I’ve owned and reviewed every T series camera (T70, 80 and 90) in the last few years apart from the T50. With the exception of the superb, groundbreaking T90 there isn’t a great deal of love for Canon’s transitional T series SLR cameras. The T80 was a best forgotten experiment into on lens auto focus, the T70 didn’t quite cut it for many people (although I thought it was vastly underrated) as an “enthusiast” level option to tempt them away from their F-1 and A-1 models and the T50… Well, let’s just say it didn’t set the world on fire.
The T series as a whole is total Marmite for many. Their prices remain low and they don’t garner quite the same misty eyed sentiment as their beautifully crafted, metal bodied predecessors. However, in modern times it is very easy to forget the context into which these cameras were released and the design goals that Canon’s engineers were trying to achieve.
SLR sales had boomed throughout the 70’s as manufacturers released ever more capable cameras designed for the discerning photography enthusiast and it appears they did rather a good job because as the market saturated, few were tempted by shiny new models being released. Furthermore, compact cameras were simultaneously becoming higher quality, fully featured and above all else much easier to use, thus negating the need for a large, heavy and complex SLR. The prevailing conditions and sentiments towards SLR cameras were very different in 1983 and manufacturers knew that the bottom was well and truly falling out of the market.
Something had to be done to tempt photographers to upgrade or come back to the interchangeable lens world before it was too late and the T50 was Canon’s first shot.
In this review:
- But it’s got no buttons!
- Critical reception
- Buying a T50 today
- Shooting some film
- Conclusions and learning
But it’s got no buttons!
In 1983, computers were going to take over the world. We were well and truly in the midst of “the coming of the future” and in just a decade or two there wouldn’t be much point in going to work because computers would do it all for us. We’d have more leisure time, be more productive and let automated systems take care of all the heavy lifting.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Familiar like the complete and utter garbage that is being sprayed liberally around by marketing departments about AI. If history can tell us one thing quite categorically, it’s that technology is brilliant but it never lives up to the hype the advertisers would like you to believe. I’m still waiting for a computer that programs itself, a system that I can interact with sanely using plain English and above all else, where is the flying car I was promised?
In 1983 as in 2025, there was the promise of a machine that would take over all the complicated stuff for you, do all of the heavy lifting whilst all you have to do is press a button. Interestingly, we are genuinely seeing these kinds of advances in the most modern camera releases today – machine learning being used to recognise a scene and make judgements not just about what to focus on, but what adjustments a real person might make such as exposure compensations. Ultimately though, for all of these advances, you will always need a human at the other end to decide what to point the camera at.
Canon made the decision to throw their cards on the table and bet all their chips on automation. If complexity was the barrier which prevented SLR sales, then Canon would abstract it all away and leave the user with not just a few choices, but none at all. The design brief must’ve been comically simple – “make a one button SLR.” If this sounds mad, it’s exactly the design philosophy of another rather important early 1980’s product – the first Apple Macintosh. Steve Jobs famously removed even the arrow keys on the keyboard in an effort to force simplification, abstraction and to push people to use this new fangled mouse thing he’d stolen from Xerox. If a button or option was unnecessary, it was removed.
The T50 has but one dial and that gives you the choice of self timer, program, off and battery check. I don’t understand why Canon didn’t just change the word “program” to “on.” It’s not like you can even shift the program on this camera, so just having an on position would’ve made perfect sense. Considering the sole purpose of the T50 is out and out simplicity, there are a few more design choices that don’t initially make sense at first glance.
Unlike previous A series cameras, the T50 introduced automatic film loading and built in motorised film advance. You could have motorised film winding with the older cameras but at the expense of buying an external motor drive and bolting it to your camera. Great choices so far, but this is where they apparently end as film rewind is entirely manual via a hand crank and you also have to manually set the ISO. The rewind I can forgive, but the number of times I’ve forgotten to change ISO between film changes, you can’t help but think the inclusion of DX coding would’ve been a priority.
Both of these features came in the later T70, so it isn’t as if Canon didn’t know how to implement automatic rewind and DX coding into a camera. Baffling though these decisions seem, the reason for their omission is actually perfectly clear – it came down to cost saving. Whilst the T50 had to be as simple and automated as possible, it also had to meet a critically low price point to tempt people to buy an SLR as their first camera, a second body, a travel camera… Anything rather than a compact. Introducing the gears and control hardware necessary for film rewind cost just a few too many pennies and DX coding was out of the question as this would’ve necessitated an LCD to display the ISO and dreaded buttons to allow the user to change the ISO.
