Why does the Canon F-1 seem to get relatively little love?

[logan2z]

I read a lot about the Nikon F and F2 on this and other forums, but I see relatively little about the Canon F-1. What I have read seems to indicate that the Canon is a truly professional grade camera and was built at least as well as the Nikons, yet they don't seem to get the same level of notoriety. Can anyone shed some light on why this might be the case? Lack of marketing? Came out too late and Nikon already had the pro market sewn up? I'm curious...

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I owned an F1N for over 30 years and I love mine. Mathieu Stern loves his too.

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

It's the F-mount.

 

[benjiboy]

I have owned Nikon Fs and F2s in the past, but for the last thirty years I have been shooting with four Canon F1s ( 2 Fin's and 2 New F1-AE's ) I have no desire to use anything else because if God ever made a better 35mm S.L.R. he kept it to himself.

 

[CMoore]

Came out too late and Nikon already had the pro market sewn up? I'm curious...

I THINK that is the biggest factor.
The Canon camera is well liked and respected. It is (arguably) a "Better" camera than the F2.............. certainly as good.

But, as you say, Nikon had a 10 year head start. News Paper, Magazine, Wire Service shooters (and their employers) had bought a lot of F-Mount lens and F bodies in that amount of time.
Just a guess on my part.

There also seems to be a big divide with the Canon Community regarding which iteration of the F-1 is best

 

[Chan Tran]

Not too many have it because it wasn't as popular as the F or F2 or F3. Only after the F4 was introduced did Canon started to catch up and surpass Nikon. But today since there are relatively few of them I think the people who have them would love them more than people with the Nikon's love their. They are also carrying higher price tag than Nikon's today.

 

[CMoore]

Why, with an abacus full of possibilities, did Canon choose the letter F.?
It almost seems like a cheap, marketing trick.

C-1 would have been an obvious choice.

 

[logan2z]

Why, with an abacus full of possibilities, did Canon choose the letter F.?
It almost seems like a cheap, marketing trick.

C-1 would have been an obvious choice.

At least call it the F-U if they were trying to stick it to Nikon

 

[logan2z]

It's the F-mount.

What about the F mount makes it more special than the FD mount? Compatibility with a wider array of lenses?

 

[Les Sarile]

My guess is because it's predecessor - the Canonflex, was as spectacular a failure as the Nikon F was a success . . .

Selection 43 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Obviously, Nikon's marketing did a pretty good job

 

[Bronson Dugnutt]

What about the F mount makes it more special than the FD mount? Compatibility with a wider array of lenses?

Lenses with the same physical bayonet mount with the option of aftermarket, professionally, or self-converted pre-AI gear made sense to me when I first bought a professional DSLR, a D610 in my case.

The pre-AI Nikkors also physically adapt to the 1 & Z via their respective adapters without any modification, although you'll be denied auto-focus. My Olympus Pen FV is used exclusively with the same glass, limited by stop down metering.

I'm not anti-Canon or anything; the Demi line is a favorite of mine and a fine alternative to the Pen rangefinders.

 

[mshchem]

The Nikon's cause in the United States was helped in no small part by the genius of the distributor, Joe Ehrenreich, of Ehrenreich Photo-Optical Industries (EPOI, which was later bought by Nippon Kogaku and renamed Nikon USA). He saw to it that every major photojournalist in the US was seen carrying a Nikon F to all the major events of the day. The focus of EPOI advertising in the 1960's is clearly skewed towards emphasizing the Nikon's near monopoly on the SLR reportage market; the message was that once you've got the Nikon, you're ready to run with the big dogs. One memorable ad shows an obviously overjoyed man with a Nikon F swinging from around his neck, connected by the thin, pain-inducing straps favored throughout the 60's; the byline reads, "The First Time You Walked Out with Your Nikon F" or something like that. Yes, the Nikon F was expensive in its day, comparable to the price of an F5 today, but those who had them swore by them.

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photograph...chaeliu/cameras/nikonf/foverview/fhistory.htm

SOURCE MIR.COM

 

[Oren Grad]

The Nikon's cause in the United States was helped in no small part by the genius of the distributor, Joe Ehrenreich, of Ehrenreich Photo-Optical Industries (EPOI, which was later bought by Nippon Kogaku and renamed Nikon USA). He saw to it that every major photojournalist in the US was seen carrying a Nikon F to all the major events of the day.... etc.

Yes, Nikon had a head start. But by the mid-'70s, when I started being aware of these things, Canon was every bit as visible as Nikon and was considered a direct and worthy competitor in the pro SLR market. The mass-circulation camera monthlies hosted "Canon vs Nikon" columns and features, debating their relative merits. Each brand had its own cadre of prominent professionals. For example, the photojournalist Bill Pierce, who is still active over at Rangefinder Forum, was well known as a Canon guy.

