Japan Camera Hunter is a well-known expert/seller of high-quality Japanese (and some German) camera gear, mostly vintage but some modern. Below is a nice video he made on the Canon rangefinder series of the 1950s/1960s – they used the Leica thread mount (what Leica used before introducing the M mount). I have a Canon Serenar 50/1.8 from the early 1950s in LTM and it is a shockingly good lens for the age. Canon transitioned to its FL/FD mount in the early 1970s, which is when it really began to take off as a top-tier camera maker (the electronic/autofocus EF mount came in the late 1980s and marked another step forward). As boring as I used to find Canon back in the day (I started with Olympus and then Fuji), all of my stuff now is Canon – an A-1 (from my grandfather-in-law) with a couple FD lenses and Canonet QL17 G-III (starting to break down so need repaired but worked great for me for a decade despite being from the 1970s) for film, an R8 and a number of RF lenses, plus the Serenar and an EF lens that I adapt to the R8. They just work, and the ergonomics are lovely and functional, even if the modern cameras have all the design flashiness and vintage flair of a 2017 Honda Accord.
JCH on Canon’s rangefinder series:
Paul Staniland 