Just digging out some old memories. Here is a pictorial history of the (stylistic) development from Canon FD to EOS-mount cameras First, the old standard - cameras in the wake of the "original style" Pentacon era - The FD-mount The Canon AE1-P Canon challenges Nikon The flagship of the Canon A line - making everything a little more automatic The Canon A-1 Still very much in the Pentacon mode, but getting more and more functions - And still more - the first of the Canon T-series Canon T-50 Practically all you need to do is push the button. Beginning to show the same kind of styling as the Triumph TR-3 sports car Focus confirmation appears Canon AL-1 It did work, even pretty well. But the T-series makes the first Canon autofocus camera. Combination of AL-1 focus and T style Note that the lens bulges are the in-lens focus motor But a German named Colani pummels the form - a prototype style exercise Which results in the ultimate (stylistically speaking) gem of the FD-mount line Ta-Da- the T90 - basically an EOS camera without AF Take the works of the T90, add a more compact in-lens focus motor, revert temporatily to a more "TR-3" style, and you have the first EOS camera, the EOS 650 a whole new mount, with many FD-mount users switching to Nikon F. From now, it seems like it may have been a smart move.
corrigendum The TR-3 Triumph car did start the transition to more "slab"-like styling, but what was stylistically most representative for the T-series and the early EOS cameras was the slab + wedge shape of the TR-7. The Coloni style brought the rounded "jello-mold" look, like that of the T90.
I loved that T90. A couple of years ago I sold mine, and just got another one last week. Unfortunately I have to get a replacement battery holder as the catch is broken, but the rest works when I hold the batteries in, and no EEEE.. Tanks for sharing the "rememberance of things past".
One of these days I'm going to make another stab at fixing the EEE error on my T90. I also love that camera. Old report on it Canon T90 - Twilight, harbinger, and herald By the way, these are all in my "collection" except, of course, for the Colani prototype.
But it started before the AE-1, of course. My first Canon was an FTb in black. This one isn't mine; I found the image online. Mine was gray market, and in those days, the C and final n were drilled off gray market imports. This was the budget alternative to the F-1, which I couldn't afford and certainly didn't need.
I could have gone back to the Exakta, or even before, but I had to start somewhere and I felt that the new FD mount and the AE-1P were the real beginnings of Canon's climb to hegemony. Here's the start of the "style" VEB Zeiss Ikon I still think it has priority for the eye-level prism. That Biotar double-Gauss lens is still excellent today. And then the East-West divide led to a new name How I wanted one, but I was probably lucky that I got a Heiland Pentax clone of it instead.
That is technically true, but the FD mount on their lenses is the breech-lock mechanism. (see FDn Series - FlynnGraphics). The mount on the FD body itself never changed, but the lenses did. The "new FD" (FDn) lenses were introduced with the Canon AE-1 in 1971. It, and subsequent pre-EOS Canon cameras, will mount FD lenses but have the (pseudo) "bayonet" twist-the- lens-to-mount on their FDn LENSES. I consider this change as another part of the design changes that mark the start on the way to Canon dominance in the SLR field. The AE-1 camera was very successful. There are arguments for the beech-lock ( it was earlier on the VEB KW Praktina), but while one can appreciate it in theory, in practice those of us who have had a breech-lock lens fall off got a little skittish.