradS]

One of the later, more miniaturized submodels? Either way that's cool. Did it run Unix?

I added an edit as you were responding( again )
It was a later model...not huge.It had lights and switches all across the front panel.
I don't know if it actually worked or whether or not it was running Unix (all of the PDP's at school were) all I know is that it consumed power and the lights and switches worked.

EDIT: It was 1983. I was a math major and my room mate was an EE major. He was really into it and I just thought it was pretty fun/funny. It resided in the living room on an end table beside the couch. We didn't impress any girls with it but all of his EE buddies were pretty gob-smacked by it. I think he ended up dis-assembling it and scavenging parts from it for a project. I had an Apple ][ plus with a floppy drive and a green screen monitor!. At school, we never actually saw or interacted directly with the computers - VAX, PDP and something they called a CDC Cyber 360? The computers were in a separate room and we sat at video terminals - VT-100 for hte VAX and teleray T-10 or Wise or something like that for the Cyber. I much preferred the VAX but mostly we had to use the Cyber - which I hated - for undergrad stuff -.

 

[binglebugbob]

Maybe your opinion of the camera comes from paying only $5 for it. ("a $5 camera CAN'T be any good!")

As for the "alright" lenses, Canon offered lenses in price ranges from entry level "kit lenses" to pro grade. For instance, there were at least two 35-105mm FD zooms. You got what you paid for.

 

[RLangham]

Maybe your opinion of the camera comes from paying only $5 for it. ("a $5 camera CAN'T be any good!)

I only payed 5 plus shipping for my Zorki S and it's my favorite non-SLR camera.

My opinion of the A-1 isn't that low, it's just that it's quirky and sometimes annoyingly so. For instance I use DOF preview constantly. It was the first thing I learned specifically about SLR's and it's very useful to me. The A-1 has a mechanism that binds up if you use the stop down lever at all and then return the lens to the automatic setting for shooting. You literally have to reset it mechanically every time you use the DOF preview. And it's not a camera that's made in any way for manual mode.

 

[Les Sarile]

Right now KEH is selling a DE1 in excellent condition (not mint) for $360!!!
https://www.keh.com/shop/nikon-manual-focus-de1-prism-f2-666277.html

But of course an excellent rating at KEH is really mint and not the "mint" that everyone else uses . . .

 

[AgX]

I got a lot of stuff about the A-series, but what I miss is inside information on Canon designing the A-series.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

My first decent SLR was an A-1 that I got as a teenager. I’ve always been a manual exposure kind of guy, but it was convenient to be able to turn it to “A” to let someone else take a photo with me in it, so they would just have to focus. It was stolen when our house was burglarized, and I used the insurance money toward a New F-1 that I still have almost 40 years later. When FD lenses were super cheap, I had a lot of nice L-glass. I sold most of it off for other things, mostly medium or large format, but kept a couple of teles (400/4.5 and 600/4.5) that I still use either on the New F-1 or with an original Canon FD-EOS converter either on the 1N-RS or the 5DII.

But to answer the original question, the A-series cameras were popular for people who were serious amateurs and didn’t need the ruggedness and flexibility of an F-1 and didn’t want the expense. They wanted to be able to control exposure and change lenses, so a point-and-shoot or fixed lens camera wouldn’t do. There were no smartphones, and photography was a popular pastime.

 

[blockend]

If no one has mentioned it, A-series Canons were subject to endemic mirror bearing failure, aka "Canon Cough". This began as a high pitched squeak and if left unattended, developed into throaty bark and the mirror operating slowly enough to be in shot. Nor was this a rarity, pretty much all Canon A cameras developed the cough eventually. I'm not aware of it troubling the F-1 derivatives, so it's probably a production corner cut too far in reaching the price point.

 

[Chan Tran]

My first decent SLR was an A-1 that I got as a teenager. I’ve always been a manual exposure kind of guy, but it was convenient to be able to turn it to “A” to let someone else take a photo with me in it, so they would just have to focus. It was stolen when our house was burglarized, and I used the insurance money toward a New F-1 that I still have almost 40 years later. When FD lenses were super cheap, I had a lot of nice L-glass. I sold most of it off for other things, mostly medium or large format, but kept a couple of teles (400/4.5 and 600/4.5) that I still use either on the New F-1 or with an original Canon FD-EOS converter either on the 1N-RS or the 5DII.

But to answer the original question, the A-series cameras were popular for people who were serious amateurs and didn’t need the ruggedness and flexibility of an F-1 and didn’t want the expense. They wanted to be able to control exposure and change lenses, so a point-and-shoot or fixed lens camera wouldn’t do. There were no smartphones, and photography was a popular pastime.

But back in 1981 B&H was selling the A-1 for $306.95 and the F1-N for $380.95 a minor difference in price. But today the values of the 2 cameras are significantly more.

 

[woodlandSerenade]

But back in 1981 B&H was selling the A-1 for $306.95 and the F1-N for $380.95 a minor difference in price.

I'm looking at a B&H ad from Aug. 1982 and they list the A-1(body only) for $249.90, while the New F-1 (body only) is $469.90. Your quoted prices seem a bit off, as I doubt B&H would heavily discount a <1 year-old professional body.
Not to pick nits, but both cameras are also valued less today than the prices you quoted.

 

[AgX]

If no one has mentioned it, A-series Canons were subject to endemic mirror bearing failure, aka "Canon Cough". This began as a high pitched squeak and if left unattended, developed into throaty bark and the mirror operating slowly enough to be in shot. Nor was this a rarity, pretty much all Canon A cameras developed the cough eventually. I'm not aware of it troubling the F-1 derivatives, so it's probably a production corner cut too far in reaching the price point.

They are subject to this. Amongst my A-series samples one has got this fault.
But can the mirror actually be in the way? At the Zenit one can easily see that it is the mirror at the end of its movement that actually releases the shutter. Though I have not yet looked into the working of things at the A-series.

 

[Les Sarile]

Here's an Adorama ad from Pop Photo 1982 showing prices fir the A-1, New F-1, F3 and others.

Full size version -> http://www.fototime.com/AE43A0F6C6874B3/orig.jpg

No surprise how expensive the three kings were - F3, New F-1 and LX. But I'm actually surprised how expensive the A-1 is compared to the Minolta XD11.