 

[Paul Howell]

The focus of EPOI advertising in the 1960's is clearly skewed towards emphasizing the Nikon's near monopoly on the SLR reportage market; the message was that once you've got the Nikon, you're ready to run with the big dogs.

Nikon had turn cornered the pro level market, the vast majority of newspapers, wire services, Nat Geo, most governmental agencies, were using Nikon by the time Canon F came out. When I bought my F, I was in the Air Force, could not afford a Canon F, for that matter could not afford a Topcon Super DM but could afford a used Nikon F. When AF came on the scene you needed AF lens, at that point it made sense to buy a EOS 1, Canon's AF system was so much better than the F4. And Canon took a page out of Nikon's play book and gave EOS bodies to Nat Geo, the Times, and with the quality of L glass lens ran Nikon over.

 

[mcrokkorx]

In these Canon F-1 vs Nikon F2 discussions, the importance of the well-heeled amateur market to sales and popular awareness of nominally "pro" cameras in the '70s always seems to get overlooked. The simple fact is, the (original) Canon F-1 had absolutely zero sex appeal to the amateur with enough money to afford it. Prior to its AE-1 swinging a wrecking ball that destabilized the entire camera market, Canon was spinning its wheels with well-built but basically ho-hum (to amateurs) SLRs like the FTb, TX, and EF. These were competitive with Minolta SRTs, Pentax Spotmatics and Nikon's Nikkormat line, but didn't particularly stand out on the camera shop shelf and scream "kewl kid". This is the crux of why the original F-1 sometimes seems to be forgotten, while there's a rabid cult-like following for the Nikon F2. Sales numbers = awareness, awareness + larger number of available surviving examples boosts cult status decades later.

Photographers who weren't around in that era and old enough to be interested in cameras really have no conception of the emotional headlock Nikon's F and esp F2 had on the imaginations of 35mm SLR buyers: they were THE aspirational SLR cameras of the early to mid 1970s, period, no credible competitors whatsoever. Amateurs were so desperate to be associated with Nikon, even their idiotic strategy of naming their non-pro cameras "Nikkormat" (WTH?) saddled with severely cropped off-center viewfinders succeeded wildly. The only thing more common than protests on college campuses in the '70s were the student-wielded Nikkormats documenting them.

That is not to say the original mechanical Canon F-1 (and F-1n revision) wasn't a worthy option for professionals vs the Nikon F2: it most definitely was. To a certain degree, Nikon was trapped by its runaway success with original F, which constrained how imaginative they could get with a followup F2. I love the F2, its my favorite camera of all time, but it was forced to carry on some quirks from the original F instead of being entirely clean-sheet. Canon cleverly seized on this, "correcting" several of the glaring deficiencies inherent in the F/F2 design, and boy did they promote these improvements. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to sell the F-1 in quantities that would enable cult status on par with the Nikon F2 decades later. The Canon F-1 sold successfully into the pro market to photographers who recognized and exploited its advantages over the Nikon, but stalled there. Nikon, OTOH, easily sold a few hundred thousand F2s to amateurs, while virtually owning the pro market.

Part of the problem was amateurs didn't care about features so much as they cared about status, so the excellent solutions and updates embodied in the F-1 didn't grab their attention. For example, most would never interchange their prism for another viewfinder, so Canon's beautifully-engineered slide-off finder system and in-body meter that retained metering with all possible finders was met with crickets. Ditto the advanced F-1 motor drive with more versatile power and grip options, and integral sync with the camera shutter cycle: most amateurs were never gonna buy a motor that cost more than their camera did, so this too sailed right over their heads. Canon also bet the farm on a semi-spot selective area metering pattern in the F-1, a boon for pros but fatal for amateur usability in those days

Canon launched some nifty F-1 ad campaigns in Popular Photography etc, featuring younger hipper pros doing super-cool work like shooting album covers for The Who, but it didn't increase sales to non-pros by much. And Nikon somehow kept making lemonade out of lemons with the F2, keeping it evergreen and ever popular. You say the F2 sucks because it can't meter with all its viewfinders? True, buuuttt... have you seen our snazzy new meter prism with two big red LED meter lights that reads down to available darkness without a huge clumsy booster? Bang... zoom... F2S sales soared. A couple years later: have you seen our newer smaller LED meter prism with 3 count 'em 3 LEDs and (wait for it) memory-free silicon cells? Usher in the legend of the Nikon F2SB and F2AS.

Canon couldn't even get status traction from its F-1 FD lenses being engineered from scratch for shutter priority automation when used on the F-1 with its AE finder, because Nikon offered the most PT Barnum sideshow attraction ever seen before or since: the DS EE accessory, a little motor that attached to the F2 lens mount and physically turned the aperture ring of all Nikon lenses according to the meter reading. Slow as hell AE, burned thru its battery within 40 mins, but golly gee was it trippy and fun to play with (and looked hella better than the gigantic Frankenstein-esque AE finder attached to the Canon F-1).

