Yet Another Camera
I went to a party a couple of nights ago, and a friend that follows this blog asked “how many cameras do you have?”. I had to guess, +/- 10 since I have not counted them. Lots of small cheap and often nasty point and shoot film cameras.
Today’s post is the product of my latest acquisition, and while cheap to me it is not nasty at all. I was given this Canon AE-1 Program with FD 50/1.8 lens, which is why I can say truthfully it is cheap. There is a lot of information about this camera on the web, so I won’t bore you with the technical stuff this time.
I have run the first test roll through the camera – the light was awful so most of these pictures are not nearly as good as they could be. The rest of the roll is part of my 52 Rolls project and can be found in a post called A Camera Gift; that post includes a couple of nice pictures from the Ross Bay cemetery, more and better from the storm drain and some of my cooperative son indoors.
To see an enlarged version of any image in the gallery below, click on it and then navigate to others with the arrows or with swiping.
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Roll 47: Canon AE-1 Program, Canon FD 50/1.8 lens,
no-name colour print ISO400 film, commercially developed, scanned with Epson V700.
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burnt embers 
I think the AE1 was one of the most popular cameras of all time. I liked them myself and thought seriously of switching from Nikon but I was too locked in. Good luck with it, you may have it for quite a while.
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Hi Ken – you did well to stick with Nikon at this time. It was not too long after this camera was made that Canon moved to the EOS lens system, making all that wonderful FD glass ‘obsolete’. It would have been really frustrating if you had just switched over.
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There are still FD users who work themselves into fury when you bring up the FD to EF mount transition. I personally bought the first EOS 650 I saw and jumped into the current century with one single purchase! Nikon had nothing like it at that time… but going back to the AE-1P, really a pretty camera! I got one from a friend free like you and shot it quite a bit. Love the 50/1.8 that it came with. No slouch in performance at all. Mine had that nasty squeal, but still worked fine. My artsie daughter fell in love with the camera and finally stole it from me. She shoots it occasionally, but really it’s just a cool object to her at this point. Enjoy your new cheap camera! 🙂
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Funny you should mention your daughter. Mine has been asking me to put together a film camera for her to use and I had been working on an equivalent Pentax, but it’s light meter is a bit off. So, it might be that this one ends up with her.
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There is a certain classic hipster appeal to these shiny SLRs! I also let my daughter “steal” my Diana Mini which she loves. I also bought here the Holga lens for her Olympus Micro 4/3 digital for a more highbred experience! 🙂
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Yes. Our daughters would probably get along. Mine took photography in high school with film and really wants to get back to it.
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A Nice camera – although I recall that they can have a problem with unreliable metering cct’s (My daughter’s and a friend both had problems) easily sorted by a competent technician.
I know what you means when asked how many cameras do you have 🙂 especially film – looking for a nice fair priced Nikon F and that should complete the collection…….. that maybe gives an indication.
It’s great fun and for film cameras (mostly) cheap compared to even a couple of years ago, also more choice in film than I would have expected given all the dire prognostications.
David.
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Thanks for the information David. I think they have quite a lot of plastic parts which can wear down with time. But I don’t believe this camera was used much so time may be on my side with this one. I parted with an F2 not long ago – part of a deal to get something I wanted more. I never even ran a roll of film through it, had it for a few weeks before I exchanged it. But it seemed like a great solid camera – bought it for a low price and got twice as much as I paid for it which was the main incentive for parting with it. It was almost like too much of a camera for me at that time. Now I regret it a bit since I am trending towards higher end film cameras.
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The FD lenses for the Canon are great & very cheap because Canon unlike Nikon, changed their mount.
Sold an f2! … one of the best & all hand assembled, they can also be refurbished like all things clockwork….. hay-ho live and learn as they say.
David.
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Yeah, that F2, dumb eh? I don’t even recall exactly what it was I was exchanging for! A lens I am pretty sure.
I’ve seen some pretty reasonably priced FD lenses around, but they can be used on the mirrorless cameras and have gone up in price with the advent of high quality mirrorless in the past few years.
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