End of an Era

Somewhere around here is a picture of me holding my very first serious camera, a Canon AE-1 Program like the one pictured above.

In that picture I'm a 24-y.o. kid inordinately happy with the fact that she's got a media pass and is working as a photographer's assistant covering the inaugural First Union Grand Prix bicycle race in Midtown Atlanta. My boss was doing important stuff while I got crowd shots with one of his Pentax ME's and my own AE-1. I also got some cool pics of some young rookie named Lance Armstrong out in front of the pack on his way to a big win.

I'd dig the picture out, but my jacked up shoulder isn't conducive to shuffling boxes around the attic just now. Remind me later.

Unlike Nikon, when Canon switched to autofocus cameras in the Nineties, they bit the bullet and went to an entirely new lens mount.

Canon still cataloged one model of 35mm film SLR, their top-of-the-line EOS-1V up until just now.

As it happens, those EOS-1V cameras in the catalog were actually "New Old Stock", however. The 35mm film camera market had collapsed so quickly that for the last eight years, Canon was selling new cameras that it had stopped making in 2010.

Having sold the last, Canon is now announcing that they are officially out of the film camera business after eighty years. They will be officially repairing the cameras through Halloween of 2025, although some repairs may be refused after 2020 based on availability of spare parts.

And so it goes.
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