EOS, as we all know, was one of the Titans and was the goddess of the dawn. Her brother was Helios, god of the sun, and her sister was Selene, goddess of the moon. She is mentioned several times in the Iliad and appears in ancient Greek art.

Canon seems to be drawn to classical gods and goddesses. The very name Canon derives from Kwan’on, an east Asian deity of mercy and compassion. The first Canon camera produced in 1934 was called the Kwanon.

EOS also stands for “Electro-Optical System” and was the name adopted for Canon’s line of autofocus single lens reflex cameras. The line was introduced in 1987 with the Canon EOS 650. Until October 1996 all EOS cameras used 35mm film. The EOS IX was released using the APS(Advantix/IX) film. That was a short lived experiment.

In 2000 the EOS D30 ushered in the digital era. Since 2005 all newly announced EOS cameras have used digital image sensors rather than film.

With the advent of the EOS cameras the manual focusing FD lens mount has been supplanted by the EF mount and later the EF-S mount.

Marketing of these cameras has caused great confusion in model designations. For reasons apparently known only to the marketing gurus the same camera was often called by different names in North America, Japan and the rest of the world. It can be very confusing but hopefully the following chart can assist:

This is not a complete list by any means and I will work on expanding it. For the most part, the cameras in a group are identical across marketing regions and only the nameplate is different. In the case of film cameras there can be minor variations across the marketing regions.