Lomopedia: Canon Demi

After Olympus introduced the Olympus Pen, the first half-frame camera in Japan, in 1959, Canon decided to develop its own compact half-frame camera with a luxury look. The result was the Canon Demi, which was introduced in 1963.

The camera boasted of high-performance features in a handy, pocketable size, a direct viewfinder, a manual-focus 28 mm f/2.8 lens, and a match-needle selenium exposure meter (with a behind-the-lens light value program for accurate metering). Aside from these features, this half-frame shooter eventually became a favorite of many for its design, which was considered ahead of its time.

Come late 1963, Canon offered the Demi in four colors: the original black, red, white, and blue. However, the last three colors were soon discontinued, making these editions quite rare finds today.

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Technical Specifications

Type: 35 mm Lens Shutter, zone-focusing, half-frame camera
Picture Size: 24 × 18 mm
Lens: Canon SH28 mm f/2.8 (5 elements in 3 groups)
Shutter: Seiko-sha L with behind-the-lens light value program. EV 8 (f/2.8, 1/30 sec) to EV 17 (f/22, 1/250 sec.) and B. X-sync flash.
Viewfinder Kepler finder with 0.41x magnification and 90% coverage.
Focusing: Lens focusing ring to match zone focusing marks. Pictographs for near (1 m), medium (3 m), and far distances (15 m). Focusing range from 0.8 m to 15 m (infinity).
Exposure Adjustment: Built-in selenium photocell meter with moving needle and program to determine correct exposure with the shutter speed and aperture combination. Metering range of EV 8 - 17 (at ISO 100). Film speed range of ISO 10 - 400.
Film Loading & Advance: After opening camera back, insertion onto the spool. Advances with the camera-top lever. (145 single or partial strokes with extra 20 stroke)
Frame Counter: Counts up. Resets automatically when camera back is opened.
Film Rewind: Camera-top crank
Dimensions & Weight: 115 × 68 × 37 mm
Weight: 380 g

All information for this article was sourced from Canon Camera Hall, KY Photo, and SubClub.org.

written by plasticpopsicle on 2014-02-03 #gear #lomopedia #review #half-frame #film-camera #lomopedia #canon-demi