Review Of The Canon AE-1

Let me empathically stay upfront that I do not have enough of a foundation in film photography to do an adequate review on a film camera.  So maybe this isn’t so much a review as it is my general thoughts on what it’s like to shoot a storied film camera like the AE-1 having come from such a solid foundation in digital photography.

I had originally purchased my Canon AE-1 with no intention whatsoever to shoot film with it.  I just like to use vintage cameras as background props in my product photography.  Normally, I try to pick up vintage cameras that no longer function because they’re cheaper.  But at the time that I purchased it, there was one advertised as being fully functional for not much more money than nonfunctional examples.  The AE-1 was manufactured by Canon between 1976 and 1984, and is considered one of Canon’s most popular cameras.  I provided ChatGPT the date code that’s found in the film chamber of the camera and determined that my camera was manufactured on January 15, 1981, at the Hiratsuka Canon factory.

IS THE CANON AE-1 A GOOD CHOICE FOR BEGINNERS?

I had it for a couple of years before I got the itch to buy a roll of film and try to use it.  When I started researching it, most of the material I looked at touted the camera for being an excellent choice for beginners.  And to that I say, “maybe.”  I actually think there’s a good argument to be made that the Canon A-1 is the better choice for beginners.  It really just depends on what kind of a beginner you are.  If you are a beginner to film photography, but already have a solid foundation in digital photography and understand the exposure triangle of ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, then the AE-1 might work just fine for you.  But what about someone who has been taking photos with their phone for their whole life and really doesn’t understand the fundamentals photography and would like to try their hand at film photography?  This type of beginner might well benefit from the Canon A-1 which has more “training wheels“ options like full automatic Program AE mode (auto exposure), where the camera electronically selects both aperture and shutter speed, as well as Aperture Priority AE mode where you select the aperture, and the camera will electronically select the shutter speed.   Program AE mode was a groundbreaking feature when it was introduced on the A-1 in 1978  – it was the first ever SLR to have this feature.  When I was learning the exposure triangle, I shot for a while using aperture priority mode which allowed me to be more creative, but the camera still made sure that my shots were exposed correctly by controlling the shutter speed.  I would have preferred to have an aperture priority mode available to me while shooting with the AE-1, but it doesn’t have one.  The A-1 also has a digital light meter display in the viewfinder which is easier to see than the analog needle found in the AE-1.

Honestly, there’s only about a $50 or so difference between the two cameras depending on condition and other accessories included.  So I somewhat regret not having purchased the A-1 over the AE-1.  

FILM STOCK

Having purchased the FujiFilm X100VI a few months ago I had some preconceived notions about film that turned out not to be true.  One of the benefits touted in shooting with a FujiFilm camera is the fact that Fuji still produces film and understands color science better than other camera manufacturers relative to producing digital images that look like they were shot on film..  So I somewhat assumed that Fuji film would be the easiest film stock to acquire.  That turns out not to be the case due to the success of their Instax cameras.  Essentially the majority of their film production capabilities are being focused on Instax film, leaving very little production capacity for 35mm film products.  You can find basic FujiFilm 200 film (which, as I understand, it is actually manufactured by Kodak for FujiFilm) but that’s about it.  The best choices readily available through sources like Amazon will be manufactured by Kodak.  Given the very real possibility that not one picture would be useable from my first roll through a film camera I opted to go with Kodak Gold 200 for my first roll.  If that goes well, I’ll order some of the universally praised. Kodak Porta 400 for subsequent roles of film.

AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIGITAL AND FILM

When I shoot with a digital camera, I commonly underexpose by about a half stop.  I do this because low lights or shadowy areas are easier to recover than blow out highlights where there is no digital information to recover.  Film tends to be behave just the opposite.  If you under expose a shot, there’s no information there to recover.  But film handles highlights better than digital.  Knowing this doesn’t help you a whole lot with the AE-1 because it doesn’t really have an exposure compensation dial.  You’d have to compensate with either ISO or shutter settings.    The Canon A-1 does have an exposure compensation dial, which is another point in favor of that camera over the AE-1.  

