Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

In CANONFLEX1959, Nikon released the large F camera, which made the Nikon F series SLR brilliant. Before the Nikon F release, Canon quietly released a SLR, which was called the R series. Unfortunately, this series did not succeed.

Some people in future generations say that Canon users are six family slaves, Canon six change their mouth, regardless of user feelings, while L39 for R port is the first change, but this statement is actually exaggerated. When Canon launched the R series SLR, its side shaft products were still being developed. In fact, we can see that in recent years, Canon and Nikon have changed their interfaces one after another. In fact, in the past, changing ports often represents a commercial dilemma.

Let's take a look at this camera first, and this camera also reflects that although Canon was a weak manufacturer in the 1950s, it always had a lot of ideas.

The Canon machine, called CANONFLEX, was released in May 1959, months before the Nikon Big F, and it was Canon's first SLR camera.

At that time, the Japanese SLR was mainly based on the basic structure and design logic of Zeiss SLR, while the operation retained a large number of German camera habits.

And Canon's DSLR has many innovations in operation.

CANONFLEX's film-passing mechanism is located at the bottom, which is a very bold design. Passing the film at the bottom is not uncommon. Leica has a fast-passing mechanism for a long time, and the design of this camera is also logically fast-passing.

But the general fast-pass film is linear, but the CANONFLEX film is still curved, in fact, it is not convenient to operate, which is considered to be a big disadvantage of this machine.

The top of the CANONFLEX is removable, but I didn't find a replacement viewfinder in all my materials, and it wasn't mentioned in the brochure or brochure of that year. The focus screen is fixed by screws, and it is not said that it can be replaced.

I personally think that Canon may have reserved a photometric system or a photometric top here, but the photometric top is over before it comes out. However, it is also possible that Canon has reserved room to replace the viewfinder, but the product is too short-lived to develop.

The CANONFLEX light meter is an external light meter, and the fuselage itself is mechanically free of electricity. The light meter is hung on the fuselage and can be linked with the shutter disc, which is also considered to be a very bad design, which makes it inconvenient to hold hands. Of course, this is only a stopgap measure, because when the camera was launched, there was no concept of TTL.

However, CANONFLEX still achieves the function of maximum aperture on some lenses. No matter what aperture is used, the scene is the largest aperture and shrinks when shooting, which is a relatively advanced mechanical function.

The CANONFLEX costs 59000 yen with a 501.8 lens, while the Nikon F has a 502.0 lens of 67000 yen, which is more expensive than Canon, but the large F is a highly finished camera, and Nikon has completely abandoned the side axis to move towards a SLR.

Compared with the big F, although the mechanical performance of the CANONFLEX is not inferior, but its design defects, inconvenient to use, fewer lenses and other problems are constantly exposed, Canon is not determined to let go of the side axle and continue to fight on two fronts.

In the end, the camera was produced for only one year, with only 14000 units produced.

After the failure of R, Canon continued its efforts to save costs, immediately abandoned the scheme of exchanging viewfinders, and launched the RP camera and R2000 camera in 1960, neither of which could replace the viewfinder. The RP camera is a simplified version of the CANONFLEX. It has no T-door and is cheaper at 48000 yen. At the same time, it also launched a version of R2000 with a 1amp 2000 shutter speed, which can be regarded as a fine-tuning of the fuselage. The R2000 is more than 70 grams lighter than the prototype.

However, the response of R2000 was even worse than that of CANONFLEX. 1960 was the year of the outbreak of the Japanese SLR, and people were used to making films at the top, so the Canon R series suffered a fiasco.

Unwilling to lose, Canon made a last-ditch attempt to launch the fourth and last camera RM in the R series in 1962.

The performance of the RM camera is the same as the previous body, but obviously learned the lesson, gave up the bottom of the film cool techs, but to use the design of the hidden film, I do not know what the Canon designer and the film maker this thing has any deep hatred.

The appearance of the RM is very stylish, and the flat head design doesn't look like a DSLR.

This machine has a photometric mechanism, the fuselage is not charged, photometry uses but the more popular photovoltaic technology, is the board on the front of the fuselage that you see. It turned out to be an impractical design that reduced camera efficiency.

The result of RM was still a fiasco, and you will see some popular technologies on FX in 1964 after the launch of the F-Series in 1964, but Canon's 1960s was destined to be bitter.

Also on sale with RM is a shot, which is also charged with the task of turning the tide, 581.2.

This head can only find one picture on GOOGLE. This is even more mysterious than Nikon's. There are a total of 14 shots in the R series, and some lenses are iterated because not every lens can automatically shrink the aperture.

The R series is a fleeting series of Canon. Canon launched the new series F series in 1964 and stopped the development of the L39 side shaft in 1965.

Although the R series failed, for Canon, it opened up their determination to embark on the DSLR path. More than a decade later, Canon launched the classic F1 professional 135 SLR in 1971. Later, the trapezoidal viewfinder style of Canon camera also began with the R series.

This article is from the official Wechat account: film fan club (ID:jiaojuanmi), author: Shanghai Old Tortoise

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