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Canon Datematic

This cute little Canon was literally landed on my hands when a senior couple donated it to me to use it. It came in a pristine condition together with an original canon lens hood, canon skylight filter (!), a speedlite flash and a cable release. Going through the boxes, i also found the original receipt for the flash (£9.99), hood and cable release (£9.86) but not for the camera. Everything was bought on the 18/8/1977. It even had the original 1.35V mercury batteries in which were actually working fine after all these years.

Canon describes this camera as "A camera for the masses" and the biggest selling point was the date printing feature which goes up to 1983, so i am not going to bother with it. The camera operates with two 1.4V mercury batteries which are long banned. I am using two SR44 together with some silver foil to make up for the difference in size. I did not see any difference in exposure due to voltage difference, for those seeking the perfect exposure rate your ISO 400 as 320 or get a Canon EOS. The tricky bit with this camera is the fact that the light meter is always on and drains the battery. Always remember to keep the lens cup on when you do not use it. The foamy light seals had deteriorated and looked like sticky tar. I've replaced them with self-adhesive black felt and it is ready to go. Also the  rangefinder was a bit cloudy so the top cover had to be removed and cleaned. Now it is bright and clean again although the yellow patch is not that vivid any more (but still usable). On the back of the camera, you will see a plastic bit covering a hole in which you'll find a tiny little screw. It is used for calibrating the rangefinder - very useful !

Those who will do a bit of search on the internet, they will find out that this camera has the same lens with the older Canonet 28, a 40mm f/2.8. Actually this info is wrong. The two cameras have different lenses. The Canonet 28 has a 40mm f/2.8 Tessar, 4 elements in 3 groups while the Datematic has a 40mm f/2.8 sonnar type with 5 elements in 4 groups. The lens performs really (really) well, actually as good as the Industar 61although I am not sure how it handles flare which is not a problem in my case as i am using the lens hood. In any case, I think this is an underrated lens and performs really well.


Conclusion

I really like this little Canon. It performs very well and looks cool with the lens hood. The only problem is that auto-exposure can be very limiting but anyway Canon produced this camera having probably Konica C35 in mind (maybe?). If you like fully auto compact rangefinders these cameras are going dead cheap on the internet and they are very good alternatives to other well sought out and usually very expensive Konicas/Minoltas etc...

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