Canon Film Camera

Film based cameras have been in existence for well over a century with the first flexible film being developed by Eastman Kodak in 1885.

Canon have the advantage of instant viewing and printing of the pictures taken by downloading them on to a computer or directly connecting to a printer. But purists say that the quality of pictures taken with a digital camera is not as good as that of a film based camera. The picture quality has improved tremendously in recent years with high resolution digital cameras capable of capturing images over 10 mega pixels in size being offered. Companies like Kodak, Nikon, Konica and even Canon have announced phased withdrawal from the film based camera market. 

  Film based cameras, as the name implies, have a photographic film made of plastic coated with light sensitive material like silver halide emulsion. When the film is exposed to light coming through the lens, an invisible image is formed on the film.

This exposed film is then treated with chemicals, a process called developing, by which the image is made visible but the colors of the image are inverted. This ‘negative’ is then turned into ‘positive’ by projecting the image on to a photographic paper. The final quality of the photograph depends, among other things, on the grain size of the silver halide crystals used in making the film.

Canon being among the pioneers in manufacturing film based cameras, offers a wide variety of compact as well as SLR cameras in the market. A low end compact camera from the Canon stable, like the Prima Zoom 90u Date is a lightweight camera with 38-90mm 2.4x zoom lens, light guide zoom flash, 5 preprogrammed shooting modes, date imprint function and weighs only 185gm. This camera is compact and would be ideal for a casual photographer.


Prima Super 180 date is a higher end Canon film compact camera and has 38 – 180mm high magnification 4.7x zoom lens. It has a large LCD panel for easy to read camera information, 6 preprogrammed shooting modes with 5 custom functions, fast 7 point switching type auto focus and a powerful zoom with 7 flash settings. It has date imprint function and weighs 215 gm. Both the above compact cameras work on a 3v Lithium battery that can last for approximately 14 film rolls. The compact cameras cost in the range of £60to £180

Canon EOS 300x is a higher end Canon film camera and is of Single Lens Reflex (SLR) type in which the photographer can view the object to be photographed precisely before clicking. Some of the features of this camera include shutter speed varying from 30 sec 1/4000 sec, up to 3 frames per sec continuous shooting, large illuminated LCD screen for viewing camera settings, fast auto focus and built in retractable flash. There are many variants to this SLR film camera to suit varying user needs. They cost upwards of £100.

Canon film based cameras continue to be sold in countries where a computer is still unaffordable and will survive for many more years.

Editor
Canon and Camera