I do not really shoot 35mm any more. The channel is mostly medium format and increasingly large format, and 35mm has slipped down the list of things I want to spend time on. There is one exception, and this is it. The Canon AE-1 Program. This specific Canon AE-1 Program, with this specific 50mm f/1.8 fitted, given to me by my dad in 1993 when I was thirteen. The camera that got me into film photography is also the camera that got me into photography full stop, and I have a great deal of affection for it.
This is the writeup of three rolls put through it over a couple of days in November 2020. Some of those days were the kind of disgusting British weather you would normally use as an excuse to stay indoors. Others were the kind of misty November morning that makes you forgive the country.
What the AE-1 Program is
The Canon AE-1 Program is a 35mm single-lens reflex camera released by Canon in 1981, succeeding the original AE-1 of 1976. It uses the Canon FD lens mount and gives you three exposure modes (Program, shutter priority and manual) plus the central manual-focus discipline you cannot avoid on a camera of this era. The shutter is an electronically controlled focal plane unit running from 2 seconds to 1/1000 of a second with a 1/60 flash sync. The body weighs 575g without a lens and runs on a 6V 4LR44 battery that lasts about a year, because it only powers the meter and the electronics. The chassis is die-cast aluminium with a metalised-plastic top plate.
If you have come across a vintage camera shop in the UK that does not have at least one of these on a shelf somewhere, I would be surprised. The AE-1 and AE-1 Program between them sold in such enormous numbers that they are everywhere on the second-hand market. Prices on eBay range from around £60 for a working body with the 50mm f/1.8 up to around £200 for a serviced example with a guarantee. North American prices are roughly the same in dollars. They are not collectors’ items by any sensible definition. They are usable cameras at usable prices.
Why the AE-1 Program matters
The original AE-1 from 1976 was a genuinely groundbreaking camera. It was the first 35mm SLR to use a digital integrated circuit (essentially a microprocessor inside a camera body), which let Canon shrink the electronics and automate the production line in ways that earlier SLRs had not done. The result was an SLR with proper TTL autoexposure (shutter priority) at a price point that nobody had previously hit. It sold in millions and changed what an entry-level SLR was supposed to be.
The AE-1 Program took the same idea further. In 1978 Canon had introduced the A-1, an upmarket model aimed at advanced amateurs, which was the first camera in the world to feature programmed autoexposure (where the camera sets both shutter speed and aperture). Plenty of people wanted that feature in something cheaper. The AE-1 Program was the answer. Launched in 1981, it took the AE-1 body, added Program mode, kept shutter priority and manual and sold for around $225 in the US (about $780 in today’s money). It became more popular than the AE-1 it replaced.
What this means for someone picking one up forty years later is that the AE-1 Program is very easy to shoot. Put it in Program mode, focus manually, press the button. The exposure is going to be right. If you want more control, switch to shutter priority and pick a shutter speed. If you want full control, switch to manual and use the meter as a guide. The whole thing is a tool that works exactly as you would want it to work.
The famous AE-1 squeal
If you have an AE-1 or an AE-1 Program and it has not been serviced in a long time, it will probably make a high-pitched squeal when you press the shutter. Mine does. The first time it happened I thought the camera was dying. It is not.
The squeal is so common on these cameras that it has a name. People call it the “Canon cough”, although squeal is more accurate. It is caused by a small lubricated felt or foam pad in the mirror dampener mechanism. Over time the lubricant migrates or evaporates and the felt dries out. When the mirror flips up on shutter release, a small lever runs over the dry felt and produces the squeal. The noise has nothing to do with the shutter itself. The shutter is electronic and silent in operation. The squeal is purely mechanical, from the mirror box.
The fix is a CLA service (clean, lubricate, adjust). A camera technician removes the bottom plate, accesses the mirror mechanism, cleans out the old lubricant and replaces it with fresh oil. The whole job takes an hour or so for someone who knows what they are doing, and costs anywhere from £40 to £80 in the UK. Mine has not been serviced since 1993, so the squeal is well overdue. I will be sending it off soon.
