>> When Canon introduced the EOS, it was VERY ground breaking; no >> one had anything like it, and AF was in it's infancy.
> No it wasn't. The first EOS was the EOS 650, introduced in March > 1987. Canon was the third major manufacturer to switch to AF, > after Minolta and Nikon, not the first. I would say the first EOS > wasn't introduced until AF had become mainstream. I have a few of Pop Photo mags in front of me: The April 1987 issue (and, of course, there is a "lead time lag" in magazine issue dates) has a "preview" of the upcoming EOS 650 and EOS 620 (and also, incidentally, a "preview" of the autofocus Yashica 230-AF). This issue also had the test of the Olympus OM77AF. The July 1987 issue has the actual test report for the EOS 650 (the Yashica 230-AF was tested in the June 1987 issue). The April 1987 issue has the first (in Pop Photo) EOS ad. The March 1987 issue was still advertising the manual focus T90. Later on, in the December 1987 issue, there was a "special report", which was an "autofocus SLR update", featuring "The 10 current autofocus SLR's". Included in this report were 3 Minoltas (5000, 7000, 9000), 2 Nikons (N4004, N2020), 2 Canons (620, 650), 1 Pentax (SF1), 1 Olympus (OM77AF), and 1 Yashica (230-AF). The March 1987 issue has a report (it's the "cover feature") on soft focus lenses (including the Pentax K 85/2.2 Soft). Interestingly, Pop Photo chose the Canon 85/2.8 Soft Focus to use for the illustration for the article on the Table of Contents page; the lens was just about to go obsolete as Canon was just about to abandon its FD mount, while the K 85/2.2 Soft is still usable on almost all Pentax bodies (and, apparently, it might even be usable on the new *ist and *ist D models, too). But I digress... Speaking of Pentax, the nicest (in my opinion) of the several SF1 ad designs appeared in the May 1987 issue. Fred