History repeated itself somewhat when Canon replaced the all-mechanical F-1 with the more advanced electromechanical F-1 New. Compared to the Nikon F3, the Canon F-1 New was so much more advanced and versatile it wasn't even funny. But Nikon managed to get their F3 to market a few months earlier, soaking up all the attention for "first professional electronic AE SLR". The F3 was as much a sensation with amateurs as the F2 was, if not more so: it sold faster than Nikon could make it. Personally, I can't stand the F3: the dismal meter display alone is enough to make me want to take up another hobby, but everybody who could afford one wanted it in 1980 (and its still one of the hottest second hand film cameras). Poor Canon was once again shunted aside into also-ran lane: existing Canon pros loved the F-1 New, some pros on the fence about the F3 jumped ship to it, and it picked up much greater amateur appeal from association with the AE-1.

But it didn't sell in crazy numbers like the F3. Maybe because once again Canon made a camera pitched fully at pros with no glamorous compromises to entice amateurs. It had multiple AE modes, but some required an optional prism or buying a motor drive. You could choose among three meter patterns, but doing so required changing the focus screen. Meter display in all modes was far more informative and readable than the F3, but the F3 could be used by a clueless dentist to make passable exposures every time without pre-configuring a particular F-1 kit. More crucially, the clueless dentist could swing the F3 boastfully off his shoulder on his friend's yacht and get an awed reaction, while few of his cronies would have recognized an F-1 New (they might have mistaken it for an A-1 tho, and applauded that).

It took the rise of autofocus for Canon to finally free itself from Nikon's shadow in the pro as well as amateur markets with its entire camera lineup. It also took a lot of guts, and a lot of luck with their bet that the future lay in fully electronic lens couplings, but they ended up dominating the camera field and reducing proud Nikon to seemingly permanent catch up mode (Nikon sometimes has the edge in technology and a few lenses, but it never shifts their market position anywhere close to Canon's). So Canon got its revenge after all, eh?

 

[logan2z]

In these Canon F-1 vs Nikon F2 discussions, the importance of the well-heeled amateur market to sales and popular awareness of nominally "pro" cameras in the '70s always seems to get overlooked. The simple fact is, the (original) Canon F-1 had absolutely zero sex appeal to the amateur with enough money to afford it. Prior to its AE-1 swinging a wrecking ball that destabilized the entire camera market, Canon was spinning its wheels with well-built but basically ho-hum (to amateurs) SLRs like the FTb, TX, and EF. These were competitive with Minolta SRTs, Pentax Spotmatics and Nikon's Nikkormat line, but didn't particularly stand out on the camera shop shelf and scream "kewl kid". This is the crux of why the original F-1 sometimes seems to be forgotten, while there's a rabid cult-like following for the Nikon F2. Sales numbers = awareness, awareness + larger number of available surviving examples boosts cult status decades later.

Photographers who weren't around in that era and old enough to be interested in cameras really have no conception of the emotional headlock Nikon's F and esp F2 had on the imaginations of 35mm SLR buyers: they were THE aspirational SLR cameras of the early to mid 1970s, period, no credible competitors whatsoever. Amateurs were so desperate to be associated with Nikon, even their idiotic strategy of naming their non-pro cameras "Nikkormat" (WTH?) saddled with severely cropped off-center viewfinders succeeded wildly. The only thing more common than protests on college campuses in the '70s were the student-wielded Nikkormats documenting them.

That is not to say the original mechanical Canon F-1 (and F-1n revision) wasn't a worthy option for professionals vs the Nikon F2: it most definitely was. To a certain degree, Nikon was trapped by its runaway success with original F, which constrained how imaginative they could get with a followup F2. I love the F2, its my favorite camera of all time, but it was forced to carry on some quirks from the original F instead of being entirely clean-sheet. Canon cleverly seized on this, "correcting" several of the glaring deficiencies inherent in the F/F2 design, and boy did they promote these improvements. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to sell the F-1 in quantities that would enable cult status on par with the Nikon F2 decades later. The Canon F-1 sold successfully into the pro market to photographers who recognized and exploited its advantages over the Nikon, but stalled there. Nikon, OTOH, easily sold a few hundred thousand F2s to amateurs, while virtually owning the pro market.

