Here is an example of the F-1 System. This F-1 has the Canon Motor Unit attached to the bottom which is powered by a spearate battery pack using AA cells. On the back is the Film Chamber 250 which allows 250 exposures before reloading.
F-1 System Accessories
The F-1 by itself is simply a great camera. But there are lots of great cameras.
The big difference is that with the accessories you can add
to it allow it to be whatever you
want it to be. You can build exactly
the camera you need for your special application. It is done with an incredible range of devices that can be added to the basic F-1 body.
We make no distinction between F-1 and F-1n because they both accept the same accessories. However, many if not most accessories for the New F-1 fit only that camera. Here we shall deal with accessories for the F-1 and F-1n only.
Pages 4 and 5 from the User Instructions for the F-1 camera showing the range of accessories available.
On this one page it will be impossible to cover all accessories that fit the F-1 camera so we shall divide them up by category on separate pages. Items that can be used across the range of all FD cameras will be dealt with generally under their indivdual headings Such as Flash Units or Speedlites. We will get to them all someday, maybe, if we live long enough!
Lenses for the F-1 System
Of course lenses are part of the F-1 System. The F-1 introduced the FD lens mount so that the camera could get enough information from the lens to allow for full aperture TTL metering. FD lenses can remain at full aperture and the match needle metering is still accurate regardless of the chosen aperture.
Canon says that FL lenses are also usable in “stopped-down metering” mode. This means that you must use the Stopped-down Lever to close the lens to the selected aperture, align the meter needle with a mark in the viewfinder, and then reopen the lens, focus and shoot.
Lenses will be dealt with under their own headings as we go along. Some came out with the F-1 and many came out later but all FD and FDn lenses work well on all models of the F-1 camera.
These pages are the Dealer Notes for F-1 Accessories. I don’t have a date for this publication but I assume it is somewhere in the mid 1970’s.
Page 48 from the F-1 User Instructions says that all FD, FL and R series lens are useable on the F-1 (with the exception of one lens.) Over the years Canon added dozens of FD and FDn lenses to this list until a truly impressive list of lenses were available.
The Accessories
The Canon F-1 User Instructions list many of the more common accessories available for the camera. These can be found near the back of the Booklet. Another source of information is the Dealer Notes created by Canon for F-1 and F-1n Accessories which you can access on the left.
There are many other accessories that are more specialized or even custom built that do not appear in the Booklet or Dealer Notes. I have not even heard of many of these but as we find different ones we will update these pages. It is amazing to me how much of this equipment I have never heard of. As I research the items I have I keep coming across things that are new to me. Bringing order to all of this information will be a challenge and it will certainly take some time.
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