THE LENS

I have a small collection of Canon FD lenses that I’ve been shooting on my modern Canon mirrorless cameras with an adapter, but elected to use the Canon FD 50mm f1.8 for my trial run with the Canon AE-1.  The FD 50mm f1.8 is was commonly sold with the AE-1 as a “kit lens” so I thought it was a good choice.  It’s quite a nice lens for the price – you can read about some testing I did with it, and comparing it to the Konica Hexanon AR 50mm F1.7  earlier this year.

FOCUSING

honestly, I don’t think I fully understood how to focus this camera until I was about eight shots in.  For better or worse I consulted good old ChatGPT on how to use the focusing system on the AE-1:

Using the Split-Prism and Microprism Focusing Screen

The Canon AE-1 has a built-in focusing aid in the viewfinder:

•Split-Prism Circle:

•At the center of the viewfinder, you’ll see a small circular area divided into two halves.

•When the subject is out of focus, the two halves will appear misaligned.

•Turn the focusing ring until the two halves align perfectly, indicating sharp focus.

•Microprism Collar:

•Surrounding the split-prism circle is a microprism area.

•When out of focus, this area appears shimmering or blurry.

•Adjust the focusing ring until the shimmer disappears, and the area becomes clear.

When I looked through the viewfinder for the first time, I remember thinking “where are the two halves?”  Based on the above description I think I was expecting the viewfinder to be segmented in some way?  But now I understand that there are sort of an inner area toward the center, and then an outer area and that outer area will be blurry until you adjust the focus so that the entire you find your area is in focus.  For fine focus the inner wheel in the center of the view finder will actually give you a split view of your subject that you can then align back into a single unit to achieve optimal focus.  It didn’t help that there were distracting black specs all over the viewfinder.  So I figured about the first eight photos were going to be somewhat blurry.  Oh well… That’s why I didn’t buy expensive film for my first roll through the camera.

LIGHT METERING

The AE-1 does have a built-in light metering function…sort of.  A half press of the shutter button will meter your subject, and a somewhat hard to see (especially in analog needle on the right side of the viewfinder will show you the appropriate f-stop for the lighting conditions and the current shutter speed setting. 

Sure – with this information, you can fiddle with the shutter speed and sort of back in to getting the correct shutter speed for your desired aperture.  But in most cases what I really want to know is the correct shutter speed for the aperture I have selected.  So the AE-1 made me have to think differently than my brain normally works to get proper exposure.  For this reason (as well as not being entirely confident that the camera’s built in light meter still functioned optimally), I decided I might want to use an independent light meter.  And for that, you have two choices – either a physical light meter, or a phone app.  I decided on the second option.

I bought MyLightMeter Pro for iOS – I think I paid four dollars for it.  It’s pretty straightforward to use – just indicate the aperture setting that you’re using, meter your subject, and the app will display of the appropriate shutter speed setting for your camera to maintain proper exposure.  Once your subject is metered, you can spin both the aperture and shutter speed wheels to get to what we’re setting you want.  This came in pretty handy when I was shooting in bright daylight conditions because of a factor I had not counted on.  

SLOW SHUTTER

Both the Canon AE-1 and the Canon A-1 have a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second.  That’s fairly on par with other camera models at the time these cameras were sold – the Nikon FM for example had the same maximum shutter speed.  A few others like the Pentax ME Super could hit 1/2000.  But I’m used to shooting with modern digital cameras that can hit 1/8000 mechanical shutter speed and 1/32,000 using the electronic shutter.  I’m ashamed to admit that prior to shooting with the AE-1 these numbers were fairly meaningless to me.  That’s because modern digital photography really never forced me to think about the shutter speed and absolute terms.  For me, shutter speed was always about getting the exposure read out in the middle of the graphical display.  Lighting conditions never really limited me in anyway – I just would spin the shutter speed dial left or right until I got the exposure optimally set in the middle of the display.  It wasn’t until a few years ago when I started shooting outdoors with fast primes that I started to run into problems with shutter speed.  Which is to say that when I wanted to shoot wide open with though fast prime, I couldn’t get the exposure line in the middle – I ran out of dial.  That’s when I started using variable neutral density filters.  well, you can imagine my surprise when I started trying to take some daylight photos at two or even at four and my light meter was telling me I needed a shutter speed of like 1/10,000 or 1/12,000.  I found myself having to stop down to f8, f10, or beyond just to be able to get to a shutter speed of 1/1000th for proper exposure .  By the end of that first roll of film I now had a much better appreciation for shutter speed as an absolute number and not just a graphical representation on the exposure reading.  Which confirmed my original hypothesis that perhaps I had some blind spots in my photography knowledge as a result of having learned photography only on digital cameras I’m never having really shot with film.  

