Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Canon F-1

Canon · Canon FD mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back · 1971

single source, unconfirmed

Also known as: Canon F-1 · Canon F1 · F-1 old · Old F-1 · F-1n · F1n · F-1 前期 · F-1 後期 · キヤノンF-1 · キャノン F-1

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
F-1 (1971) Canon FD 1971–1976 — —
F-1n (F-1 later model, 1976) Canon FD 1976–1981 — —
F-1 Montreal 1976 Olympic edition Canon FD 1976–1976 — —
F-1n Lake Placid 1980 Olympic edition Canon FD 1980–1980 — —
OD F-1 (olive drab) Canon FD 1978–1978 — 2,002 (mir.com.my)
F-1 High Speed Motor Drive Camera Canon FD 1972–1972 — About 100, for the 1972 Games (mir.com.my; no figure from Canon)
  1. Canon has published no production total for the F-1 in either form. The only quantities on this page are the OD F-1's 2,002 and the High Speed camera's roughly 100, and both come from mir.com.my alone, so the page carries the single-source flag for them.
  2. The lens caps for the Montreal and Lake Placid editions (55mm and 58mm, then 52mm) rest on Wikipedia alone; so does the KS-99C adoption by the United States Army, which comes from camera-wiki alone. Neither is confirmed here.
  3. Two cameras answer to "F-1n". Canon's museum writes F-1N for the 1976 later model, and Wikipedia, camera-wiki and the collector trade use F-1n for the same camera. mir.com.my uses "F-1n" throughout for the 1981 New F-1, and sellers write F-1N for either. A listing titled F-1N needs the photographs read: a grip over a battery compartment and a hot shoe on the prism make it a New F-1.
  4. The X-sync speed of 1/60 comes from analog.cafe's review; Canon's museum page gives the FP/X automatic switching without a figure.
  5. Canon claims the body was tested for 100,000 exposures and for operation from -30°C to 60°C at 90% humidity. That is the maker's claim and is repeated by every reviewer from it.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • FD breech-lock mount with the meter coupling on the lens's aperture signal lever
  • Removable pentaprism with no accessory shoe on it; the flash coupler fits around the rewind crank
  • Combined self-timer and stop-down lever on the front, beside the lens
  • A plastic tip on the advance lever and a memo holder on the back mark a 1976 F-1n; a bare lever and a plain back mark a 1971 body

F-1 (1971):

  • All-metal film advance lever with no plastic tip; 180° stroke with a 15° stand-off
  • Film speed dial ends at ASA 2000
  • Plain back door with no film memo holder
  • No accessory shoe on the prism: the flash coupling sits around the rewind crank

F-1n (F-1 later model, 1976):

  • Plastic tip on the film advance lever; 139° stroke with a 30° stand-off
  • Film speed dial reaches ASA 3200
  • Film memo holder on the back door
  • PC flash socket with a locking fastener, and a soft rubber ring around the eyepiece

F-1 Montreal 1976 Olympic edition:

  • Montreal 1976 Olympic emblem engraved on the front, upper left

F-1n Lake Placid 1980 Olympic edition:

  • Lake Placid 1980 Olympic Winter Games logo engraved on the body
  • Sold with an FD 50mm f/1.8 marked Olympic Winter Games 1980, or with the FD 50mm f/1.4

OD F-1 (olive drab):

  • Olive drab finish on most external parts, with a matching wide strap and soft case

F-1 High Speed Motor Drive Camera:

  • Fixed semi-silvered pellicle mirror in place of the swinging mirror; the finder never blacks out
  • Integral motor, 1,180 g with 147 × 149 × 43 mm, run from twenty AA cells in an external pack
  • No exposure meter and no self-timer; speeds 1/60 to 1/1000 only

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back
Finder
Interchangeable eye-level pentaprism with microprism rangefinder; Speed Finder, Waist-Level Finder and Booster T Finder also fitted. Four focusing screens at launch, nine by 1976. · 0.77× magnification · 97% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
four-axis horizontal-travel focal plane, metal curtains, mechanical throughout · 1s – 1/2000, B, X · flash sync FP and X with automatic switching, German socket; X at 1/60 · self-timer
Film advance
single-stroke lever, 180° with partial strokes; 139° on the F-1n
Back
hinged, with a film memo holder from 1976
Meter
CdS cell, TTL full-aperture match-needle partial metering over about 12% of the frame at the centre, read through a beam splitter in the screen condenser. EV 2.5 to 18 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens; film speeds ISO 25 to 2000 (3200 on the F-1n). One 1.3V mercury cell runs the meter and nothing else.
Motor drive
Motor Drive MF, Power Winder F
Weight
820 g
Dimensions
147 × 99 × 43 (1971, Canon's figure); 147 × 100 × 50 and 845 g for the 1976 F-1N on the same source mm
Country
Japan
Original price
78,000 yen body only, 92,800 yen with the FD 50mm f/1.8, 100,000 yen with the FD 50mm f/1.4, 117,000 yen with the FD 55mm f/1.2, March 1971 (Canon Camera Museum). F-1N: 104,000 yen body only, September 1976. OD F-1: 111,000 yen with strap and case, 1978. (today ¥257,000)
Accessories
Motor Drive MF and Power Winder F · Speed Finder, Waist-Level Finder, Booster T Finder · Servo EE Finder for shutter-priority automation · Interchangeable focusing screens, four types at launch and nine on the F-1n

