The Super-Canomatic lenses did indeed have an automatic diaphragm, but you had to use the second aperture ring for DOF preview. Still a pain.

Also, I forgot the 200mm f3.5 was available early on. Other lenses including the 85mm f1.8 and the 100mm f2.0 and f3.5 showed up later, but oddly there was not a lens wider than 35mm.

Cheers.

That said, the Canonflex is a great camera. It’s built like a tank, the shutter is very reliable and the lenses are quite good although presets are a pain in the rear to use.

It has a selenium meter. No battery. The array of plastic “lenses” distributes reflective light. There should be a flat translucent white plastic incident light slip on cover with the meter. In your photo, the meter is not mounted correctly on the body. The shutter speed on the meter should correspond with the shutter dial setting. Either way, though, the meter will not be accurate, assuming it is still working.

As to the removable prism, somewhere along the way, someone grafted an accessory shoe from a much later vintage camera onto it. Too bad, because it mars the original. Canon made a bayonet mount accessory flash holder that mounts onto the bayonet surrounding the PC contact at the end of the camera near the rewind crank.

I have one of each body in the C-flex series. The original version, the one pictured above (which I call the R1000) with meter, the R2000 with meter, the RP (and a second one in black)with meter, Canon RM, Bell & Howell RM. The RM version had the built in meter while the others used an optional clip on meter. The R2000 meter had an extra setting for the 1/2000 shutter speed which the other clip one meters lacked. I also have all the lenses from 35 to 600mm and a number of accessories. I’ve added the 19 FL-R and 28mm FL lenses to get wide angle coverage.

The R lens mount is the same as the FL and FD mounts. The difference is in the operating system for each family. R lenses have two prongs on the back. FL have only one. FD have two but arranged differently. R lenses will mount on later cameras. FL lenses will mount on C-flex cameras. FD lenses are either impossible to mount or will cause damage to themselves or their host. When using lenses on cameras they were not designed for there’s no automation and everything must be set by hand.

@ Jason

I don’t see any continuity of style between this and later Canon film cameras. the RM version was totally different to the one pictured here.

The two apeture rings were a cross between a pre-set and an automatic lens. One ring let you set the desired value but the lens only closed down during the time the shutter was open. The second ring actually did close down the lens to whatever value you selected and kept it there until you changed it. This served as the depth of field preview.

The long teles used a bellows focusing system had had no auto diaphram. They came straight from the rangefinder line where they were used with a mirror box. Because of the bellows focusing, these long teles can be used on today’s EOS models with a glassless EF-FD adapter ring and they will focus to infinity. There were also economy versions of the 85, 100 and 135 lenses that were also RF lenses with different mounts.

Seriously …I really like how the old mechanical lenses were build and how they looked…

The dual lens aperture rings are confusing: which of the two aperture-numbered rings actually turns, and why are there two?

Jason.