After trying to convince myself for about a year, I recently found a gentleman in Reno, NV who buys Canon T90s worth saving, rebuilds and sells them with a nice little warranty and everything. Considering how much a full frame Canon digital SLR costs these days (something I have little to no intention of buying any time soon) I think the tiny sum I paid for this new old camera is insanely cheap, especially considering that it's got everything most digital SLRs have in them today (save, perhaps the video camera showing up in newer model dSLRs).
Released in 1986 and manufactured for only about thirteen months, the T90 represents the zenith of Canon's manual focus camera line up. The next SLR they produced was the auto focus EOS 6XX series (650 and 630). Everyone was going auto focus in the mid to late '80s, so Canon changed their lens mount and left thousands of Canon shooters standing with their zoom in their hand; none of their manual focus FD and FL lenses would mount on these new EOS cameras which raised a bit of a stink among Canon loyalists. A lot of people to this day can't believe Canon did and got away with it. I can't even imagine what it must have been like at the time to have thousands of dollars invested in lenses and camera bodies, only to have your camera company of choice turn your world upside down by basically saying, "If you want one of our new cameras, you'll need to drop some coin on new lenses, too. It'll be worth it...they're newer...better...faster...."
What makes the T90 so special? First, you have to consider its features in the proper context: This camera was introduced in 1986 when cameras, by comparison, were square and looked like your dad's SLR. Canon brought in a German industrial designer named Luigi Colani, known for his work designing sports cars for Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini. Gone are the squared off edges and corners, replaced by smooth curves that invite you to pick up the camera and use it. The deep hand grip and LCD display on the camera's right shoulder first appeared on the T90 and became the template for Canon's SLR design from that day forward.
But, looks aside, the T90 made several leaps forward regarding the features Canon packed into their cameras. Up to this point, most SLRs they made had horizontal focal plane shutters that would only sync with a strobe unit at 1/60 of a second (the earlier T70 does sync at 1/90). The T90's precision metal vertical-travel focal plane shutter allows flash sync at 1/250—now the industry standard on just about all pro-level SLRs. If you don't shoot with strobes, this number means nothing to you, so I'll just say it's pretty damn cool.
Additionally Canon packed in several other features like three metering modes: full frame averaging, center-weighted averaging, and a 2.7 degree spot meter. They also loaded it with a built-in motor drive that advances the film at one of two user-selected speeds: Low at 2 frames per second or High at a blistering 4.5 fames per second. Most consumer level digital SLRs on the market today still can't touch the T90's highest frame rate.
In their efforts to appeal to the widest range of shooters possible, Canon also built the T90 with all the requisite Program and Auto shooting modes people had come to expect in their cameras at this point in time, but none of those features interest me much as I tend to shoot almost exclusively in Manual mode (save the few instances when I want to pick up the camera and grab a quick shot with no time to take a meter reading). I bought into the T90 after using my Olympus dSLR showed me how much more control I can have over my creativity with something as simple as a spot meter and a flash sync higher than 1/60. The motor drive is just gravy and not something I tend to use all that often, but it's nice to know it's there for those times when a sequence shot is the only kind of shot that will do.
I'm a couple months into shooting with the T90 and I have to say this camera is a joy to work with. It didn't get its nickname "The Tank" for no reason; it's solidly-built, has plenty of weight and when shooting with it you know you're working with a piece of precision photographic equipment. So far the images it's helped me create have been wonderful. Included here are a few images from the first shoot I did with the camera a couple days after receiving it. My sister and a good friend of ours share back to back birthdays, for which they usually combine their efforts and celebrate together with a low-level gathering of good friends new and old. This year I commandeered a corner of a spare bedroom and set up a couple fluorescent Home Depot shop lights to produce sort of a poor man's bank-o-Kino Flo ala Martin Schoeller. I went through six rolls of film over the next few hours as the set took on a photobooth vibe.....but with me deciding when to go click. I captured very cool shots of a bunch of incredible people...shots I still need to go through and edit down to the absolute best of the best, then figure out what to do from there. 11x14 prints for everyone!!!
The specs for these shots are: Canon T90 with a Canon FDn (New FD) 200mm f/4. I was shooting mostly Fuji Superia X-tra 400 film rated at ISO 250. This was giving me f/4 at 1/125...so I had the camera on a tripod quite low to the ground so I could crouch and shoot everyone seated in a comfy chair. I quickly ran out of the Fuji 400 and had to switch to Fuji HQ 200, which I had to shoot at 200 because I couldn't afford to go any slower with my shutter speed for fear of getting too many blurred shots as people laughed and interacted in front of my lens. Also, f/4 is the max aperture on that 200mm, so I was letting in as much light as I could. Normally I like to shoot color negative film 2/3 of a stop overexposed to open up the shadows a touch, but I couldn't do that with the Fuji 200. Shooting it at ISO 125 was out of the question. As a result, the grain is quite heavy in the three-quarter tones and shadows of the shots taken with the 200 at 200. The 400 at 250 is probably just as grainy, so what can you do? I think the 400 would be even grainier at 400. It is consumer-grade film, after all. Upon seeing these shots, I recently had someone ask me why I bother shooting with consumer-grade film and I didn't really have a good answer other than, 'It's cheap.' I don't like spending more than two dollars for a roll of film at this point in my career. A dollar a roll is even better!
1 comment:
Enjoy your T90. I bought one new back in the day, and even though I am currently swimming in digital Canon photography, I never gave up my all of my FD lenses, and complete F1 N camera set for times when film seems appropriate.
A few years ago, I bought a used T90, and 300TL flash unit from KEH in Atlanta in a nostalgic moment. Holding that camera in my hand when it arrived brought a wave of satisfaction that is beyond my ability to describe.
I love that camera, and even though I own, and work with a very impressive collection of EOS lenses, film and digital bodies from the EOS 10, 3 and the 30D through the 7D, I regularly include film in my shooting now, and the T90, rather than my EOS film cameras is my preferred camera body for film.
I even bought a second clean T90 body at a bargain price just to have as a spare.... That's pretty sick. Having the latest and greatest EOS film and digital gear on hand, and still drooling like a lovestruck teenager over a 25 year old camera.
What can I say? The T90 is a timeless jewel in the photographic world. I don't fault Canon for moving to the EOS auto focus system, and the new lens mount at all. It really was a stroke of genius to bite the bullet and enter the future with a clean slate.
On the other hand, I thank Canon for giving us the T90 before they made the change. As long as there is a functioning T90 body in the world, a film shooter can pick and choose from among the millions of awesome FD lenses out in the world, and never have to offer an excuse for a lack of creative features, image quality, or solid granite reliability (feels sweet in the hand too).
Awesome camera....
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