Canon

Canon

Canon Brand Overview

Canon logo

Founded: 1933 — Tokyo, Empire of Japan
(modern day Japan)
   
Currently: Canon Inc.

Canon Brand History

Canon is an Japanese brand founded in 1933 as Seiki Kogaku Kenkyujo (Precision Optical Instruments Laboratory) in Tokyo by Goro Yoshida, his brother-in-law Saburo Uchida, Uchida’s colleague Takeo Maeda, and Uchida’s close friend Takeshi Mitarai. Over the decades, Canon has grown to become an enormous multinational company producing a wide variety of imaging products such as photocopiers, scanners, and, of course, cameras.

The story goes that Goro Yoshida was interested in the possibility of making high end 35mm rangefinders in Japan and so established a company to further investigate the matter. After closely studying a disassembled Leica II, Yoshida became angry when he realized that the premiumly priced German camera was made of high quality but relatively inexpensive parts. He went to work replicating the Leica II and produced the company’s first camera in 1934: the Kwanon which was named after the bodhisattva Guanyin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. Two years later, the company eased up on the religious iconography, registered the “Canon” trademark, and released its first commercially available camera: the Hansa Canon which used a Nikon-sourced lens since they didn’t start making their own optics until just before World War II.

Precision Optical Industry, Co., Ltd. emerged from World War II virtually unscathed and resumed operations with the goal to surpass Leica. Luckily for them, there was a growing interest in Japanese-made cameras among Allied (mainly American) soldiers occupying postwar Japan but the Precision Optical Industry Co.’s disjointed naming conventions began to hurt sales so they decided to unify all products and rename the company as Canon Camera Co.

As Nikon began dominating the professional market in the late ’50s and early ’60s with the venerable F and its successors, Canon slowly distanced itself from the high-end market and began manufacturing lower-end models for consumers and even entered into a partnership with Bell & Howell to market Canon models in the United States. With cameras like the ever-ubiquitous AE-1 and the wildly popular Canonet QL17 G-III, Canon gained control over a significant portion of the consumer camera market before striking back at Nikon in 1989 with the professional-grade EOS-1 and a brand new line of autofocus lenses which lured countless photographers away.

Today, Canon is a leader in the camera industry having claimed the number one spot in global Digital SLR sales since 2003. In addition to digital cameras, Canon also offers a wide variety of other products such as consumer and professional grade camcorders, flatbed scanners, fax machines, photocopiers, printers, ophthalmic diagnostic equipment, and digital X-ray machines.

Interested in starting or growing your own collection of Canon cameras?
Check eBay to see what’s available.
References:

McKeown, James M. and Joan C. McKeown’s Price Guide to Antique and Classic Cameras, 2001-2002. (Grantsburg, WI, USA: Centennial Photo Service, 2001), p 125-133.

“The History of Canon,” Canon Inc., http://www.canon.com/corporate/history/

Related Brands

Canon FT QL

by

The Canon FT QL is a manual, mechanical single lens reflex camera introduced by Canon in 1966 and is also the first Canon camera to feature TTL (through the lens) metering. The FT QL belongs to the family of SLRs that were designed around Canon’s short-lived FL breech-lock lens mount which lasted from 1964 until the the FD Mount was introduced in 1970. The FT is very similar to its two older brothers: the FX and the FP with the only real difference being the FX’s lack of TTL metering and the FP’s complete lack of integrated light meter. Also included in this family is the unusual Canon Pellix, the first of only a handful of cameras in history to use a fixed translucent pellicle mirror until the concept was resurrected by Sony in 2010 with its Alpha SLT series. The “QL” designation introduced by the Canon FT QL stands for “Quick Load” which denotes the inclusion of a spring-loaded hinge that assists in the loading of 35mm film. This quick loading system can also be found on other Canon models such as the Canonet QL17 G-III.

Canon Sure Shot WP-1

by

The Canon Sure Shot WP-1 (also sold as the Sure Shot A-1 in North America, the Autoboy D5 in Japan, and the Prima AS-1 in Europe) is a fully automatic waterproof 35mm compact meant to compete with the likes of the Nikon L35 AWAF, Minolta Weathermatic, and Konica Mermaid. At the time of its release, the WP-1 was the lightest and smallest underwater camera in the world.

Canon AE-1

by

The Canon AE-1 was one of the very first affordable SLRs with automatic exposure available to the public. During the ’70s and ’80s, competition in the SLR market among Japanese manufacturers was intense and, having lost considerable market share to its biggest rival Nikon, Canon decided to overhaul their entire line of single lens reflex cameras. Nikon more or less had complete control over the professional SLR market at the time so Canon decided to launch its A-series of consumer cameras, the most popular of which was the AE-1. By cleverly simplifying the design and using cheaper materials, Canon were able to keep their costs low and ship out over one million units during its eight year production run to amateur photographers across the globe. Due to its ubiquity, simple construction, and reliability, the AE-1 remains one of the most common manual focus SLRs still in use today.

Canon Canonet QL17 G-III

by

In 1961, Canon—then an upmarket camera company—shocked the industry by debuting the Canonet line, a series of modestly-priced compact rangefinders. The very first Canonet model completely sold out in just two hours while worldwide sales hit the one million mark in a mere two and a half years, an auspicious beginning for what would be a wildly popular line of cameras that would span over two decades. The Canon Canonet QL17 G-III is the final high-end model of the Canonet series.