Canon Sells Its Last Film Camera

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rgMekanic

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After more than 80 years, Canon officially discontinued its last film camera, the EOS-1V. From a report on PetaPixel, since entering the camera industry in 1937, Canon has been a leader in the photography world, and despite discontinuing almost all its film cameras, the EOS-1v has been around since its launch in 2000, that is, until supplies were depleted earlier this week.

A bit of a shame, but the move is understandable. Fortunately if you are still wanting to shoot film, Nikon still offers the FM10 and the $2,700 F6, doesn't help much if you have a bag full of Canon glass.

The EOS-1V, a professional 35mm SLR, was launched in 2000, and its design paved the way for the modern generations of Canon EOS DSLRs. The ‘V’ in the name (which also stands for “Vision”) referenced the fact that the camera was Canon’s 5th generation of professional SLRs.
 
I love Canon's digital SLRs, their tech is top drawer. I just wish they stood up to extreme cold as well as Nikon's bodies.
 
I'm really surprised film is still around tbh with the high dynamic range of sensors nowadays you can be a fucking moron with exposure and still fix it in lightroom.
 
But they're servicing the camera until 2025 for repairs. lol
 
Twisted Kidney said:
I love Canon's digital SLRs, their tech is top drawer. I just wish they stood up to extreme cold as well as Nikon's bodies.
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how extreme? I was using my canon 1D IV in boston earlier this year in -20F without issue? batteries always thought they were low but li-ion batteries don't like the cold, that isn't unique to canon
 
FLECOM said:
how extreme? I was using my canon 1D IV in boston earlier this year in -20F without issue? batteries always thought they were low but li-ion batteries don't like the cold, that isn't unique to canon
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At -40C (they match in around there) the Canon, and I mean ALL Canon body start to act up and ALL of them will stop working. Going on an "expedition" with a bunch of photographers every single user that wasn't using Nikon got shut down by the cold, myself included. that was a few years ago, but yeah the failure rate was 100% on all bodies that weren't Nikon. Sony was the only other one there and it shit the bed at the mere hint of a chill wind.
 
Chaos Machine said:
I'm really surprised film is still around tbh with the high dynamic range of sensors nowadays you can be a fucking moron with exposure and still fix it in lightroom.
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35mm film still has more resolution.

And kodachrome is still a prized and covetted film that even out of production sell for $150 a roll because it's color rendition can't be reproduced digitally.
 
Krenum said:
That sucks. Film is still superior to digital imo.
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Certainly there are applications where film would be superior to digital.

But for technological progression, and say the advancement of photography, digital has been a boom (or not a boom if you count selfies against it).

Point is, for the vast majority of applications, and most people, digital is hands down far superior.
 
Jim Kim said:
End of an era.
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No tears here. I've done by share of developing liquids, stop bath, and more. WHile the nostalgia factors nice and all, I prefer digital. I still have my AE-1, Elan 7E, and a few other film cams that I did a few gigs with, but I'm more than happy knowing they fought the good fight, and now it's time to retire.
 
MrGuvernment said:
Please explain why?
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Well, since its my opinion. I like the hands on aspect of creating effects in traditionally on film. Also not knowing what you have on film until its finally developed is exciting. Much more than having a digital snapshot that you can look at instantly. Just my opinion, it probably is one sided because I have never owned a high quality digital camera other than a Nikon 8800 but its far too old now to compare to the newer ones.
 
There's no room for film cameras when most folks are happy with photos taken on a cell phone. I'm not a pro and my last film camera was a Canon Elan 7E. I now use a Panasonic G85 and that covers 100% of my photography and cinematography needs plus it is small enough to carry the body and two lenses in a small bag. When I was shooting with film I was way more careful about how many pictures I took and more diligent about setting up each shot correctly. Now I can take hundreds of photos on a 200GB and 256GB MicroSD and pick and choose the best ones.
 
Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz must be rolling over in their grave ...

jevans64 said:
There's no room for film cameras when most folks are happy with photos taken on a cell phone.
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Cell phone cameras suck, at least the one's I've used and then they complain that there's no quality in products like there used to be. Gee, I wonder why?
 
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DigitalGriffin said:
35mm film still has more resolution.

