Happy thoughts, that's how I felt as I was going through the just uploaded scanned images taken with the Canon AE-1 Program fitted with a Canon FDn 50mm F1.8. Images from this roll of film, my first with the AE-1 Program, are purely random, taken in and around the house, done with no specifics in mind.
The AE-1 Program turned out to be a joy to use actually. The very compact body came with a huge and bright finder, one of the largest ever made, I had no problem holding the camera up with one hand and focusing was effortless with the left hand (I was with a bit of luck here as the focusing ring on the 50mm f/1.8 is still silky smooth).
Introduced as a successor to the Canon AE-1 which was first introduced in 1976, the Canon AE-1 Program (1981) is acknowledged as one of the most popular cameras of all time. The 35mm SLR saw the introduction of the Program AE mode, which enables both the shutter speed and aperture automatically by the camera. The metering is slightly biased towards the shutter speed setting.
The Canon FDn 50mm f/1.8, performance-wise, is no slouch either. It was the lightest, and the cheapest, of all Canon FD interchangeable lenses, and the only lens in the Canon FDn series that came with only the S.C. (Spectra Coating) coating as opposed to the S.S.C. which all the others had. Handling, however, was superb and its solid reputation for stable picture quality and sharp, crisp pictures really shows in the images here. Couldn't really ask for more here, enjoy the show, folks.
Since 15 years ago, I have eben building up a small collection of AE-bodies around my old Canon-FD lenses and I join you in your
ReplyDeleteopinion about this "bread&butter" camera of the 80s.I left Canon in the 90s because of frustration about the T90 model, and I'm very happy with my AEs, even if one of them suffers from the famous "asthmatic" shutter noise.