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

Canon T70

Canon · Canon FD mount · 24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back with a lock button on the door · 1984

single source, unconfirmed

Also known as: Canon T70 · Canon T-70 · T70 · キヤノンT70 · キャノンT70 · Canon T70 body

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
T70 Canon FD 1984 — —
  1. Canon publishes no production total for the T70 and no discontinuation date. The Emulsion Archive gives 1984–1987 as the years of manufacture; no second source confirms the end date, so `years.last` is left absent and the page carries the single-source flag for that claim.
  2. Canon's specification gives ISO 12–1600 for the film-speed setting; the Film Photography Project's review says 25–1600. Canon's figure is used. There is no DX contact in the chamber on any account, so the speed is always set by hand.
  3. The shutter is the vertical-travel metal design introduced on the T50 in 1983, which replaced the horizontal cloth shutters of the A-series. On the T70 that bought 1/90 sync, a step over the A-series bodies; the T90 took the same idea to 1/250.
  4. Two AA cells in the grip run everything: loading, advance, rewind, metering and the shutter. A second, soldered-in lithium cell (BR-1225 or CR-1220) only keeps the frame count and ISO setting when the AAs are out, is rated at about five years, and needs a technician to replace; Wikipedia states the camera works normally with that cell dead.
  5. The battery door in the base is the recurring fault. The Phoblographer's reviewer broke his more than once and could find no spare; iFixit answers, Photrio threads and Canon Classics all record broken or corroded doors and note that the door is moulded as part of the bottom cover, so a replacement means a bottom cover from a donor body.
  6. In Japan the launch advertising was drawn by Katsuhiro Otomo, who also directed two television commercials; in the United States the endorsements were Larry Bird, Wayne Gretzky and John Madden (Wikipedia). It won the Good Design Award and the European Camera of the Year award in 1984 (Canon Camera Museum).
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • The LCD and the UP/DOWN buttons where a shutter-speed dial would be: the first Canon SLR with a top-deck LCD
  • Built-in winder with powered loading, advance and rewind, at 0.7 frames a second; the T50 before it had a hand crank for rewind
  • A sliding switch at the top left that chooses centre-weighted or partial (11%) metering, the self-timer and Lock
  • Vertical-travel metal shutter visible through the gate, where every A-series body has a horizontal cloth one

T70:

  • T70 on the front of the prism housing; the winder grip is part of the body, not an add-on
  • An LCD panel at the top right with UP and DOWN buttons above it, and the mode buttons at the top left; no shutter-speed dial and no advance lever
  • Two AA batteries behind a hinged door in the base of the grip; a manual rewind crank is absent, since rewind is powered
  • Kit lens was the FD 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 or the FD 28-55mm f/3.5-4.5 (Canon Camera Museum)

Specifications

Format
24×36mm on 35mm film, hinged back with a lock button on the door
Finder
Fixed eye-level pentaprism; Laser Matte screen with a horizontal split-image surrounded by a microprism collar; not interchangeable · 0.85× magnification · 92% coverage · no rangefinder image
Shutter
vertical-travel metal focal plane, electronically controlled · 2s – 1/1000 in AE; a manual B setting; bulb does not depend on the batteries once open · flash sync 1/90 (X), hot shoe · self-timer
Film advance
built-in winder, 0.7 frames a second continuous; powered loading and powered rewind
Back
hinged, with a lock button on the door
Meter
TTL full-aperture silicon photocell above the eyepiece, switchable between centre-weighted average and partial metering of the centre 11% of the frame; EV 1–19 at ISO 100 with an f/1.4 lens; film speed set by hand, ISO 12–1600, no DX reading.
Motor drive
Not compatible — The winder is built in; no external drive attaches.
Weight
580 g
Dimensions
151 × 89 × 48 (W × H × D), 580g with batteries, from Canon's specification mm
Country
Japan
Original price
69,000 yen body only; 104,000 yen with the FD 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 (April 1984, Canon Camera Museum) (today ¥91,000)
Accessories
Speedlite 277T dedicated flash (programmed flash AE) · Command Back 70 (date and data imprinting, timed and interval exposures)

Where sources disagree

Last
  • 1987 — The Emulsion Archive, in its specification box, unsourced
  • not stated — Canon Camera Museum, Wikipedia and camera-wiki, which give only the April 1984 launch

Nothing from Canon dates the end of the run. Left absent rather than adopt one blog's figure.

What reviewers say

History

The T70 went on sale in April 1984 at 69,000 yen for the body, the second camera in the T series and the first one with any real control in it. The series was Canon’s answer to a falling SLR market: the second oil shock had pushed buyers toward cheap lens-shutter compacts, and Canon’s reasoning, in its own museum’s words, was to build SLRs with thoroughly automated mechanisms for easy and simple shooting. The T50 of March 1983 had done that with a single Program mode and a hand crank for rewind. The T70 kept the built-in winder, added powered loading and powered rewind, and gave the photographer eight exposure modes, two metering patterns and a full manual setting.

What makes it look the way it does is the LCD. The T70 was the first Canon SLR with a liquid-crystal panel on the top plate, and the shutter-speed dial and advance lever went with it: speeds, modes, film speed and the frame count are read off the panel and changed with UP and DOWN buttons beside it, the mode buttons sit at the top left, and a sliding switch there chooses centre-weighted or partial metering, the self-timer, or Lock. The Canon Museum credits that panel and its key-touch buttons with a major impact on the SLRs that followed, and the T90 two years later refined the same idea into the interface Canon’s EOS bodies still use.

Underneath is a vertical-travel metal shutter, electronically timed from 2 seconds to 1/1000 with X-sync at 1/90, a step up from the horizontal cloth shutters of the A-series. Two AA cells in the grip run everything. The winder manages 0.7 frames a second, which reviewers of the day found slow next to a proper motor drive and which is still faster than most thumbs; the museum’s specification puts the whole camera at 580 grams with batteries. A second lithium cell, soldered to a flexible board inside, keeps the frame count and ISO setting when the AAs come out. It was rated for about five years, and the camera works without it.

There is one version and no published production figure. Identification is straightforward: T70 on the prism, the LCD at top right, no rewind crank, a lock button on the film door. What to check is the base. The battery door is moulded into the bottom cover and it breaks, either from being forced against the spring or from being freed after old cells have leaked into it; a broken door means a bottom cover from a donor body, because Canon has none. Beyond that, confirm that the LCD is complete, that loading pulls the leader through to frame 1 on its own, and that the rewind motor runs. The aperture-priority mode that reviewers keep asking for was never there; Canon left it to the stopped-down AE setting, which only works with the lens off its A mark and is meant for FL glass and bellows.

Modern opinion has been kinder than the styling suggests. Six reviewers here converge on the same verdict: a bright finder, a meter that does not miss, AA power, near-nothing prices, and a plastic body with buttons where the enthusiast expects dials. The Emulsion Archive dates the run to 1987; nothing from Canon confirms it, and the end of the T70 is otherwise undocumented.

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 T70
Canon T70 — Morven, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Canon T70
Canon T70, showing the LCD and the button deck — RRT877, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Canon T70
Canon T70 with the FD 50mm f/1.8 — James Petts, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $60 across 38 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-18 (middle half $37–$80). First day tracked.

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

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Related: Canon A-1 · Canon AE-1 · Canon AE-1 Program · Canon AL-1 · Canon T90

Sources (13)

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.