Description
Introduced in 1986, the Canon T90 was the last serious, high-end manual focus FD mount SLR designed by Canon. The T90 was the most sophisticated automatic exposure camera developed prior to modern DSLRs. It include a top mounted LCD panel with pictographic representation of the multiple metering modes, multiple exposure modes, shutter speed, aperture, and other settings. There was a 7 segment LED display visible in the viewfinder for shutter speed and aperture information and a 3 segment LED display for AE lock and metering information. A battery pack containing 4 AA cells powered the camera and the built-in 4.5 FPS autowinder. The camera could autoload film as well as read DX code information from the film can. The camera had a conventional pentaprism and interchangeable focusing screens.
Metering and Exposure
The T90 did not introduce any fundamentally new type of metering but it was the first time a single camera combined so many methods of metering. The camera used multiple silicon photo cells for through the lens (TTL) metering. Meter coupling range was EV 0-20 with ISO 100 film and an FD 50mm f1.4 lens. An ISO range of 6-6400 was supported with ISO 25-5000 set automatically in 1/3 steps based on DX coding. Exposure compensation could be set in 1/3 increments for +/- 2 steps. A Highlight/Shadow control was offered in 1/2 increments for +/- 4 steps in certain modes.
Metering options included :
- Center-weighted average metering
- Partial area metering (13%)
- Spot metering (2.7%)
- Multi-spot metering (8 spots, based on the Olympus OM-4)
- Highlight and Shadow spot metering (based on the Olympus OM-4)
Exposure modes offered :
- Shutter priority AE with selectable safety shift function
- Aperture priority AE with selectable safety shift function
- Standard program AE
- Variable shift program AE with 7 program options
- Manual
- Stopped down AE
- Stopped down with fixed index
- Flash AE with A-TTL Canon Speedlites
Add comment