Part of the problem was amateurs didn't care about features so much as they cared about status, so the excellent solutions and updates embodied in the F-1 didn't grab their attention. For example, most would never interchange their prism for another viewfinder, so Canon's beautifully-engineered slide-off finder system and in-body meter that retained metering with all possible finders was met with crickets. Ditto the advanced F-1 motor drive with more versatile power and grip options, and integral sync with the camera shutter cycle: most amateurs were never gonna buy a motor that cost more than their camera did, so this too sailed right over their heads. Canon also bet the farm on a semi-spot selective area metering pattern in the F-1, a boon for pros but fatal for amateur usability in those days

Canon launched some nifty F-1 ad campaigns in Popular Photography etc, featuring younger hipper pros doing super-cool work like shooting album covers for The Who, but it didn't increase sales to non-pros by much. And Nikon somehow kept making lemonade out of lemons with the F2, keeping it evergreen and ever popular. You say the F2 sucks because it can't meter with all its viewfinders? True, buuuttt... have you seen our snazzy new meter prism with two big red LED meter lights that reads down to available darkness without a huge clumsy booster? Bang.. zooom... F2S sales soared. A couple years later: have you seen our newer smaller LED meter prism with 3 count 'em 3 LEDs and (wait for it) memory-free silicon cells? Usher in the legend of the Nikon F2SB and F2AS.

Canon couldn't even get status traction from its F-1 FD lenses being engineered from scratch for shutter priority automation when used on the F-1 with its AE finder, because Nikon offered the most PT Barnum sideshow attraction ever seen before or since: the DS EE accessory, a little motor that attached to the F2 lens mount and literally turns the aperture ring of all Nikon lenses according to the meter reading. Slow as hell AE, burned thru its battery within 40 mins, but boy oh boy was it trippy and fun to play with (and looked hella better than the gigantic Frankenstein-esque AE finder attached to the Canon F-1).

History repeated itself somewhat when Canon replaced the all-mechanical F-1 with the more advanced electromechanical F-1 New. Compared to the Nikon F3, the Canon F-1 New was so much more advanced and versatile it wasn't even funny. But Nikon managed to get their F3 to market a few months earlier, soaking up all the attention for "first professional electronic AE SLR". The F3 was as much a sensation with amateurs as the F2 was, if not more so: it sold faster than Nikon could make it. Personally, I can't stand the F3: the dismal meter display alone is enough to make me want to take up another hobby, but everybody who could afford one wanted it in 1980 (and its still one of the hottest second hand film cameras). Poor Canon was once again shunted aside into also-ran lane: existing Canon pros loved the F-1 New, some pros on the fence about the F3 jumped ship to it, and it picked up much greater amateur appeal from association with the AE-1.

But it didn't sell in crazy numbers like the F3. Maybe because once again Canon made a camera pitched fully at pros with no glamorous compromises to entice amateurs. It had multiple AE modes, but some required an optional prism or buying a motor drive. You could choose among three meter patterns, but doing so required changing the focus screen. Meter display in all modes was far more informative and readable than the F3, but the F3 could be used by a clueless dentist to make passable exposures every time without pre-configuring a particular F-1 kit. More crucially, the clueless dentist could swing the F3 boastfully off his shoulder on his friend's yacht and get an awed reaction, while few of his cronies would have recognized an F-1 New (they might have mistaken it for an A-1 tho, and applauded that).

It took the rise of autofocus for Canon to finally free itself from Nikon's shadow in the pro as well as amateur markets with its entire camera lineup. I t took a lot of guts, and a lot of luck with their bet that the future lay in fully electronic lens couplings, but they ended up dominating the camera field and reducing proud Nikon to seemingly permanent catch up mode (Nikon sometimes has the edge in technology and a few lenses, but it never shifts their market position anywhere close to Canon's). So Canon got its revenge after all, eh?

Great writeup, thanks for taking the time to post it.

 

[CMoore]

In these Canon F-1 vs Nikon F2 discussions, the importance of the well-heeled amateur market to sales and popular awareness of nominally "pro" cameras in the '70s always seems to get overlooked. The simple fact is, the (original) Canon F-1 had absolutely zero sex appeal to the amateur with enough money to afford it. Prior to its AE-1 swinging a wrecking ball that destabilized the entire camera market, Canon was spinning its wheels with well-built but basically ho-hum (to amateurs) SLRs like the FTb, TX, and EF. These were competitive with Minolta SRTs, Pentax Spotmatics and Nikon's Nikkormat line, but didn't particularly stand out on the camera shop shelf and scream "kewl kid". This is the crux of why the original F-1 sometimes seems to be forgotten, while there's a rabid cult-like following for the Nikon F2. Sales numbers = awareness, awareness + larger number of available surviving examples boosts cult status decades later.

Photographers who weren't around in that era and old enough to be interested in cameras really have no conception of the emotional headlock Nikon's F and esp F2 had on the imaginations of 35mm SLR buyers: they were THE aspirational SLR cameras of the early to mid 1970s, period, no credible competitors whatsoever. Amateurs were so desperate to be associated with Nikon, even their idiotic strategy of naming their non-pro cameras "Nikkormat" (WTH?) saddled with severely cropped off-center viewfinders succeeded wildly. The only thing more common than protests on college campuses in the '70s were the student-wielded Nikkormats documenting them.

