Canon 100ED 20

Canon 100ED 20

This is the best 110 film camera by a large margin in my opinion. It's the only camera of this kind that passed through my hands and caused me a really good impression. It's way better than the widely acclaimed Pentax Auto 110 and the Minolta 110 Mark II. The reason? The film flattening system of the 110ED works very well, much better than any other. The only other 110 camera that gets close is the Minox 110 (Balda) but it's not a very reliable camera, despite the excellent optics.

The multicoated 5 element 26mm f2 design is very sharp and coupled to a decent rangefinder. Maybe the best lens ever fitted to a 110 camera. In my opinion, it's sharper than the famous Pentax 24mm F2.8 of the Pentax Auto 110. Especially if you take in account that the Auto 110 is automatic program exposure only and the 110ED is an aperture priority camera. Just set the aperture and it calculates the exposure time according to the available light. The exposure goes from 8 seconds (yes, eight) to 1/1000s.

There's a slider for aperture setting with four positions. A "window" means F2, a cloud for F4, a sun for F8 and a mysterious dot for F16. I don't have a clue why Canon decided to use odd symbols for the maximum and minimum apertures.

Canon 110ED 20 Controls

There's a mechanical shutter backup that can be used in case of a drained battery or even a total electronic failure. In this case, the shutter will be set to 1/125s and you will need to control the exposure manually by choosing the proper aperture. The only fail I could find on this camera was the fact if you need to use the mechanical shutter, you'll need to remove the battery cover, and to do this, you need to open the film chamber. Maybe Canon's engineers forgot the fact that the battery can go dead on a loaded camera ! ^^

It uses a 4LR44 alkaline battery, easy to find and cheap. There's also a standard mechanical cable release socket near the shutter button.

An interesting date imprinting system was built on this camera. All you need is to set up the date numbers with the wheels.

Canon 100ED 20 date controls

How good is this camera ? If used with good, low grain film, it's just amazing, considering the negative size. It's a very high-resolution lens with excellent corner to corner sharpness.

Canon 100ED 20 image example

But nothing is perfect. It's extremely complex inside and it's a top challenge to have the viewfinder cleaned. Only try to do this if you have top-notch technical skills and Budah's patience. Be warned, otherwise, you may damage it.