40+ years old

<p>I bought this Servo EE finder about 25 years ago. I’ve used it sparingly over the years, it’s spent most of its life neatly stored in its case. Just for kicks, I pulled it out today, plugged it into its battery pack and turned it on. It worked beautifully. The servo motor inside softly purred as the aperture changed from F1.4 to F16. And what amazed me the most, the meter was 100% accurate when compared to my Luna-Pro F handheld meter. Not bad for a 40+ year old technology. </p>

<p><img src="http://gallery.leica-users.org/d/432736-1/Servo_EE.JPG" alt="" /></p>

<p> </p>

 

<p>Way cool!<br>

Thanks for sharing with us. :)</p>

<p>40+ years and the battery is still working. Did you recharged the battery before plugged in to use? The problem with batteries, stored long time not charged, losing some chemicals or something and become unchangeable, dead. A nice toy to play with it. I like stuff like that.</p>

<p>Bela, the batteries are standard AA. Eight fit in the battery chamber. Bought some new ones today and everything worked fine.</p>

<p>What did the Servo EE do, and what photographic use could one use it for? I had bought the T-90 instead of an F-1. A lot of the pro features were beyond me at the time.</p>

<p>The Servo EE finder turned the F-1 into a shutter speed-preferred automatic camera. You set the shutter speed, and the camera would set the correct aperture. That was the beauty of any of the F-1 models. They were true systems cameras and, with the right attachments, could be configured to do about anything.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>What did Servo EE do?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I guess EE stands for Electronic Exposure. That makes me miss shooting with a Canon EF which was the first Canon that I bought and still in love with it (even though the F1 is more attractive)</p>

<p>Thank you Jim. Ah the normal AA batteries, of-course. Those time we used mostly batteries for everything, flash, motor-drive gadgets , etc., getting old, 77, forgetting the good all time.</p>

<p>I wish I had known (and should have guessed) earlier that it used alkaline AA batteries. The case looked like it might have used a proprietary NiCad battery no longer available. I would have bought one of the mint condition Servo EE sets that used to come up for sale occasionally, just for the coolness factor...<br>

I mean, to be honest, I don't really like auto-exposure. I have an EF that I bought in 1980 to take on a family trip to Japan. After spending a month using it there, I bought an F-1 as soon as I came home because I didn't like/trust the bottom center weighted auto exposure. I was too accustomed to the 12% rectangle in my FT.</p>

"It's alive! It's alive!"

 

Good stuff Jim! The Servo EE Finder is such an ingenious device, I love it.

<p >We may laugh at the Servo EE finder now, such a large, awkward, bulky device, but in 1970 when this was first introduced, it was considered cutting edge. </p>

<p > </p>

<p >Even today it has use. I don’t do a lot of wildlife photography, but several year’s back, I put my F-1 and the Servo EE finder and Motor Drive MF on a tripod and aimed at our backyard bird feeder. I put on a FD 300mm lens, prefocused, then went inside the house. The camera/finder/motor were connected by a cable (Canon made) to where I was inside our house. I shot a 36 exposure roll of Kodachrome 64 of birds at the feeder. All were perfectly exposed. </p>

<p>I discovered the old F-1 a few years after it had been replaced by the New F-1, so while I was rather fascinated by the old tech of the original F-1, I guess I thought there wasn't much of a point to using the Servo EE finder anymore. Not when I could achieve the same result wth an A-1 and motor drive. But that other big finder that was made for the old F-1 -- the Booster T Finder -- now that was something of value that I could still appreciate. Metering down to -3.5EV, timed exposures out to 60 seconds, and ASA settings all the way out to 12800. That was something I felt I could use. So when I ran across a mint one with case, I scooped it up. It's a marvel to watch and listen to as its electronically controlled clockwork times out the slow speeds. So, whether it's the Servo EE or Booster T, I think the old tech is really cool in a lot of ways.</p>

 

<p>I will "call" on your Servo EE and Booster T finders and "raise" you the Speed Finder. I think this was Canon's most innovative finder for the F-1 and New F-1. No other company made anything like it (IIRC) although Nikon's HP (High Eyepoint) finders were close. But, although Nikon's HP finders allowed you to view the full viewing screen from a couple inches away, it did not rotate to give you a right-side-up waist level finder which in itself was innovative since most (all?) waist level finders are upside-down and reversed. The only thing that could have made the original Speed Finder better was to combine it with the Servo EE finder's auto exposure function, which Canon did with the New F-1/Speed Finder FN.</p>

<p>Don't forget, this was introduced in 1971 with the release of the F-1 system. At the time, other than a few prosumer cameras (Konica Autoreflex T series) and a few point and shoot range finder cameras, this was the cutting edge. Everybody else was building aperture priority auto exposure SLRs.</p>

<p>Very cool Jim, that's the on item for my F-1s I still need to find.</p>

<p>Ed</p>