With this in mind, the design compromises that Canon made start to make far more sense. They had achieved their main ambition of giving the user nothing to do but focus and press a button, something outside of that was either too costly or would lead to feature creep that negated the whole point of the camera in the first place.
Critical reception
The T50 wasn’t panned by the photography press when it was launched and Popular Photography managed to capture the essence of the camera perfectly in the opening paragraph of their review in November 1983:
Recently, I noticed a young woman in New York’s Central Park using a Canon T-50 to snap pictures of children. Her handling of the young subjects and manipulation of the camera seemed so professional that I felt impelled to ask her if the T-50 were her only camera. “Oh no,” she replied, explaining that her main camera is a much more sophisticated SLR. “But,” she added, “the T-50 allows me to relax, to put technical questions aside when shooting pictures of people.” She had neatly explained the task for which the T-50 is intended—to give sharp, well-exposed pictures with a minimum of fuss.
The T50 was, believe it or not, a groundbreaking camera. If you think people were skeptical about plastic lens mounts not being robust enough in cheaper EOS cameras released in the very late 1990’s, you can imagine how people viewed an all plastic body (although glass fibre reinforced) on an SLR in the early 1980’s.
Canon had made inroads into automated production with the A series of cameras and had recouped their huge research, development and engineering outlay with sales in the millions of units. With the T series of cameras, they pushed this cost reducing even further with some obvious and some very subtle changes. The T50 makes use of a mixture of old and new components – the mirror box was apparently mostly A series, but the shutter was entirely new. Some of the film winding mechanism was also from the older cameras.
Canon’s transition to cost saving automated production wasn’t straight forward. When it came to the chassis of the camera and mirror box assembly they apparently had it down to a T (see what I did there) and it was considered something of a marvel that Canon didn’t apply any kind of finishing to the casing of the T50 which saved time and lowered production costs further. However, they increased the number of wires that were hand soldered during manufacture which surely then increased labour costs. Popular Photography scratched their heads and wondered why they just didn’t do away with physical wires and make use of ribbon cables (quite the new concept at the time) instead.
The T50 came with a few small quality of life improvements over the A series, primarily the switch from the small, odd 6v batteries to standard AA’s. There’s a lot to be said for being able to just pick up a new set of batteries no matter where you are and on top of that you can apparently get between fifty to seventy rolls of film out of a single set of batteries. That’s crazy when you consider the power winder must use a reasonable amount of power per film, I do wonder if anyone ever replaced the batteries in their T50 – after shooting fifty rolls of film they probably had moved on to a newer model. Perhaps this explains all the cameras today that are full of battery corrosion!
Time has been kind to the T50 and a lot of the concerns about the longevity of plastics and so forth have been proven incorrect. The real weak spot of the camera is the battery door which commonly suffers from a broken latch or being detached entirely. Of course, many more die at the hands of battery leakage eating their internals after being put away in a cupboard for a couple of decades. In terms of robustness, that’s not bad going for a bottom of the range, first attempt at a cost and feature reduced camera.
Buying a T50 today
For a long, long time the T50 had been an absolute bargain basement camera that no one really wanted, in the same bracket as the ubiquitous EOS 1000F. Recently prices have just started to creep up, not by much and not to stupid levels, but they’re definitely on the up. If you’re very lucky you might be able to pick one up for around £10, but more likely is somewhere in the £20 price bracket.
Ebay isn’t necessarily the best place to buy one of these and they’re definitely the source of some hideous attempts to sell T50’s for absurd amounts. There are actually some excellent deals to be had from some independent camera dealers and, if they come with a lens, you could be getting a far better deal buying from a reputable source than risking it with an auction. Do make sure it is a reputable source before you place your order, however. In a temporary loss of sanity I recently failed to follow my own advice and now Barclays are in the middle of investigating where £70 went when I placed an order with “M W Classic Cameras” of London who, despite even answering the phone and promising to send things out, just couldn’t be bothered. The internet is flooded with horror stories from that shop and how they’re still in business is a mystery. Avoid them at all costs!
In another case of history repeating itself, I have owned a T50 before and sold it on for next to nothing some time around 2010. I think I put a single roll of film through it and I cannot for the life of me find any evidence of those pictures anywhere. I’d been searching on and off for a replacement for a while but prices were far too high and the condition of some were spectacularly bad. Then, out of nowhere, the listing below appeared. I offered £14 which was accepted, making a total outlay of £17.94.
For a few pence shy of £18, the camera that arrived genuinely was in perfect condition. It looks barely used, the viewfinder is spotless, as was the film chamber. As an extra bonus it came with the original body cap (something I always need more of) and a set of fresh batteries. Result.