That is not to say the original mechanical Canon F-1 (and F-1n revision) wasn't a worthy option for professionals vs the Nikon F2: it most definitely was. To a certain degree, Nikon was trapped by its runaway success with original F, which constrained how imaginative they could get with a followup F2. I love the F2, its my favorite camera of all time, but it was forced to carry on some quirks from the original F instead of being entirely clean-sheet. Canon cleverly seized on this, "correcting" several of the glaring deficiencies inherent in the F/F2 design, and boy did they promote these improvements. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to sell the F-1 in quantities that would enable cult status on par with the Nikon F2 decades later. The Canon F-1 sold successfully into the pro market to photographers who recognized and exploited its advantages over the Nikon, but stalled there. Nikon, OTOH, easily sold a few hundred thousand F2s to amateurs, while virtually owning the pro market.

Part of the problem was amateurs didn't care about features so much as they cared about status, so the excellent solutions and updates embodied in the F-1 didn't grab their attention. For example, most would never interchange their prism for another viewfinder, so Canon's beautifully-engineered slide-off finder system and in-body meter that retained metering with all possible finders was met with crickets. Ditto the advanced F-1 motor drive with more versatile power and grip options, and integral sync with the camera shutter cycle: most amateurs were never gonna buy a motor that cost more than their camera did, so this too sailed right over their heads. Canon also bet the farm on a semi-spot selective area metering pattern in the F-1, a boon for pros but fatal for amateur usability in those days

Canon launched some nifty F-1 ad campaigns in Popular Photography etc, featuring younger hipper pros doing super-cool work like shooting album covers for The Who, but it didn't increase sales to non-pros by much. And Nikon somehow kept making lemonade out of lemons with the F2, keeping it evergreen and ever popular. You say the F2 sucks because it can't meter with all its viewfinders? True, buuuttt... have you seen our snazzy new meter prism with two big red LED meter lights that reads down to available darkness without a huge clumsy booster? Bang.. zooom... F2S sales soared. A couple years later: have you seen our newer smaller LED meter prism with 3 count 'em 3 LEDs and (wait for it) memory-free silicon cells? Usher in the legend of the Nikon F2SB and F2AS.

Canon couldn't even get status traction from its F-1 FD lenses being engineered from scratch for shutter priority automation when used on the F-1 with its AE finder, because Nikon offered the most PT Barnum sideshow attraction ever seen before or since: the DS EE accessory, a little motor that attached to the F2 lens mount and literally turns the aperture ring of all Nikon lenses according to the meter reading. Slow as hell AE, burned thru its battery within 40 mins, but boy oh boy was it trippy and fun to play with (and looked hella better than the gigantic Frankenstein-esque AE finder attached to the Canon F-1).

History repeated itself somewhat when Canon replaced the all-mechanical F-1 with the more advanced electromechanical F-1 New. Compared to the Nikon F3, the Canon F-1 New was so much more advanced and versatile it wasn't even funny. But Nikon managed to get their F3 to market a few months earlier, soaking up all the attention for "first professional electronic AE SLR". The F3 was as much a sensation with amateurs as the F2 was, if not more so: it sold faster than Nikon could make it. Personally, I can't stand the F3: the dismal meter display alone is enough to make me want to take up another hobby, but everybody who could afford one wanted it in 1980 (and its still one of the hottest second hand film cameras). Poor Canon was once again shunted aside into also-ran lane: existing Canon pros loved the F-1 New, some pros on the fence about the F3 jumped ship to it, and it picked up much greater amateur appeal from association with the AE-1.

But it didn't sell in crazy numbers like the F3. Maybe because once again Canon made a camera pitched fully at pros with no glamorous compromises to entice amateurs. It had multiple AE modes, but some required an optional prism or buying a motor drive. You could choose among three meter patterns, but doing so required changing the focus screen. Meter display in all modes was far more informative and readable than the F3, but the F3 could be used by a clueless dentist to make passable exposures every time without pre-configuring a particular F-1 kit. More crucially, the clueless dentist could swing the F3 boastfully off his shoulder on his friend's yacht and get an awed reaction, while few of his cronies would have recognized an F-1 New (they might have mistaken it for an A-1 tho, and applauded that).

It took the rise of autofocus for Canon to finally free itself from Nikon's shadow in the pro as well as amateur markets with its entire camera lineup. I t took a lot of guts, and a lot of luck with their bet that the future lay in fully electronic lens couplings, but they ended up dominating the camera field and reducing proud Nikon to seemingly permanent catch up mode (Nikon sometimes has the edge in technology and a few lenses, but it never shifts their market position anywhere close to Canon's). So Canon got its revenge after all, eh?

