The Canon EOS 1n, the Camera that Made Life Difficult for Nikon

August 17, 2020

I want to thank Ori Carmona, a friend and fellow Facebook Group adminstrator for Canon Film Photography for me to try out. So, my first serious camera was a Canon Rebel XS, your classic plastic fantastic from the late 1990s, once I went to manual focus, I never really used that camera again. Fast forward 20 years and with collection of camera gear from a variety of brands, I sort of saw myself as a Nikon fan boy with a soft spot for Canon FD mount gear and really loved shooting other brands like Minolta, Olympus and Pentax. I never shot with a pro grade Canon EOS mount camera, I do own a Nikon F4 which sadly has developed really bad LCD bleed on both displays so she's toast. Ori loaned me his camera to try out. Yes this camera made Nikon's life very difficult, and probably the reason why the F5 came along.

First I did was consult the owners manual, Canon does things differently than other brands, so Auto Exposure is Av, Shutter Priority is Tv (why I have no idea, it goes back to the A-1 in the late 1970s) and figuring what controls did what. My plan was to put the camera on Av and go for a drive and hike in the country on hot sunny Saturday.

Canon was quite linear with their design philosophy, you can see proportional echos of the FTB and the lines from the Canon T90. There's nothing retro about the EOS-1n, Canon never did retro with any of their cameras.

Despite my initial fumbling around, this camera is scary good, the EOS 1n has some heft to it, my guess around the same as the F4 minus the extened battery pack. If you're a Canon DSLR shooter it's like going back in time but at the same time being right at home in some regards. I really loved the results I got out of this camera and lens combo, I did not have one bad frame on any of the negatives I processed from this session. Everything was so sharp I really didn't have to much in post other than some minor cropping and dust removal, the camera is almost too. good.

The Sigma 50 f1.4 EF mount lens is a beast, takes a 72mm filter, it's heavy compared to OEM lenses but oh boy does it deliver better than Canon glass. I wonder if it came in Nikkor AF-D mount?

The two knocks I have against his fine beast is one the display in the viewfinder was slightly dim for my Gen-X eye, and the fact the EOS-1 takes a relatively exotic battery you can only find at a good bricks and mortar camera store, or online. The Nikon F5 takes AA batteries which you can find anywhere, literally anywhere.

So, will I save up my nickels and dimes and get an EOS 1n? Don't know, the one thing you have to factor into the equation is this a new lens mount for me really, I have no EOS/EF lenses lying around. In my case a Nikon F5 makes more logical sense as I already have a boatload of manual focus glass, so I can only use centre weighted and spot metering, but I can get started with the camera right away and fill in with Nikkor AF-D lenses as time goes. on. I do think this is the perfect film camera for a full frame Canon DSLR shooter with a lot of EF glass and it would be a very fast learning curve for them to get started shooting film.

Camera: Canon EOS 1n, Sigma 50 f1.4 lens.

Film: Kosmo Mono 100, D76 1+1.