Some thoughts on the Canon EF

[belgiumreporter]

Being a hard core Nikon fan made me somewhat blind to great cameras from other makers. A good example is the Canon EF, maybe not the most iconic Canon ever but interesting non the less.
To truly appreciate it it is best compared to the nikkormat EL, both cameras appeared in 1972 as an attempt by the "big two" to supply the customer with an automatic SLR. Konica and Pentax went a few years before them, but that's another story.

Now the main an not unimportant difference between the EF and EL is the Canon is shutter priority and the Nikon aperture priority auto.
So in '72 the stage was set for what was to come in the following years, Canon pursuing mainly the shutter priority and Nikon the aperture priority path.

Shouldn't you need aperture priority, the Canon has some serious advantages over the Nikon: a wider metering range (EF -2to 16 EL 1to16) with the EF having more responsive metering cells, the EF has all shutterspeeds available without battery power the EL 1/90th only, EF's shutterspeed range 1/1000th to 30sec, EL 1/1000 to 4sec....
The EF has a rather nice shutterspeed ring wich extends over the body and can be easely adjusted using one finger without taking your eye off the finder (some say it was inspired by the Leica M5 design of that era) I do prefer the EL's focussing screen and the larger mirror wich doesn't vignette with longer lenses.
With all that said the EF clearly shows in the early seventies Canon was catching up with Nikon and settled it's position as one of the two main players in the SLR field.

So far i haven't found anything on the price of both cameras when new, but i guess they wouldn't be that far apart so that wouldn't be a main issue in choosing one over the other back then.
Also note the Canon was available black only while the Nikon came both in black or chrome.

[belgiumreporter]

Here's a small Canon family portrait. After the disaster with the Canonflex,in the 60ties Canon had nothing to compete with Nikon's F pro range.The FTb wasn't in the same leage as the F (more like the Nikkormat, Minolta SRt101, Pentax spotmatic....) This changed in 1970 when Canon launched the F1. This time they've learnt from their own and others mistakes making the F1 a very interesting alternative for Nikon's F.

From then on it has been a constant competition the one beating the other with every new camera wich was brought out, Nikon and Canon being the only players in the highest leage. Back to the EF, some people claim it is a F1 with fixed prism but apart from some superficial resemblances this isn't the case. The EF is a beautifull well made rugged camera but it isn't an F1!

[belgiumreporter]

Did some research and found out the original list prices : Canon EF with 50mm 1:1.4 = 89.000 Yen
                                                                     Nikormat EL (Black) with 50mm 1:1.4= 92.650 Yen
So not that far apart, if you wanted the Nikkormat EL in chrome finish it would have cost the same as the canon. 
The canon was (in my opinion) a more modern camera than the Nikon, it has the more reponsive silicon blue metering cells, with a wider metering range, wasn't crippled to one shutterspeed when batteries ran out  and had a slightly better lens mount (no rabbit ears, 5.6 nikon shuffle lens mounting) though the canon breach lock at that time (silver ring) FD lenses weren't that easy to switch either.
In those days if you weren't allready using Nikon or needed aperture priority, i think the Canon would have been the better choice.