That was interesting..... AND entertaining.
It is telling how Canon "dominated" the coming days of 35mm AF SLR cameras.
Minolta made a good start.
It seems like Canon was ubiquitous, circa 1990. A lot of pro sporting events were swimming with White, Canon Lens.
Things change

 

[4season]

If I knew how to predict pop-culture trends, I'd be a wealthy man. But IMO, if Canon F-1 sale prices seem underwhelming, prices for garden-variety pro Nikons aren't very impressive either compared to say, prices on Nikon FM3A, a consumer / enthusiast product. Am guessing that many of the features which distinguished yesteryear's professional cameras simply aren't relevant to many of today's buyers. For example, who cares that professional cameras can be outfitted with higher-speed motor drives, when no one uses motor drives anymore? I imagine that many of today's buyers are seeking a slower, more deliberate shooting experience, not the screech of a 1980s motor drive.

 

[mcrokkorx]

prices for garden-variety pro Nikons aren't very impressive either compared to say, prices on Nikon FM3A, a consumer / enthusiast product.

Ah, but remember the FM3A is out in Nikon La La Exotic Land along with the FM2T, so asking/selling prices can't be logically compared with garden-variety cameras of any make or model (unless its another goofball low-volume esoteric). The FM3A sells for a princely sum primarily because its a fairly rare (thus collectible) camera with the scarce, cult-y (and again highly collectible) feature of AE electro-mechanical shutter thats fully operational at all speeds with or without battery.

Am guessing that many of the features which distinguished yesteryear's professional cameras simply aren't relevant to many of today's buyers. For example, who cares that professional cameras can be outfitted with higher-speed motor drives, when no one uses motor drives anymore? I imagine that many of today's buyers are seeking a slower, more deliberate shooting experience, not the screech of a 1980s motor drive.

The marketplace can be deceptive and tricky today. Nobody really cares about the motors anymore, true, but pretty much every all-mechanical (and some electronic) "pro" camera is either a sought-after hipster cult item or flat-out collectible due to dwindling available examples. Original Canon F-1 slots in there: they moldered on eBay for a long time, but interest perked up a few years ago after collectors finally cast their greedy eyes on once-common early '70s masterpieces. When it became apparent there weren't very many truly pristine examples of Canon F-1 floating around anymore (because they were almost exclusively owned by sports pros and photojournalists who beat the crap out of them), prices on clean ones crept steadily upward. As the clean ones disappeared from dealer shelves, prices began to rise on beaters too. Something similar happened to the Minolta XK: second-hand dealers couldn't give that thing away for decades, now suddenly its become collectible as the peak of Minolta's '70s era. Ditto Topcon Supers.

Nikon pro models span the price range depending on specific variations, becoming more desirable as user cameras or collectibles depending on factors like date of mfr (a big deal for F collectors), version of meter prism attached (needle display or LED, CdS cells or Silicon Blue, significant for F2 enthusiasts), and overall functional/cosmetic condition (F3/F4). A mid-period Nikon F with Photomic meter prism and typical dead metering may sell as low as $150, ditto a Nikon F2 Photomic with similar prism, but a working Nikon F2AS or F3 will easily sell for triple that amount. The hipster, nostalgia, and back-to-basics, I-wanna-work-slowly buyers *love* the "pro" SLRs because they omit most of the fripperies found on amateur cameras, including (shudder) AF. It never occurs to most of these buyers a motor drive even existed for their "precious".

If you wanna see truly terrifying price appreciation over the past 18 months, look at the medium format market. Prices doubled and tripled on Hasselblad, Mamiya RB67, Bronica SQ, and Pentax 67 gear. Yikes.

 

[CMoore]

Ah, but remember the FM3A is out in Nikon La La Exotic Land along with the FM2T, so asking/selling prices can't be logically compared with garden-variety cameras of any make or model (unless its another goofball low-volume esoteric). The FM3A sells for a princely sum primarily because its a fairly rare (thus collectible) camera with the scarce, cult-y (and again highly collectible) feature of AE electro-mechanical shutter thats fully operational at all speeds with or without battery.



The marketplace can be deceptive and tricky today. Nobody really cares about the motors anymore, true, but pretty much every all-mechanical (and some electronic) "pro" camera is either a sought-after hipster cult item or flat-out collectible due to dwindling available examples. Original Canon F-1 slots in there: they moldered on eBay for a long time, but interest perked up a few years ago after collectors finally cast their greedy eyes on once-common early '70s masterpieces. When it became apparent there weren't very many truly pristine examples of Canon F-1 floating around anymore (because they were almost exclusively owned by sports pros and photojournalists who beat the crap out of them), prices on clean ones crept steadily upward. As the clean ones disappeared from dealer shelves, prices began to rise on beaters too. Something similar happened to the Minolta XK: second-hand dealers couldn't give that thing away for decades, now suddenly its become collectible as the peak of Minolta's '70s era. Ditto Topcon Supers.

