30th anniversary OF EOS Cameras
Canon’s current range of EOS cameras has 30 years of groundbreaking innovation behind it. We celebrate how Canon started with the EOS 650D SLR in 1987 up to the latest 800D and 77D
We look back at the first 30 years of Canon’s revolutionary EOS camera line – from early film SLRS to today’s brand-new 77D and 800D DSLRS
The Canon brand name has become synonymous with imaging equipment that covers an incredibly diverse range, from compact cameras to broadcast lenses, and from X-ray machines to printers and photocopiers. However, the company was founded 80 years ago in 1937 with one simple aim: to create the best-quality cameras in the world.
Success soon followed, but the biggest leap in Canon’s pioneering path came 50 years later, in 1987, with the birth of EOS. Aptly sharing a name with the Greek goddess of the dawn, Canon’s ‘Electro Optical System’ cameras really were a new dawn for photography.
The big idea was a fully electronic lens mount, making the original EOS 650 35mm film camera and its accompanying lenses a world-first, ushering in a new generation of autofocus SLRS. For 30 years now, Canon EOS cameras have boasted precision electronic control of aperture and autofocus for EF (Electrofocus) lenses, with the autofocus motor/ actuator being built into the lens.
In 2000 Canon released its first-ever digital SLR, the EOS D30; but it was the launch, in 2003, of the ground-breaking EOS 300D that changed digital photography forever, as DSLRS become truly affordable for the amateur photographer masses.