The important thing to know is that the squeal does not affect the negatives. The mirror still flips. The shutter still fires. The exposure is still accurate. The camera sounds unwell but works fine. If you buy a cheap AE-1 Program and it squeals, you have a camera that needs a service, not a camera that is broken.
The three rolls
I shot three rolls over a couple of November days, picking films to cover the range of what the camera is good for.
Kentmere Pan 100 went in first for the rainy day. Kentmere is Ilford’s budget black-and-white emulsion, made in the same Mobberley factory as the rest of the Ilford range. At ISO 100 it wants light, which is asking a lot of a British November sky. I metered straight and trusted the camera.
The first frame was the Church of St Arilda at Oldbury-on-Severn, shot from the bottom of the hill in heavy rain. St Arilda’s sits on top of a small hill above Oldbury village and is named after a sixth-century local martyr, which is about as deep into Severn-side hagiography as I am going to go in a camera review. The church looked genuinely atmospheric in the rain. Wet hilltop, dark sky, a hint of the building emerging through the drizzle. I kept the lens pointed slightly down to avoid streaks on the front element and clicked.
The rest of the Kentmere roll was around Oldbury Power Station. Oldbury was a Magnox nuclear station on the south bank of the Severn estuary, generating electricity from 1967 to 2012 and now in active decommissioning by Magnox Ltd (since absorbed into the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority). Magnox was a uniquely British reactor design from the 1950s, and Oldbury was one of the last of its kind in operation. The site looks like an industrial cathedral from a distance. Twin reactor buildings with stripes on them, ringed by a security perimeter and then by Severn-side scrubland with sheep on it.
I shot the camera in the rain on the way round, which is something the AE-1 Program is emphatically not designed for. There is no weather sealing of any kind on a 1981 SLR. The front element of the 35-105 zoom (which I had swapped onto the body to avoid changing lenses in the wet) was streaked with water within ten minutes, and I spent most of the walk wiping it with my coat sleeve. The negatives still came out fine. Some of them have what looks like a slight haze in one corner, which I am attributing to water on the front element rather than to anything inside the camera.
Kodak Portra 160 went in next for a brighter day. I waited a day for the weather to improve and then walked across the M48 Severn Bridge on the pedestrian footway, which is something I had been meaning to do for years and had been putting off because I am very bad with heights. The M48 is the original Severn Bridge, opened in 1966, since superseded for motorway traffic by the Second Severn Crossing (now the M4 Prince of Wales Bridge). The M48 has a footway that runs alongside the carriageway. You can walk all the way across the estuary, looking down at the Severn from about forty metres up, with traffic noise on one side and a wire mesh barrier on the other.
It is genuinely terrifying. The bridge deck flexes slightly as the wind moves it. The water is a long way down and you can see right through the structure under your feet. I was not so petrified of heights when I was younger, but I am now, and the walk across the M48 footway has not improved that.
The Portra negatives came back lovely. Portra 160 is the right film for slightly overcast bright daylight with green and brown landscapes, which is what the south bank of the Severn estuary is in November. The Severn Bridge towers look genuinely cinematic on Portra. The camera handled the auto-exposure faultlessly because I had been swapping aperture control between auto (so the camera did the work) and shooting in shutter priority for the wider shots. The 28mm Super-Paragon lens (which I swapped on for the bridge walk to get more of the structure in the frame) gave me a slightly cold rendering that suited the cold day.
Kodak T-Max 400 went in last for a misty morning. I drove out early, parked up somewhere with the sun coming through low between the trees, and used the camera’s AE lock button for the first time on the trip. The AE lock on the AE-1 Program is one of those features that does not get talked about enough. The meter on the camera is centre-weighted average, which means it takes a reading across the whole frame but weights heavily towards the centre. If you have a high-contrast scene with bright highlights and deep shadows, the average reading will compromise between them and probably get the exposure wrong.