Nikon pro models span the price range depending on specific variations, becoming more desirable as user cameras or collectibles depending on factors like date of mfr (a big deal for F collectors), version of meter prism attached (needle display or LED, CdS cells or Silicon Blue, significant for F2 enthusiasts), and overall functional/cosmetic condition (F3/F4). A mid-period Nikon F with Photomic meter prism and typical dead metering may sell as low as $150, ditto a Nikon F2 Photomic with similar prism, but a working Nikon F2AS or F3 will easily sell for triple that amount. The hipster, nostalgia, and back-to-basics, I-wanna-work-slowly buyers *love* the "pro" SLRs because they omit most of the fripperies found on amateur cameras, including (shudder) AF. It never occurs to most of these buyers a motor drive even existed for their "precious".

If you wanna see truly terrifying price appreciation over the past 18 months, look at the medium format market. Prices doubled and tripled on Hasselblad, Mamiya RB67, Bronica SQ, and Pentax 67 gear. Yikes.

There are not that many, so it might be hard to judge..............i bought a pair of F2-S about 5 years ago.
They were more money, but not a whole lot more than a "Photomic"......... but they were quite a bit less than the SB or AS.
I wonder how "Desirable" my S models are now days.?
Probably about the same i guess.?
More than a Photomic but nowhere near the price of an SB or AS.

I never owned the SB or AS, but i have held them.
I realize the meter in my S is not as "Good" as the meter in the other two.............but to be honest, i sort of prefer my Two LED readout better than those in the SB and AS.
Maybe it is just my age. I can see the 2x LED better than the 3 Lights...or maybe i simply never used the SB or AS enough to get used to them, because i never owned one

 

[mcrokkorx]

I realize the meter in my S is not as "Good" as the meter in the other two.............but to be honest, i sort of prefer my Two LED readout better than those in the SB and AS.

The F2S is under appreciated today but was probably the single hottest camera in the world the first year or two after it came out. Nikon was almost perversely giddy at the thought they actually had a camera body + normal lens combo (F2S + 55mm f/1.2) that retailed for over $1000, putting them in the rarefied Leica and Alpa price range. The two red LED arrows are much larger and brighter than the smaller symbols of the SB and AS, which really lights up the aperture and shutter settings in the finder when shooting indoors or at night (very cool).

The biggest drawbacks of the F2S are appearance (that multiplane prism hump is an acquired taste), battery drain, reliability and the usual CdS meter cell aging issues. Battery drain can be managed if you religiously push the film advance lever in after metering, the appearance kinda grows on you after awhile, but the reliability of the electronics and fading CdS response can kill the thing dead as far as usability. So the trick with the F2S is finding one with solid meter response, preferably with a late serial number above 54xxx indicating the most updated circuit modifications.

Nikon revised the F2S/DP2 circuit board at least 7 times during its three years on the market: it sold mostly to amateurs instead of pros, which surprised the hell out of Nikon at first, so they weren't prepared for all the complaints when it was put to typical amateur use and stress. Originally, the DP2 LED meter prism was intended to be sold only as a package deal with the DS1 servo AE attachment, as an exotic specialty accessory for wildlife and surveillance photographers. Nikon had a change of heart last minute and figured development cost would be recouped faster if they could sell a few DP2s as part of a standard camera configuration, which became the F2S and sold far better than they dreamed.

Bringing this back to some Canon F-1 lore, I always thought Canon goofed just a little with the meter sensitivity of the original F-1. It was about a stop or so less sensitive than the comparable F2 Photomic CdS needle-display meter prism. I admired the F-1 tremendously and seriously considered switching over in the early 1990s when FD gear was selling for pennies on the dollar, but I do a lot of low-light work and the F-1 meter would bottom out on me more often than not. The ridiculous and rare Booster finder was too archaic a solution, so I stuck with Nikon and eventually upgraded to the F2AS (which can literally meter a black cat in a coal bin at midnight). The Canon F-1 New had more sensitive SB meter cells like the F2AS, but it didn't grab me the way the original F-1 did (the early F-1 had a feeling of unsurpassed build quality, the F-1 New didn't quite make that impression on me).

 

[benjiboy]

the early F-1 had a feeling of unsurpassed build quality, the F-1 New didn't quite make that impression on me).

I have 2 Canon F 1n's and 2 Canon New F1- AE's I have been shooting with for more than 25 years, and I have never found any significant difference in the build quality, to my mind the only fault both cameras have is that they are both heavy, and with advancing age I can no longer carry two bodies.