And kodachrome is still a prized and covetted film that even out of production sell for $150 a roll because it's color rendition can't be reproduced digitally.
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35mm tops out around 4-8k depending on scan and media.
There were ~25k sensors about a decade ago that red was allowing certain videographers in NZ to play with.. Enough said.
Film has lost the res battle now, unless you're talking and funding 70mm, good luck.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
At -40C (they match in around there) the Canon, and I mean ALL Canon body start to act up and ALL of them will stop working. Going on an "expedition" with a bunch of photographers every single user that wasn't using Nikon got shut down by the cold, myself included. that was a few years ago, but yeah the failure rate was 100% on all bodies that weren't Nikon. Sony was the only other one there and it shit the bed at the mere hint of a chill wind.
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so the camera doesn't work at WELL below it's minimum operating temperature? I'm shocked... you need to use special equipment to operate any camera at that cold a temperature without potentially damaging it or your batteries
 
N4CR said:
35mm tops out around 4-8k depending on scan and media.
There were ~25k sensors about a decade ago that red was allowing certain videographers in NZ to play with.. Enough said.
Film has lost the res battle now, unless you're talking and funding 70mm, good luck.
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that 8K with a quality 100 ISO film is about 32K because of the bayer Filter. Not every pixel on a 35mm CMOS sensor is dedicated to a pixel. It's interpolated between 4 pixel wells
 
DigitalGriffin said:
35mm film still has more resolution.

And kodachrome is still a prized and covetted film that even out of production sell for $150 a roll because it's color rendition can't be reproduced digitally.
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Longevity is a factor too, it also takes 200 years to start degrading. Digital is much more of an open question as to how long we can make it last. I have 100GB BluRays that are supposed to be good for a thousand years but there's no guarantee the drives to use them will exist in 30. At least you can see what's on old film if you find it.
 
Todd Walter said:
Longevity is a factor too, it also takes 200 years to start degrading. Digital is much more of an open question as to how long we can make it last. I have 100GB BluRays that are supposed to be good for a thousand years but there's no guarantee the drives to use them will exist in 30. At least you can see what's on old film if you find it.
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I disagree.

If you want to talk about preservation, you can keep digital format in its original form effectively as long as electronic storage persists. You're not stuck with Blu-rays, you can always move it to any number of different electronic storage mediums.

Film might last 200 years, but it will need to be transferred onto another medium, which may or may not be as faithful as the original rendition. Moving from digital to digital is far more easily achieved, and automated, than a physical to digital transfer. And then you're stuck with the "digital" form anyways.

If you're talking about it being "handy" just print the photo out.
 
ZiggyDeath said:
I disagree.

If you want to talk about preservation, you can keep digital format in its original form effectively as long as electronic storage persists. You're not stuck with Blu-rays, you can always move it to any number of different electronic storage mediums.

Film might last 200 years, but it will need to be transferred onto another medium, which may or may not be as faithful as the original rendition. Moving from digital to digital is far more easily achieved, and automated, than a physical to digital transfer. And then you're stuck with the "digital" form anyways.

If you're talking about it being "handy" just print the photo out.
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That's my point. It takes active preservation to keep digital alive. For Kodachrome, it can be left in a box in the attic for 200 years and only the yellows will have suffered damage and you can just pick it up and look at it. No reverse engineering required. For a real life example of this, look up NASA and their old data problem.
 
Todd Walter said:
That's my point. It takes active preservation to keep digital alive. For Kodachrome, it can be left in a box in the attic for 200 years and only the yellows will have suffered damage and you can just pick it up and look at it. No reverse engineering required. For a real life example of this, look up NASA and their old data problem.
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I can certainly see your point.

However I would counter that any photo that is sufficiently important would likely be printed out. Now whether or not it would last 200 years is another story.

My point here is that just because it happened to last a long time doesn't mean that was its intended purpose, and we should not mistaken this longevity as its primary function. I highly doubt the Egyptians used papyrus with the intent of it surviving for 2000 years, and the same with Kodachrome.

On the other hand, on the digital front, Jpeg is such a widespread standard that any major shift to a new standard would likely be backwards compatible or have some kind of program that could convert. We're in a situation where we have so much storage and processing power that little effort needs to be exerted to preserve a vast amount of data. For some archival work that I had done, it took my laptop 30 minutes to convert 2500 pages from a magazine from one picture format to another.

I'm not familiar with Nasa's problem, but my guess that it has something to do with file format?

Realistically the only way something stored in jpeg become unreadable is the destruction of every computer on the world. And that would probably entail some destructive WW3 event, in which case most physical media (aka photos) would likely fall casualty as well.
 