The AE lock lets you point the camera at a specific area of the scene, lock the reading from that area, and then recompose. For a misty morning frame with sun rays breaking through trees, I pointed at the sunlit grass (which I wanted to render as mid-grey), pressed the AE lock button, recomposed and fired. The negative is very satisfying. The rays show. The shadows are dark but printable, and the grass is exposed exactly where I wanted it.
The shutter squealed on a few frames as the camera warmed up in my hand. The negatives came out fine.
The lenses
I took three lenses out with me over the two days.
The kit 50mm f/1.8 is the nifty fifty that came with the camera in 1993. It is a really nice piece of glass for what it is, and the centre is sharp wide open. The 50mm focal length on 35mm is the classic “normal” lens, which I have a slightly mixed relationship with. I find it neither wide enough to feel expansive nor long enough to feel like a portrait lens. It always feels too tight. I used it less than I used the other two.
The Super-Paragon 28mm is a third-party lens (Super-Paragon was a UK-market brand badge fitted to various Japanese-made lenses in the 70s and 80s) in original FD breech-lock mount. The 28mm focal length is the one I default to on 35mm because it gives the camera room to breathe. The lens is contrasty and slightly cool in rendering, both of which suit British weather.
The Canon FD 35-105 zoom is the one I used most on the rainy day, because changing lenses in the rain is a stupid thing to do. It is a Canon-branded zoom from the 80s and is very heavy. The image quality is unremarkable but consistent, and the zoom range covers most of what you would want on a single walk.
The 28mm and the zoom are both original FD breech-lock mounts, which means that instead of twisting the lens to mount it (like a modern bayonet) you line up the red dots and hold the lens still while rotating the silver collar at the back to lock it on. The new FD mount from 1979 onwards changed this to a more conventional bayonet where the lens itself rotates. Both mounts use the same lens-to-body coupling, so any FD lens will fit any FD body. The breech-lock just feels different in the hand. Slightly old-fashioned now. I still like it.
The sound
I am going to admit to a slight obsession with the sound a camera makes. The shutter sound of the AE-1 Program is, to me, the sound of 1980s photography. It is a wonderfully crisp metallic snap with a tiny mechanical whisper from the mirror return. If you have ever watched a film set in the 1980s where a journalist or a wedding photographer takes a picture, the sound editor probably dubbed the AE-1 sound over the top. It is that recognisable.
(Mine currently squeals. But the underlying sound, when the squeal is dealt with, is the right one.)
By comparison, my Olympus OM10 makes a much higher-pitched click that sounds slightly tinny. Both are fine. The AE-1 sound is the one I grew up with and it is the one I default to thinking of as how an SLR should sound.
Verdict
I am genuinely fond of this camera. The combination of “given to me by my dad as a teenager”, “still works after 27 years without a service” and “still takes really nice photographs” is a difficult one to argue with. The squeal is annoying but fixable. The build quality is exactly as 1980s Japanese as you would expect.
If you do not already have an AE-1 or an AE-1 Program in your collection, you should consider one. They are everywhere on the second-hand market, reliable and easy to shoot. They will give you frame after frame of properly exposed, properly composed work without making you fight the camera. The cost is less than a roll of film a month over two years. These cameras are part of the history of how affordable autoexposure SLRs came into being.
Buy one with the 50mm f/1.8 on it (or pick the 50mm up separately for £20). Run a roll of FP4 through it, then a roll of Portra and a roll of T-Max. You will see what I mean.
The next outing on the channel was back to medium format, which is the natural pairing with this one. If you want a 6x6 entry-level cousin to the AE-1 Program for around a fifth of the price, the GB Kershaw 110 review is the article to read next. Same philosophy, different decade, different format.
I will be sending the AE-1 in for a CLA. The squeal will be gone by the next time it appears on the channel. It will sound right again.