Vintage Canon F1 35mm SLR Film Camera with Eye Level + Motor Drive 193896
The New F-1 is an expandable system. It consists of interchangeable viewfinders, focusing screens, motor drives, and alternate backs, all of which are specific to the New F-1. All other Canon components, such as the FD lens series, close-up accessories (bellows, extension tubes, etc.), and Canon A and T Speedlights (except the 300TL) are also compatible with the system.
This particular camera is in very good condition and barely has any marks on it. Each feature in this camera works as it should. A new light seal has been installed as well. The light meter works as well as the film counter. The lever pulls nicely at all aperture speeds and the film winder is good too. Viewfinder is very clean and has no marks on it, Prism is also nice and clean. Everything works on this camera.
The New F-1 system also has 13 different focusing screens, in a variety of metering modes (center-weighted averaging, selective-area, and spot, though not all are available with spot metering), for a total of 32 different screens. The screens are named with a two-letter designation, the first indicating the metering type (A for averaging, P for area metering, and S for spot metering), and the second indicating the style of screen, as listed below.
The originally available Motor Drive was named the "Motor Drive Unit". It was commonly referred to as the Motor Drive MD – because all of the accessories had MD in their suffix, but that was not the official designation. The Motor Drive Unit originally required a corded battery pack (10 AAs) making it unwieldy for field or sports action use. A later battery pack that direct connected to the unit became available. The unit also contained a built intervalometer for delays up to 1 frame per minute. The maximum speed was 3 frames per second.
In 1972 Canon made a special Modification of the F-1 called the "High Speed Motor Drive Camera". It had a fixed pellicle (semi transparent) mirror, the motor drive motors were a permanent attachment (the camera's wind lever was removed – making it impossible to use without the motor drive). Maximum speed was 9 frame/sec – the fastest available at the time. Its use at the 1972 Olympics in Japan produced fantastic sequential shots that were previously impossible to achieve.