On Friday, October 21, 2005, at 08:27 AM, William Robb wrote:
Canon, in their entire history, has never ventured into formats larger
than
miniature format.
But they did prototype a very advanced medium format SLR in the late
80s. The body was designed by Luigi Colani, the man who did the design
work on the EOS bodies and some of their compact 35mm cameras. This
camera was shaped much like a Rollei 6000 series camera, and was to
have had an electronic viewfinder, autofocus, and many other advanced
features. You can see a photo of it in the Prototypes section of my
book Canon Compendium.
FWIW, Konica also took a medium format SLR system well past the
prototype stage and almost put it into production. This was in the 70s.
It would have been 645 format! I haven't found anyone who knows why
this project was halted very late in the game.
Bob
