Canon “Charlie-Browns” me once again

By James Hitchcock

Auuuuuugggghhhh!

If you are a child of the 1960s or 70s you are probably familiar with the “Peanuts” comic strip that was featured in most daily newspapers during those decades. You may also then be familiar with verb idiom to “Charlie-Brown” someone, based on the sad sack Peanuts character Charlie Brown, who was continually being fooled by the character Lucy’s unkept promise to hold a football for him to kick. Pulling it away at the last moment left Charlie Brown flying through the air in the last panel of the comic shouting a frustrated “Auuuuuugggghhhh!”

I am Charlie Brown, and Canon cameras is my Lucy.

First of all, if you’re not familiar with the photography world, you need to understand that each camera maker creates an “ecosystem” of cameras and lenses that are compatible with each other, but not with the cameras of other manufacturers. So one must decide in which ecosystem one wishes to “live.” And that decision then binds one to the camera maker in a way that’s not common with other product manufacturers. In the 1970s, when I became involved in photojournalism, Nikon, and to a lesser extent Canon, were the camera makers who ruled the professional camera market.

I got my first Canon camera in the late 1970s while I was still in high school. It was the Canon AE-1, one of the first auto-exposure cameras to hit the market. It had interchangeable lenses with the “FD” mount that required three hands to change: one to hold the camera, one to hold the lens, and one to tighten the knurled “breech-lock” ring at the base of the lens that held the two together. As ungainly as the process was, it was far easier than changing the lenses on my father’s 1960s Nikkormat camera that I had been using for high school yearbook photography. Those lenses had to be screwed onto the camera body, and I was in constant fear of cross-threading and ruining them.

So I headed off to college set to conquer the world with my AE-1 and three breech-lock FD lenses: a “normal,” a wide-angle, and a telephoto zoom lens.

And Canon Charlie-Browned me by introducing a “New FD” lens mount in 1979 that eliminated the breech-lock ring with a true “bayonet” mount, where the entire lens was rotated until it audibly clicked into a locked position. There was no longer the worry of cross-threading the breech-lock ring, or that the ring might loosen while the camera bounced around in the camera bag of a constantly-moving photojournalist. Removing the lens now required pressing a small button to release the lock before rotating the lens. Still, it was far easier to use than the old FD mount.

This didn’t really change the camera mount itself, one could still mount the old lenses on new cameras and new lenses on the old. But it practically eliminated any used resale value on the old breech-lock lenses.

And perhaps worse, it provided a point of embarrassment when standing on the photographer’s line at sporting events next to more experienced, deeper-pocketed shooters who would inquire about me using my grandfather’s camera. A brutal lot, we photojournalists were.

Then, in 1985, all my photography equipment was stolen. I had to take out a loan to buy new equipment: A new pro-level F1 camera and four lenses with the “new” FD mount. I was now one of the cool kids.

And Canon Charlie-Browned me, again.

In 1987 Canon introduced auto-focus lenses with an entirely new “EF” mount. This new mount was incompatible with the FD mount cameras. This meant that moving to auto focus would require not just buying new lenses, but new camera bodies on which to mount them. And, of course the new camera bodies would not accept the old lenses, so the changeover would require a huge cash outlay for all new equipment, rather than being able to just replace one piece of gear at a time as had been previously possible.

At that point I was so angry that I vowed that as long as I had to buy all new equipment, I would switch to Nikon in protest.

Well, that decision was made for me, as I got a job in 1989 at a newspaper that actually had an equipment budget, and I was outfitted with a Nikon camera and auto-focus lenses. The early auto-focus was so slow I turned it off when shooting sports, as I could focus faster manually, but still I felt like I had held true to my vow.

I left the field for a while beginning in 1990, and then a couple years later came back, freelancing full time, using my old Canon gear and getting along just fine, thank you very much. Then in 1996 I got a full-time job at another publication that provided me with Nikon gear, and the Canon gear went back into the cardboard box in which it had been living before.

As you are most likely aware, during the early 2000s film photography ceased to exist, except in certain enclaves, much like Neanderthals continued to exist in small ecosystems as modern humans overran Europe and Asia. The publication at which I worked was one of those enclaves. However, while I continued using Nikon film cameras to scratch images on the cave walls of my publication, my fiancé bought me a Fujifilm S9000 digital camera for my personal work. It didn’t have interchangeable lenses, but the lens it did have was tack-sharp and had a zoom range that covered everything I needed for personal photography. After I left the publication for which I was working, that camera performed fine for the online work I was doing, its 9-megapixel sensor producing smaller files that were perfect for websites. I finally sold off my Canon gear, earning about a thousand dollars for equipment that had cost me nearly $10,000.

But, by the late 20-teens I wanted to do more video work, and began shopping around for a more video-capable camera. Still feeling a bit burned by Canon, I set out find an alternative. After reading many magazine articles and watching numerous videos by professional photographers, I narrowed my selections down to the three camera makers with the largest market share: Nikon, Sony, and … Canon. While there were those that heaped praise on other companies such as Fujifilm, Panasonic, and Olympus, in the end I just was too worried about smaller market-share companies’ ability to continue in the long term. I’m sure there are many who would object to my choice, and I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it myself. But market share tells one a great deal about products offered, and about the headwinds smaller companies will face as camera phones become greater and greater competition to stand-alone cameras.