I like using my Konica T3N film camera because more of a thought process goes into taking that shot as opposed to taking a few dozen pictures with a digital camera and hoping one of them comes out the way you want it. My brother in law buys wooden golf clubs because of the vintage feel. Same goes for people that still like film.

I believe some ISO50 film might be comparable to around 80MP.

The longetivity of media is something I’ve greatly considered since I’m thinking about a time capsule for the family. Today USB adapters exist for legacy serial ports. If we have those adapters today, then I don’t see why we wouldn’t have USB adapters for whatever ports we would have 30+ years from now. I’m been thinking of using that 1,000 year BR media in the time capsule with a BR player. Even though I’d like to vacuum see the capsule, I’m still not sure how negatives or photos would survive, but pics on 1,000yr Blu-Rays will probably do beter.
 
I've always been told (back in the day) that slide film actually had the highest level of resolution... good luck finding any of that stuff
/still miss my old Canon AE-1
 
Lumpus said:
I've always been told (back in the day) that slide film actually had the highest level of resolution... good luck finding any of that stuff
/still miss my old Canon AE-1
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Most transparency film has a fine grain for the ISO and tends to be low ISO on top of that but the main advantage is color reproduction that's magnitudes better than negative film which is still better than current digital sensors. My favorite slide film was Fuji Velvia which was discontinued due to a rare mineral it uses not being available but they had an almost as good replacement that was still available last time I checked a couple years ago.

I still think 35mm film has a slight edge over digital at this point but the advantage is small and good film and developing is difficult to find these days so film doesn't really make sense unless you're going to medium or full format and blowing the images up big. I recently picked up a DSLR because I wasn't using my film camera(RIP Elan 2) but I settled for a cropped frame(at about the same price point as the Elan 2) which means less light gathering capability even if quality was comparable besides that.
 
But see, this is the whole point.

Film might have higher resolution, if you use the low ISO stuff. Film definitely has higher nostalgia and vintage factor over digital, I certainly can empathize with this - after all I still use fountain pens and safety/straight edged razors.

However, these are still niche to the average person.

That low ISO means that the second you need a few more stops beyond what's required to take landscape photos on a sunny day, you're left with a camera that's useless.

We're at a point in time where even most camera phone can take better action shots than that ISO50 film by virtue of it being able to get the shot.
If you're documenting a growing child, beyond those first few months of being immovable, the second they start crawling it's all over for low ISO film.

Want to increase your frustration level further? Leave the tripod, use a non-stabilized lens, and then 24hr after the photo shoot realize you only have a blurry mess.
 
ZiggyDeath said:
But see, this is the whole point.

Film might have higher resolution, if you use the low ISO stuff. Film definitely has higher nostalgia and vintage factor over digital, I certainly can empathize with this - after all I still use fountain pens and safety/straight edged razors.

However, these are still niche to the average person.

That low ISO means that the second you need a few more stops beyond what's required to take landscape photos on a sunny day, you're left with a camera that's useless.

We're at a point in time where even most camera phone can take better action shots than that ISO50 film by virtue of it being able to get the shot.
If you're documenting a growing child, beyond those first few months of being immovable, the second they start crawling it's all over for low ISO film.

Want to increase your frustration level further? Leave the tripod, use a non-stabilized lens, and then 24hr after the photo shoot realize you only have a blurry mess.
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Film still has technical advantages over digital even outside of low ISO however the gap is narrow enough that the convenience of digital does make it a better choice in most situations.

While film grain size does get larger at higher ISO with a digital sensor you get digital noise at a higher ISO setting which mimics the film grain effect. I do think recent high end digital sensors get close to the quality of film and even closer at high ISO settings (partially due to processing) but I don't think it meets it until at least 800 ISO which is already grainy on both.

I've also never had any shots come out with camera shake without knowing it was likely when taking the shot but it is nice to be able to check right after taking the shot. My new camera also has a handy feature for handheld shots in low light that will take a few shots for each button press and then automatically detects which one has the least motion blur, obviously a film camera would be at a disadvantage trying to do that.

Many here are underestimating film in regard to color reproduction and detail, fortunately I think there's enough demand for higher quality that digital will surpass film in all regards at some point.
 
Ebernanut said:
Film still has technical advantages over digital even outside of low ISO however the gap is narrow enough that the convenience of digital does make it a better choice in most situations.

