 The Canon 7 was introduced in 1961. It was one of the last great 35mm rangefinder cameras whose claim to fame was its standard lens, advertised as being four times brighter than the human eye. What that meant in reality was that it had a maximum aperture of f/0.95, and it became known as the Canon Dream Lens. The camera was the first from Canon with a built-in meter coupled to the shutter control. The meter was a selenium type, whose larger than usual cell took up best part of half the width of the body. The rangefinder was a coincident image type, and Canon lengthened its base by about half as much again as that on the company’s previous rangefinder cameras. But with the meter cell also larger than usual, it got in the way of the rangefinder, a problem that was overcome by cutting a small square aperture out of the cell to accommodate the second rangefinder window. |