Canon EOS 650

Here are a couple of trivia questions for you…

Number one: What camera was used to take the very first photo posted on the Web?

Number two: What camera was the first to use the Canon EF auto-focus lens mount?

I’m sure you’re way ahead of me… the answer is the same for both questions and it’s the Canon EOS 650.

This camera was released in March of 1987… Wikipedia says it was on Canon’s 50th anniversary… and who am I to argue with the almighty crowd-source.

The EOS 650 represented a huge gamble for Canon. Like the Autofocus Minolta A-Mount, which predated the EF by two years, Canon created a brand-new mount for its line of autofocus lenses. Looking back after 37 years and millions of EF lenses, we know now it was the right decision. But back then I know of several Canon users who were ready to take up torches and pitchforks to storm the headquarters. Luckily no one was poked or singed.

I guess it helped that Canon started turning out good quality EF Mount lenses from the git-go. Two zooms and a nifty fifty were available on day one, and nearly a dozen more zooms and primes came to market in the first year. It also helped that Canon’s auto focus system really worked well right from the start. Maybe it was all this technology that convinced Silvano de Gennaro of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN, to acquire a Canon EOS 650. He took a picture of Les Horribles Cernettes, a parody pop band made up of CERN employees. His buddy, Tim Berners-Lee asked for a photo for his new invention, the “World Wide Web.” That was just in 1992. Anyone feeling old?

Anyway… this Canon EOS 650 is holding up better than websites from the early 90s. You can tell it is an ancestor of the modern Canon DSLRs. Sure… the curves are a little less curvy but the big beefy grip with the shutter button and a control wheel are already in place. It’s covered in high quality plastic, which on my copy has stood up very well. The EOS 650 in my hand must have lived a pretty easy life before I picked it up at a Goodwill store back when thrift stores still had cameras. It feels comfortably heavy in the hand and thank goodness there is no rubber to turn to goo.

Using an old Canon autofocus SLR is a lot like using a modern Canon camera. The shutter button is in the same place, and it works in the same way.  The old camera focuses more slowly, but it’s fast enough for me and just as accurate almost every time. The Canon EOS 650 has exactly one focus point, dead in the center of the viewfinder. That works because you can half press the button to lock focus and recompose. You know, I think that’s less fiddly than having dozens of points to choose from. 

I will say that Canon engineers have improved the menu interface greatly over the decades. There’s no big display and quad-button to navigate through the menus. You don’t really have menus. What you do have is a control wheel, a knob or two and buttons scattered around the camera. They even hid some of the buttons behind a tiny door on the back of the camera below the film door. In the spirit of full disclosure, the controls are annoying enough that for 90 percent of my shooting, I just use the “Auto-Everything” setting and forget it. Luckily, that’s another thing Canon got right way back then. The metering and the exposure program are spot on. For what I do, there’s no compelling reason to shoot in any of the manual or semi-manual modes. Your milage may vary.

The main reason I got this camera was to use my collection of EF lenses… it’s the only “Full Frame” Canon that I own. My favorite lens is the 50mm f1.8 nifty fifty. Another beauty is the Sigma EX DG 15-30mm f3.5 – 4.5.  These two make up most of my shooting on this camera. 

This camera does its job well… which is to hold a good Canon EF lens in front of the film and set the focus and exposure accurately. But there are newer cameras that do that just as well and maybe a little faster, if less historically. It's cool to have a camera that helped invent the modern internet.