I have had my eye on the Canon 1V for a little while now; I think about a year (I am clearly not an impulse shopper!). After months of trawling eBay trying to find one which wasn’t being shipped from Japan, I finally found one which looked in really good condition around 2 hours drive away. Mike and I decided to make a day of it, and drove down to Bournemouth to pick up my shiny new purchase.

The lovely man who I had bought this gem of a camera from was really excited that his beloved camera was going to someone who was going to take really good care of it, and also put it too use. The camera is actually in near mint condition, and considering that this was purchased over 10 years ago, I am super impressed.

The Canon 1V is the final flagship 35mm film camera which Canon made. It’s a solid camera, which weights a TON when you have the power booster attached to it. I removed this straight away; I would rather keep a couple of spare batteries in my bag (which I do anyway with my main digital camera) than struggle to hold this camera above waist level for more than 5 minutes.

I won’t be going into the full technical ins and outs of this camera (I am not a total gear geek), but you can check out a comprehensive review over here by Ken Rockwell.

What I can say, with only have shot a few rolls of film on this lovely chunk of a camera, I am very happy that I have added this to my camera bag. It’s fast, works with my existing Canon prime lenses and does not need to be wound on like my old faithful Minolta from Uni days (hello the Year 2000).

I generally object to having to refer to a product manual to learn how to use new gear, much to my other half’s annoyance. I learn best by doing, and within a matter of around 20 minutes, I had come to grips with how all the different functions could be adjusted. It may have helped that I am familiar with other Canon cameras, and they tend to just move buttons around for different models, and for some cameras have more than a single function per button.

The only thing I have found to be a bit awkward is the focus points have to by selected by using two different dials, which is not the quickest adjustment to make. I am hoping this just taking a bit of getting used to. Other than that, it’s easy to adjust your shooting mode, exposure compensation, aperture and shutter speed within a few easy steps.

I have included a few of the images in this post which I have shot during the very first of film in this camera. I AM IN LOVE. My fridge is now stocked up with film and I am ready to keep playing with this gorgeous camera.