 

[Chan Tran]

My guess is because it's predecessor - the Canonflex, was as spectacular a failure as the Nikon F was a success . . .

Selection .43 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Obviously, Nikon's marketing did a pretty good job

I think that the Canoflex was a failure so that when I sold mine a few years back Ebay refused to give me the money right away until the buyer got it. They said too many people tried to sell non existence Canonflex.

 

[benjiboy]

A factor that nobody has mentioned is that Canon was making the "L " range of professional lenses, that no other leading lens manufacturers at that time could approach in design and image quality that featured low dispersion glass and aspheric elements that included a 14mm f2.8L, a 24mm f1.4L,55mm f1.2L,85mm 1.2L, and a 20 -35 mm f 3.5 L zoom.
I own some of these lenses in the FD mount that Canon still manufactures in their A/F versions, and I can assure you that they have never been equaled.

 

[mcrokkorx]

A factor that nobody has mentioned is that Canon was making the "L " range of professional lenses, that no other leading lens manufacturers at that time could approach in design and image quality that featured low dispersion glass and aspheric elements that included a 14mm f2.8L, a 24mm f1.4L,55mm f1.2L,85mm 1.2L, and a 20 -35 mm f 3.5 L zoom.
I own some of these lenses in the FD mount that Canon still manufactures in their A/F versions, and I can assure you that they have never been equaled.

Nobody mentions the Canon FD "L" lenses as a factor because when they were current they had an insignificant impact on Canon camera sales. In these historical discussions, one always has to keep the broader context in mind. The "L" (mostly named "AL", actually) lenses were quite an achievement, the crown jewels of Canon's FD era. But most of the lineup was a byproduct of Canon's ongoing industrial aspherical and LD research: halo products to boost and re-position Canon's reputation than actually saleable, profitable products with any major impact on the bottom line or market share. The (more practical) "L" focal lengths sold OK to existing Canon pros, who certainly appreciated the upgrades, but they weren't a particularly effective lure to boost overall Canon body sales. You have to zoom out to the larger picture. How did Nikon AIS respond to the FD "L" lenses? Er, they didn't respond: at all. The "L" series didn't have a huge effect on the balance of Canon F-1 vs Nikon F2/F3 pro market share, so (aside from the 300/2.8) Nikon simply shrugged it off as a non-threat.

Again. looking at the larger picture: we're talking about the 1970s. Consumer (and pro) incomes, economic inflation rates, perceived value of ultra-pricey premium lenses, the types of photography that predominated in the film era, etc, all conspired to muffle the virtues of the "L" series as a selling point for the FD system (which Canon didn't distinctly market as "L" until later anyway). We were still a couple years ahead of the "Yuppie" phenomenon, and decades ahead of todays funny money being thrown around like it was nothing, with non-pros actually buying multiple $2K lenses as if they were candy bars.

That was not remotely common in the FD era, when amateurs rarely took the 50mm off their camera and if they did it was to slap on a cheap Vivitar 28 or 135. All Canon needed to keep pros happy was a good 20mm for the PJs, good 80-200 zoom and 300 f/2.8 for the sports guys, a fast 85 for portraits/stage, a decent macro, and a couple decent fast-ish wide and normal focal lengths. The only lens pro photographers would pay out the butt for was the 300mm 2.8, so thats the one that slowly started the ball rolling for Canon attracting more pros over the fence, and Nikon did clumsily scramble to address that specific threat. But few in the '70s were running to drop a ton on something like a 24mm f/1.4. Most of the pro market was price sensitive, and back then only Leica could command prices from amateurs dramatically above the going rate for standard Canon/Nikon/Pentax/Minolta glass (for all the good that did Leica, which spent the latter 1970s/early '80s circling the drain before re-organizing with a vengeance as a jewelry mfr).

All of that changed when Canon made the bold decision to throw FD under the bus in favor of a clean-sheet new AF mount with EOS. Practically overnight, the superiority of Canon's in-lens AF coupled with the optical performance of their EF "L" 300mm f/2.8 blew Nikon out of the water. The tide of publicity was witheringly critical of Nikon. Deservedly so, if we Nikon enthusiasts are honest: Nikon had been coasting for years with a lot of uninspiring but adequate glass (and their revoltingly engineered, poorly-received first-gen AF optics embodied all of the compromises of AF with none of the advantages). The AF versions of the Canon "L" 85mm f/1.2, 55mm f/1.2 and others garnered a level of attention, press coverage, prestige and sales volume never achieved by their FD predecessors. The EF "L" series remains a major factor in promoting Canon camera sales right up thru today, but during the FD era the "L" lenses (other than fluorite teles) mostly slipped under the radar, with a negligible effect on Canon camera sales. At least the FD "L" lenses are finally getting wide appreciation now as sought-after adapted glass for mirrorless digital bodies: you can't pick them up cheap anymore.