Of the three, Nikon seemed a bit unable to get its digital feet under it, so to speak. Even today Nikon, once the be-all-end-all of prestige photography, in 2023 was third of the three with a global market share of less than 12 percent. Sony at the time had (and has still) a extensive offering, but there seemed a widely held view that it had trouble with color rendition. Sony fans countered that it was easily correctable in post production, but I was interested in doing the least work possible. In recent articles that issue seems to have been addressed, but at the time I wanted a camera that was shoot-it-and-forget-it.

Which led me back to my nemesis, Canon.

At that point Canon had split its ecosystem into two branches: the first was DSLRs,* the old film-camera-body framework that had been converted to digital sensors which used the existing EF lens mount; and all-new, much smaller “mirrorless” EOS-M digital camera bodies that had a smaller lens mount.

Canon’s EOS-M camera bodies and lenses were nowhere near the professional level DSLR bodies and EF lenses in sturdiness or features, but I was now far from being a professional photojournalist. And although the EOS-M ecosystem was short on lenses, there were adapters available to fit EF lenses on EOS-M bodies.

At this point Canon’s EOS-R camera had not been released, although a great deal of pre-press had, and retailers were taking preorders. This new camera would have an entirely new lens mount, incompatible with either the EF or EOS-M lenses. I don’t know if it was a company promotion, or just retailer incentive, but several were offering a free lens adapter with a preorder of the EOS-R camera, allowing purchasers to continue using their existing EF mount lenses on the new camera. This was obviously a way of dealing with the problem that the changeover from FD to EF mount lenses created, as I discussed before, that led me to vow never to buy Canon again.

The impending drop of the EOS-R camera made me nervous about the future of either the DSLR EF lens mount or the EOS-M lens mount camera lineups. The DSLR range of cameras had such a powerful market footprint that it would definitely continue on for many years, in my opinion. But it just didn’t seem prudent to buy into an ecosystem that had at its heart what was nearly a 100-year old mechanical technology.

The EOS-M lineup faced perhaps an even more dangerous future, as there just weren’t as many lenses available, so the changeover away from the system would be less painful for photographers and manufacturer alike. The question was, would Canon keep two mirrorless camera ranges? Well, the DSLR camera ecosystem itself was really two: there were “full frame” cameras which had a digital sensor the size of the 35 mm film it replaced, and “crop sensor” cameras that had, well, a sensor that was cropped smaller in size than the full-frame sensor. In 2012 Canon had even introduced EF-S lenses specifically for the crop sensor cameras. These lenses, while still maintaining the EF lens mount, were smaller, designed specifically for the smaller sensor. This allowed lower prices than the equivalent full-size EF lens, the larger image projected by which was essentially wasted on the smaller sensor.

And, with a retail price of $2,000 for the upcoming EOS-R camera body alone (and a beginning lens range with astronomical prices to match), not to mention its “full frame” sensor, it seemed to be aimed at different clientele than the EOS-M series, where the “crop sensor” camera body and two zoom lenses covering everything from wide angle to medium telephoto could be had for less than half that. Price-wise, and sensor-wise, the mid-level DSLR cameras in the EF system lined up far more closely with the new EOS-R camera.

It seemed to me that it was a pretty good gamble that there was room for the EOS-M ecosystem to coexist alongside the EOS-R ecosystem. I’m sure Neanderthals thought the same thing the first time they saw a tall, slender, handsome Homo sapiens man wander by.

So I bought an EOS M50 camera body, and bowing to my late father’s photographic wisdom to “spend your cash on glass,” bought a higher grade EF 24 mm-105 mm f/4L zoom lens to put on it for video work. This required the aforementioned EF-M adapter to get the EF lens on an EOS-M camera body. I found a Viltrox adapter with an optical reducer that not only mated the lens and camera, but reduced the large image the lens projected to fit the smaller crop sensor, eliminating the wasted light, adding an entire f/stop** to the exposure range of the lens. So the 24 mm – 105 mm f/4L Canon lens becomes an f/2.8. This might look a bit silly with a big lens attached to a small camera body, but it works great.

I shot this music video with it (except the black and white segments which were shot with the Fuji camera I mentioned earlier).

I’m sure by now you know where this is going.

Fast forward to 2024, and I was thinking about getting a longer telephoto lens to do some wildlife photography while I’m hiking. So, I went online. And the first thing that comes up in my search is this video on the demise of the Canon EOS-M series.

Charlie Brown; Lucy; Football.

Thanks, Canon.

To paraphrase what Ugg the Neanderthal said to his buddy Urgg when a Homo sapiens walked by, “That is one damn fine looking (camera) body.”

Here’s some affiliate links in case you’re interested in the products mentioned in this essay. We may get a small commission when you use these links, at no additional cost to you:
Canon cameras on eBay: https://ebay.us/repyKt
Canon cameras on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3xlHDPS
Viltrox Adapter for Canon EF Lens to EOS-M on eBay: https://ebay.us/U2jAQu
Viltrox Adapter for Canon EF Lens to EOS-M on Amazon: https://amzn.to/45xak9h
Nikon cameras on eBay: https://ebay.us/iFFpr5
Nikon cameras on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3VLrwV7
Sony cameras on eBay: https://ebay.us/ADhXK1
Sony cameras on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4c5QaWe
Fujifilm cameras on eBay: https://ebay.us/z5vFCU
Fujifilm cameras on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3VsvhNL

*Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras, like the film SLR cameras before them, have a mirror in front of the digital image sensor that creates a periscope-like ability to look into the camera viewfinder and see directly through the camera lens when composing photos. “Mirrorless” cameras are just that: there is no mirror in front of the sensor, and looking into the viewfinder, the photographer sees instead a digital screen showing what the digital sensor “sees.”

** Photographer mumbo jumbo for “It’s brighter!”