After running a test roll of film through it to check everything seemed to be working sensibly, I clicked the faithful 50mm F1.4 on the front, loaded up my last roll of Kodak Gold 200 and went for a walk.
Shooting some film
You might think there’s not a lot to say about using a T50 and you’d be largely right in many respects. Operation is painfully simple – insert the film, pull the leader, close the back and fire off two shots. The camera has a built in safety feature where the meter wont work until you’ve wound the film to the first frame on the counter. There really is nothing that can go wrong and once that’s done you twiddle the control dial to Program, focus and fire.
Review over, then?
Yes, but not quite.
Features aside, it is the user experience that makes or breaks a camera and the T50 is particularly pleasant to use. Back in 1983, I’m convinced that many consumers would’ve seen this camera as a genuine step forwards over both compacts and the previous generation of SLR’s. Compared to the hefty, metal bodied predecessors, the T50 is about as small as a SLR is going to get, much lighter as a body only and does everything for you. As a camera to tempt the average Joe that SLR photography is for everyone, in an affordable package, I don’t think Canon could’ve done much better back then.
Ergonomically, I ended up feeling that the T50 just about broke even. Compared to the AE-1 and A-1, the grip is definitely an improvement and the textured thumb grip on the back of the film door is surprisingly effective if not a little lacking in imagination. A small bump on the back would’ve made the camera feel even more secure in the hand, especially when wearing gloves.
The T50 has easily the most uncluttered, bright and large viewfinder you could ever want. There’s nothing to disturb the picture taking process, mainly because the T50 has nothing to tell you and consequently it’s a real pleasure framing up an image. Focussing is nice and easy thanks to the tried and tested Canon A series method of using a split prism – simply point the camera towards some kind of line in your image and turn the lens until it lines up perfectly.
Talking of gloves, I found the shutter button surprisingly hard to locate when wearing them. I’d go to take a picture and start fumbling around in search of it. When your fingers are cold (regardless of gloves!) the recessed design is a real hindrance. The design of the T50, unlike the later ergonomic marvel that is the T90, does nothing to guide your finger to sit in just the right place for the shutter. This is a shame, but not a show stopper in normal weather. With your fingers free of wool, you can obviously feel where things are almost immediately.
Whilst using the T50, I did come across one of the most odd issues I’ve ever had with any camera. Occasionally, when shooting in portrait, I found my nose being caught by the film rewind crank as the camera automatically wound the film on. Stop sniggering at the back, I know what you’re thinking, “he must have a nose to rival Postman Pat” and perhaps I do, but I’ve never experienced anything like this before when using any camera. Why? Well, the only reason I can think is because the T50 is the only camera I know of, or have used, which is auto advance but manual rewind. That and I have a massive nose.
Canon were confident that their program mode was so sorted it’d work in 99% of situations so you didn’t need any kind of user input. That’s a bold decision and I tried to use my T50 in a range of different lighting including taking it out in the recent cold snap we had where the fog and frost turn everything into a “this definitely needs exposure compensation” situation. Photography magazines in the 80’s and 90’s regularly used to roll out features on shooting in snow and harsh light conditions and the advice was always “dial in at least a stop of over exposure and bracket, bracket, bracket.”
So, how did the T50 cope? Well…
I think the answer is – remarkably.
Of course, there are times when I’d have liked to have control of the aperture, but that defies the point of owning and using a T50. You’re not meant to worry about control, you’re supposed to immerse yourself in the picture taking process whilst the T50 weighs up the best exposure settings it can and you benefit from the quality of SLR optics when the film comes back from the photo lab.
That’s exactly what you get and I’m surprised by just how well the T50 exposed in a range of situations. The picture below was a deliberate attempt to fool the meter as in the real world it was mostly just white everywhere. I expected the trees and railings to be totally underexposed but… they’re just not. It balanced the scene very well and the final negative had plenty of latitude for recovering some highlights and shadow detail.
We like to flatter ourselves as photographers that we know best, that we need full control over each exposure. The T50 shows that in 90% of situations you really can have faith that program mode will pull the correct exposure out of the bag. Of course I accept that you lose the choice of your depth of field and the ability to dial in exposure compensation, but unless you’re trying to photograph fast moving action shots, the T50 really does have you covered and it’s… odd. Disarming, even.