Where sources disagree

Weight (grams)
  • 820 g, 147 × 99 × 43 mm (Canon Camera Museum, F-1 of 1971; Wikipedia gives the same)
  • 845 g, 147 × 100 × 50 mm (Canon Camera Museum, F-1N of 1976; analog.cafe weighs an original at 845 g)

Better supported: 820 g for the 1971 body

Both figures are Canon's, on two museum pages for the two models, and the difference may be the plastic-tipped lever and the memo holder or simply a different way of measuring depth. analog.cafe's 845 g for a 1971 body suggests the two cameras weigh the same and the museum rounded differently.

First
  • March 1978 (Canon Camera Museum)
  • January 1978 (mir.com.my)

Better supported: March 1978

Canon's own date, against a fan site's; the two are two months apart.

Montreal-1976 base body
  • The standard 1971-type F-1 with an emblem (Wikipedia; canonclassics.com lists it as a variation of the 1971 F-1)
  • F-1n (mir.com.my's showcase title)

The Games ran in July 1976; the F-1n was marketed in September 1976. A pre-Games commemorative would be the earlier body unless Canon used pre-production F-1n stock. Unresolved.

What reviewers say

History

The F-1 was shown at Photokina in September 1970 and reached the shops in March 1971 at 78,000 yen for the body, and it brought the FD mount with it. Canon had tried the professional market once before with the Canonflex and lost it to Nikon; this time the company says it spent the development effort of ten or more ordinary cameras, tested the body to 100,000 exposures and from minus 30 to plus 60 degrees, and promised that the design would stand unchanged for ten years. It kept the promise closely enough that the 1981 successor was called the New F-1 rather than an F-2.

What it is: a mechanical horizontal-travel metal-curtain shutter from one second to 1/2000, a removable pentaprism giving 0.77x and 97% of the frame, and a CdS meter that reads about 12% of the frame at the centre through a beam splitter in the screen condenser, at full aperture with FD lenses. The single mercury cell runs the meter and nothing else. There is no shoe on the prism; a flash coupler fits around the rewind crank instead. The self-timer and the stop-down lever are the same lever on the front.

The 1976 revision, F-1N in Canon’s spelling and F-1n in everyone else’s, made thirteen changes and no new promises. The ones that show are a plastic tip on the advance lever, a shorter 139-degree stroke with a wider 30-degree stand-off, a film memo holder on the back, a locking PC socket and a rubber eyepiece ring; the ones that matter in use are an ASA dial that reaches 3200 and a Type E split-image screen as standard from a range that grew from four screens to nine. Canon’s own specification for the later model reads 845 grams where the first reads 820, though a reviewer weighing a 1971 body also got 845, so the two may simply have been rounded differently.

Around the standard body sit the editions. A Montreal 1976 body carries the Games emblem on the front upper left, and whether it sits on a 1971-type or a 1976-type body is unresolved, since the Games ended two months before the F-1n went on sale. A Lake Placid 1980 body is an F-1n with the Winter Games logo engraved and, where it is complete, an FD 50mm f/1.8 marked for the Games. The OD F-1 of 1978 is an F-1n in olive drab, 2,002 of them for Japan only on mir.com.my’s count, 111,000 yen with strap and case on Canon’s. And in February 1972 came the High Speed Motor Drive Camera, a fixed-pellicle-mirror body with an integral motor that ran nine frames a second on twenty AA cells for the Munich press corps, at 300,000 yen and, on one account, about a hundred made.

Buying one is a matter of reading the photographs, because sellers write F-1N for the 1976 camera and for the 1981 New F-1 alike. A grip over a battery compartment and a hot shoe on the prism make it a New F-1 and belong on that page. On the mechanical camera, the things to check are the ones every reviewer mentions: whether the meter lives, since many are dead and the rest want a 1.35-volt substitute cell, whether the metal curtains run cleanly at 1/2000, and whether the self-timer lever, which fingers catch on, has been forced. No production total has ever been published for either version.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Canon F-1
Canon F-1 with the FD 55mm f/1.2 — Pancolar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Canon F-1
Canon F-1 with the FD 50mm f/1.4 S.S.C., eye-level finder — s58y, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Canon F-1
Canon F-1n body, the 1976 later model — Hiyotada, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $230 across 68 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-18 (middle half $15–$310). First day tracked.

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Show 87 more listings

Listings updated 2026-09-18. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Canon EF · Canon FTb · Canon New F-1 · Canon T90

Lenses for this body: FD 200mm f/2.8 · FD 24mm f/1.4 Aspherical / L · FD 24mm f/2.8 · FD 28mm f/2 · FD 300mm f/2.8 Fluorite / L · FD 35mm f/2 · FD 50mm f/1.4 · FD 55mm f/1.2 · FD 85mm f/1.2 Aspherical / L

Sources (14)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.