While film grain size does get larger at higher ISO with a digital sensor you get digital noise at a higher ISO setting which mimics the film grain effect. I do think recent high end digital sensors get close to the quality of film and even closer at high ISO settings (partially due to processing) but I don't think it meets it until at least 800 ISO which is already grainy on both.

I've also never had any shots come out with camera shake without knowing it was likely when taking the shot but it is nice to be able to check right after taking the shot. My new camera also has a handy feature for handheld shots in low light that will take a few shots for each button press and then automatically detects which one has the least motion blur, obviously a film camera would be at a disadvantage trying to do that.

Many here are underestimating film in regard to color reproduction and detail, fortunately I think there's enough demand for higher quality that digital will surpass film in all regards at some point.
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I was wondering if you've tried a modern DSLR to see whether or not >ISO800 is acceptable for you.

TBH, I find the trade off in quality worth it for "getting the shot". You'd be amazed at how much detail you can get in a candle lit cave at ISO3200. In my opinion, in a 5x7 print, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Unfortunately for film, most reproduction is now digital, even if the capture was analogue, so outside of highly specialized equipment, any color and detail advantage is effectively lost.
 
ZiggyDeath said:
I was wondering if you've tried a modern DSLR to see whether or not >ISO800 is acceptable for you.

TBH, I find the trade off in quality worth it for "getting the shot". You'd be amazed at how much detail you can get in a candle lit cave at ISO3200. In my opinion, in a 5x7 print, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Unfortunately for film, most reproduction is now digital, even if the capture was analogue, so outside of highly specialized equipment, any color and detail advantage is effectively lost.
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I picked up a Canon SL2 recently which uses a 24 MP sensor and the DIGIC 7 processor, I find the high ISO shots to be much more usable than some of the earlier DSLR cameras I've used before. Comparing it to film I would give film the edge at 800 and the SL2 the edge at 1600, 3200 and 6400 were never even an option with film and are usable if the grainy look works with the subject matter.

I was always willing to use 1600 ISO film when the situation called for it but I knew that quality would suffer and I feel the same way about high ISO on digital. With the SL2 using a cropped sensor I lose a little light gathering capability but both of my new lenses have image stabilization which gains me a couple stops of wiggle room so I think I'm ahead overall on that.

There are still a couple places locally that do real prints. They even have a fridge full of pro film and do exotic development processes but there's a lot less places than there used to be and it's all more expensive because it's more of a niche product/service.
 
Ebernanut said:
I picked up a Canon SL2 recently which uses a 24 MP sensor and the DIGIC 7 processor, I find the high ISO shots to be much more usable than some of the earlier DSLR cameras I've used before. Comparing it to film I would give film the edge at 800 and the SL2 the edge at 1600, 3200 and 6400 were never even an option with film and are usable if the grainy look works with the subject matter.
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I had an original SL1. As much as I liked it, my setup was highly unbalanced since I tended to buy L lenses, which made it extremely front heavy.

I quickly moved up to a Canon 6D, and I felt it could get at least a good "~1.5 stops more". That's not including the fact that the larger sensor size allows for an additional stop.

That being said, Canon's 24MP APS-C sensor is far improved from the venerable 18MP found in the SL1.


While the price is in a different league, getting a full frame 35mm sensor is pretty magical over a APS-C, in terms of the low ISO grain look over APS-C, as well as how hard you can push the sensor.
 
ZiggyDeath said:
I had an original SL1. As much as I liked it, my setup was highly unbalanced since I tended to buy L lenses, which made it extremely front heavy.

I quickly moved up to a Canon 6D, and I felt it could get at least a good "~1.5 stops more". That's not including the fact that the larger sensor size allows for an additional stop.

That being said, Canon's 24MP APS-C sensor is far improved from the venerable 18MP found in the SL1.


While the price is in a different league, getting a full frame 35mm sensor is pretty magical over a APS-C, in terms of the low ISO grain look over APS-C, as well as how hard you can push the sensor.
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I would have liked to get a full frame body and some L-glass but with how little I've been shooting recently I just couldn't justify it.

It is front heavy with a 55-250mm STM lens and even is a bit with a 18-55mm STM lens but it's not that bad and I'm used to supporting a camera by the lens. Also one of the reasons I got it was for traveling which makes the smaller size nice and the lower price is good if it's stolen, lost, or broken.
 
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