Background and Identification
Canon Inc. is a Japanese corporation that specializes in optical, imaging, and industrial products such as cameras, lenses, medical equipment, printers, scanners, and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Canon officially discontinued their last film SLR camera, the EOS-1V, in 2018, after more than 80 years of producing film cameras. Canon produced a long line of rangefinders and SLR cameras, but after Canon’s first digital camera, the RC-701, was released in 1984, Canon began to focus more on the digital camera market. The EOS-1V was kept alive specifically for professional film photographers and was Canon’s only film camera as of 2018.
A single-lens reflex camera (SLR) is a camera that uses a mirror and prism system that allows the photographer to view through the lens to see what will be photographed. With rangefinder and twin-lens reflex cameras, the viewed image could be very different from the final image. When the shutter button is pressed to take a photograph, the mirror flips out of the light path, allowing light to pass through the light receptor, which allows the image to be captured.
Canon SLR cameras include the name “Canon” printed on the front of the device, generally in white font. The model name and number are generally included in the bottom right-hand corner of the camera’s front face.