Canon Canonet 19
by Karen Nakamura
Overview and Personal Comments
The Canonet 19 is a coupled-rangefinder, leaf-shuttered 35mm camera. It was the first camera to be produced under the "Canonet" sobriquet and came out in 1961. It featured automatic exposure and sold for less than ¥20,000. It was wildly popular in Japan and the United States. In 2.5 years, over a million Canonets were sold, launching Canon into the major camera scene. Using the text or images on this website without permission on an ebay auction or any other site is a violation of federal law.
The Canonet 19 was released in January 1961 by Canon and sported a 45mm f/1.9 Canon lens. The Canon Museum notes that its original retail price was ¥18,800 with an additional ¥1,700 for the leather case.
The Canonet 19 was unique
in borrowing the bottom mounted trigger wind from the Canon rangefinder series.
The feature was later dropped in favor of more conservative top-mounted,
thumb-lever wind in later editions.
The Canonet came to fame with the movie Pecker. It's been called the Poor Woman's Leica (or Poor Man's Leica if you're a chauvinist). It's small, light, reliable, quiet, the lens is fairly bright and contrasty, and it costs about 1/100 of a Leica M series. It's been found in garage sales and goodwill stores for much less than its real value.
Interesting quirks
The selenium photocell
is mounted around the lens element. This allows for metering through
filters without having to dial in a compensation value. The camera can be
full-manual or shutter-speed priority automatic exposure. Inside the viewfinder,
the camera will display the aperture it is setting (f/1.9 to f/16). It's
a very nice finder with parallax compensation.
Technical Details
|
Camera
Name |
Canonet 19 | |
|---|---|---|
|
Manufacturer |
Canon, Inc. | |
|
Place
of Manufacture |
Japan | |
|
Date
of Manufacture |
1961.1 | |
|
Focusing
System |
Coupled
rangefinder w/ parallax compensation Lens use helicoid focusing |
|
|
Lens |
45mm, f/1.9, Canon SE lens (5 elements in 4 groups) Minimum focusing distance = 0.8 meters (~3 feet) Right focusing (infinity on right side) |
|
|
Shutter |
Copal
SV shutter 1 - 1/500 |
|
|
Metering
System |
CdS
cell mounted above lens on lensmount Needle in viewfinder gives current aperture EV 5 - 17 (at ISO 100) |
|
|
Apertures |
f/1.9 - f/16 |
|
|
Flash |
External hot-shoe and PC sync connection |
|
|
Film
type / speeds |
Type 135 film (35mm standard) ASA 10 to 200 |
|
|
Battery
type |
none | |
|
Dimensions
and weight |
140 x 78 x 64 mm, 700 g | |
|
Retail
price |
¥20800 in 1965 | |
Note: Using the text or images on this site in an ebay auction without permission is a violation of your ebay Terms of Service. I will report you to ebay if I discover such a violation taking place. |
||
About Canon
Canon started out its life as Seiki Kohgaku Kenkyuujo (Precision Optical Research Company). Its first goal was to produce domestic inexpensive Leica clones, and it released the Kwanon, its first camera in 1934. Interestingly, they used Nikon lenses since Nikon was already established as an optical lens manufacturer and was not making any of its own camera bodies at that time. Canon soon gained the ability to make their own lenses and never looked back. Nikon also went on to produce some reasonably popular cameras of its own as well.
The name 'Canon' comes from the Buddhist deity Kwanon and early Canon cameras were actually spelled 'Kwanon' and the lenses were named 'Kyasapa' after another deity.
Side note: Canon is my favorite Japanese company along with Honda. I actually interned for Canon Japan (ok, Canon Sales Japan, a part of the Canon keiretsu) during a summer in college and loved my coworkers to death. They keep coming out with innovations that take your breath away.
Leave a comment