Hierarchy of Canon rangefinders

[xayraa33]

by the time Canon made an rf camera that was pro worthy, it was the era of the SLR camera.

 

[airds]

I did not realize that Canon made so many different models over the entire lifespan of their rangefinder production.

Sorry would have posted these links yesterday if I'd remembered:-
pacificrimcamera.com and good notes about some of the models models from Karen Nakamura

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Between the Canon 7 and Canon P, there were over 200,000 sold. Did pro's use them- I would think so. That's a lot of high priced cameras! The pro's used the Canon 50/f0.95, and the Canon 7 was the only game in town for that lens.

As to the "best" Canon RF's- lots of models, lots of choices. The trigger wind models certainly sold in large numbers as well.

 

[xayraa33]

I remember seeing a documentary on the Canadian pianist, Glen Gould on the CBC, one film clip, taken in the the late 1950s, showed a photographer with two Canon VTs photographing Glen playing the piano in the recording studio.
I am sure that the images he took of Glen Gould ended up on his LP record cover.

 

[brobbins]

Hi,

The Canon 7 and Canon P do not have the mechanism that adjusts the finders for parallax. I believe that all versions of the Canon V and VI (other than the P, which is essentially a form of Canon VI) have the mechanism. It of course only works with Canon finders designed for these cameras. One needs a special adapter to use the parallax adjustment mechanism on these finders on other Canon cameras.

 

[xayraa33]

the focusing cam moves the VF up or down via the pin.
starting with the model P, & all other later models ie: 7, 7s, 7s(z) did not have this feature.
Canon dropped it.

 

[xayraa33]

Canon made an accessory shoe with a parallex correction lever that was used to fit viewfinders that were normally used on the pinned cold shoe cameras such as the VT,L1, VIT, VIL.
this allowed these viewfinders to be fully used on the P, and 7s.

 

[crawdiddy]

Hi,

The Canon 7 and Canon P do not have the mechanism that adjusts the finders for parallax. I believe that all versions of the Canon V and VI (other than the P, which is essentially a form of Canon VI) have the mechanism. It of course only works with Canon finders designed for these cameras. One needs a special adapter to use the parallax adjustment mechanism on these finders on other Canon cameras.

Thanks for the information. I'll have to check out a V or VI sometime. Too bad they dropped this feature.

So, if you had a Canon external viewfinder, I suppose you would set it at infinity, and then the focus-linked pin would handle the adjustment, right?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The external finders with this feature can not be set manually. Canon made an obscure adapter that allowed you to set them.

I have the 135 viewfinder for my Vt and VI-t. It works nicely. Just got back a roll with a Tele-Colinar, picked up in a box of junk for $12. It is sharp- well, it is now after CLA'ing it...

 

[crawdiddy]

Fred-- thanks for the examples. It's a standard sized adapter shoe, right? So you could use any external viewfinder in it. Including the ones with parallax adjustment built into the viewfinder. I don't think previous posters understood my point about the Canon external viewfinders with this feature. Actually, I only have the finder for 35mm, but it does have this feature.

Anyway, thanks again.

You do have a thing for the black paint cameras, huh? I agree, they're beauties.

 

[xayraa33]

the early Canons did use Nikkor glass Fred, you are safe.

 

[crawdiddy]

the early Canons did use Nikkor glass Fred, you are safe.

I don't think it's the Canon that Fred is less-than-proud of. I think it's the Lumix.