Let’s be honest, the program mode in the T50 is based on some fairly basic, cost saving 1980’s technology. There’s an 8 bit CPU in there and a program that takes up a few kilobytes of memory at most – but that’s all you need. Calculating exposure doesn’t require the most powerful computer hardware, yet today we have cameras that are as powerful as a super computer from the 1990’s. It doesn’t seem fashionable to call it program mode on modern cameras, but the level of computer assistance in the mirrorless world is at unimaginable levels. The 1980’s photographer would’ve thought these machines with their subject recognition, tracking, automatic compensation and so forth are the absolute pinnacle of space age, future technology.
Is the T50 infallible? Of course it isn’t. There were one or two shots on the roll that didn’t come out for various reasons. One portrait of my daughter was underexposed and a few that contained movement had subjects that were just a blur and really, that’s where the camera falls down. For all the praise I can heap on the program mode, and it is brilliant, the total lack of any other option really is a drag, A few rolls in and very quickly it becomes obvious that the inability to take some form of control over how the camera prioritises the scene in front of you means that certain types of shooting are completely off the table.
And that’s the deal breaker, isn’t it? It’s 1983, you’ve been tempted away from a compact camera by the salesman in Dixons, taken the plunge and spent your money on an SLR with a lens and, although the image quality is definitely a step up you realise that ultimately your new camera was twice the price for the same level of features. It’s not quite a “point and shoot” but… it pretty much is.
Conclusions and learning
There are many reasons SLR photography ruled the roost over all other methods of taking images. Primarily interchangeable lenses, lens quality and complete control. No compact was ever going to be able to compete on these fronts, but they won hands down when it came to size, weight and portability. Customers were willing to sacrifice a bit of image quality and flexibility in terms of lens zoom range for these killer features.
I understand exactly what Canon were trying to do with the T50 and I think they so nearly achieved their ultimate goal of boosting SLR sales and convincing people that there was still a reason to own a big, bulky machine rather than a simple compact. When the camera does what you want, it’s fantastic and they nailed the automation.
Consequently, though, I believe the laser focus that Canon had on simplicity and cost saving went a step too far. By completely eliminating any user override, not even the ability to shift the program, Canon placed a hard limit on the T50 being able to grow with the user as they gained confidence, knowledge or perhaps the desire to branch out into different types of photography. I’m convinced that plenty of T50 owners were rightly convinced by the brilliant pictures it could take, wanted more and then ended up severely disappointed when they quickly realised they had a camera that couldn’t even be gently coaxed into doing anything else whatsoever.
Years ago when I first picked up a T50 I completely failed to see the point in it. With the benefit of more time and research, it makes a lot more sense. Canon were in a difficult situation with sales rapidly falling away in a sector that they’d invested millions into. The 80’s was the beginning of the mass introduction and adoption of affordable home computing and with this came an opportunity to market a new, futuristic model to jump firmly on the new age automation bandwagon.
Undoubtedly, Canon faced difficult decisions in the design phase and engineers were constrained by meeting both a budget and a strict brief of “no complexity.” Did they succeed or fall at the final hurdle? I’m conflicted. On one hand I think they did an incredible job of being disciplined enough to stick to their guns and refuse to add anything to the T50 that could even remotely get in the way of picture taking. On the other, this approach must have culminated in disappointing those who wanted to explore creative photography further. Did many T50 owners go on to buy bigger, better cameras? I’d bet the house on it, but not all of them would have. I couldn’t find any records or letters in magazines from people praising or bemoaning the T50 and I think that without a time machine it’s basically impossible to know now what the truth of the situation was for T50 owners back in 1983.
What about the T50 today? If you wanted to take out an FD compatible Canon camera and not have to care about a single thing, just indulge yourself in some photography, then it’s perfect. Only… you wouldn’t do that now, because for exactly the same money you could buy a T70, put it in program mode and achieve exactly the same outcome knowing that all the other features you might want are there should you need them.
The T50 is one of the finest examples of a product which is “of its time” and is firmly so. Today it makes little sense in a market flooded with cheap, capable film cameras. As we so recently discussed, the EOS 300 is £1-5 and has program mode (of course) and every other mode, feature and capability you could ever need to explore the world of film photography. I do think, though, that the T50 should rightly hold a place in history as a camera that got so much right and showed people who were very wary of technology just what was possible when you trusted a computer to make some decisions for you. Ultimately, and whether you like it or not, it was a small glimpse of the future and paved the way for plastic bodied, computer controlled cameras that were packed with innovation and electronics.
The T50, then, is a definite case of “Nearly, but not quite.”
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Brilliant review. All the facts. Reasons to buy it or not to buy it. Balanced opinions.
thanks for reading 🙂