THE PHOTOS 

after taking a few shots of my dog and a few during our black Friday shopping at the local outlet mall, I decided to head to downtown Miamisburg and finish the role.  Once done, I headed to my local camera shop to get the film developed – Dodd camera.  They used to have a location quite close to my house, but it closed down earlier this year, unfortunately.  They advertise doing film development, but I learned to my disappointment that they did not do it at that facility and instead send it out for development.  The cost to develop the role was only going to be about $15, but that assumed you would bring a thumb drive or a CD in and copy the photos.  For an extra $10 you could get a download link emailed to you, which was the faster option.  Even with this faster option, I was told it could be a week maybe two until I would get the email with the download link.  From there I could select any of the photos I wanted to be printed for an additional cost.  The roll of film was about $15 – and that was for the cheap stuff.  The development was another $27 with tax.  Yikes.  I’ll have to investigate different options.

Much to my surprise, three days after dropping off the film, I got the link to download the images.  Even more surprising with the fact that only one of the images was not usable – An indoor image that exhibited motion blur.  The rest were well focused and reasonably well exposed.  Here are a few examples – not that no image editing/Photoshop was applied.  These are the “straight out of the camera” images that I downloaded, but scaled down a bit:

A couple of photos taken at the outlet mall I took while my wife was shopping on Black Friday:

most of the rest of the photos were taken in downtown Miamisburg:

Here’s the one shot that didn’t come out so well – an indoor shot.  I’m not exactly sure why I got the motion blur –  I guess I’m a little to use to shooting with modern mirrorless camera that have in-body stabilization (IBIS).

FINAL THOUGHTS

I was very pleased with my final results in that I proved to myself that I do have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of photography.  What this a transformative experience which will make me abandon my mirrorless camera and set up a dark room at home?  Not so much.  The photos weren’t fantastic – and that’s partially my fault.  Several of the photos are under exposed by as much as one stop.  In some cases, it’s due no doubt to how I metered the scene.  In most cases though, as I  noted above, the photos would have benefited to maybe a half stop of exposure compensation due to the name of film vs. digital photography.  Overall, I didn’t find the photos more appealing than the results I can achieve with a digital camera.  I’ve photographed quite a bit in Miamisburg this past year (it’s my go to location for testing camera gear) so I have lots of digital versions of many of the film photos I took.  There were a couple of film photos I took which were interesting to me because they really captured my childhood memories of what film looks like – like this:

Most of the photos exhibited quite a bit more film grain that what’s personally appealing to me, but that could be inherent to the Kodak Gold 200 film stock I used.  I found the shooting experience with the AE-1 that many describe as being more deliberate and purposeful to be slow and cumbersome…and not in a fun way.  Does that mean I’m done shooting film?  Not at all.  I’ve actually ordered and already received an absolute minty Canon A-1 (review coming soon) that I plan to shoot on my next film outing.  I’ve also paid a painful $75.00 for three rolls of Kodak Porta 400 film (the “good stuff”).  I’m also ordering a couple of rolls of b&w film – FujiFilm Neopan 100 Acros II and a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus.  I was pleasantly surprised at how cheap the FujiFilm ($12.99) and the Ilford were ($8.99).  I specifically bought the FujiFilm because I thought it would be fun to shoot a roll through my A-1 and compare it to same scene being shot on my FujiFilm X100VI using the Acros film simulation to see how the film simulation compares to the real thing.

I’m sure I’ll shoot the AE-1 once in a while, but when shooting the occasional role of film, I tend to think I’ll prefer the A-1.  As of this writing, you can pick up a body only AE-1 for about $100.00 and an A-1 for about $50.00 more.  I paid about $200 for the A-1 I ordered with a nFD (new FD) 50mm f1.4 straight from Japan.  For the small difference in price, I think most will prefer the added features of the A-1.