Electronics 1969
Canon
How to see the world in 23 exciting ways
FROM THE PRINTED PAGEOriginal ad copy
OCR transcription from the archived page. Scanning and reading-order errors may remain.
How to see the world in 23 exciting ways The concept of taking a longer or shorter view of the world is not new. Man has been doing that for as long as glass has been around. Until the Canon FT QL, however, no one saw it in so many different ways with as much accuracy and convenience. Behind this versatile SLR camera stands a line of no fewer than 23 Canon FL interchangeable lenses. Wide-angle and standard lenses. Telephoto and zoom lenses. A special Macro lens for close-up photography. And even a giant 1000mm super telephoto lens. Each is a masterpiece of the world's foremost optical equipment maker. Each comes equipped with change-in-a-second bayonet mountings. Each has been designed to get the most from the FT QL's advanced TTL exposure measuring and center spot-reading systems. Together, they combine to make the FT QL at home in every field of photography. Mount one or all, and the world never looked better or more exciting. Canon FT QL. Canon lenses. CANON CAMERA CO., INC.: 9-9, Ginza 5-chome, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104, Japan. CANON U.S.A. INC.: 64-10 Queens Blvd., Woodside, N.Y. 11377, U.S.A. CANON AMSTERDAM N.V.: Gebouw 70, Schiphol Oost, Amsterdam, Holland. CANON LATIN AMERICA, INC.: Apartado 7022, Panama 5, Panama.
Commentary
At first the large white circle over the central figure’s face looks like an interruption in the photograph. Then I find the camera and lenses along the bottom edge and read the headline: “23 exciting ways” are 23 Canon FL lenses. The circular shape becomes the argument. A lens changes what a person can see, and the ad makes that change visible before it names a single focal length. Two smaller scenes, one involving close inspection and another a microscope, stretch the range of looking even further.
The copy counts its evidence with unusual care. It moves from wide-angle and standard lenses through telephoto and zoom, then gives a macro lens and a “giant 1000mm super telephoto lens” their own sentences. The FT QL is presented as the stable center of this expanding system. Bayonet mounting, through-the-lens exposure measurement, and center spot reading answer the practical question underneath the spectacle: can the photographer move among these different views without losing control of exposure? Those are the advertiser’s claims, while the scan shows the camera and several lenses rather than all 23.
There is also a revealing division of labor in the image. People occupy the upper scenes; the gear fills the foreground at almost architectural scale. I read this as an invitation to buy a way of working, not just one camera body. A modern interchangeable-lens buyer can still recognize that logic, although the ad’s promise of “every field of photography” is broader than any one kit can prove.
For a new copywriter, the headline’s number is doing important work. “23” turns a vague promise of versatility into a countable claim, while “ways” lets the visual treat lenses as perspectives rather than accessories. The short list sentences give the reader a route through unfamiliar equipment. Name the range first, then give enough technical detail to make the range credible.
Canon’s camera museum dates the FT QL to 1966 and documents its through-the-lens metering and quick-loading system. Canon remains an imaging company, while its current businesses also include printing, medical, and industrial equipment.
The enduring idea is that one camera can support many kinds of seeing. Film loading, the FL lens mount, and the precise 23-lens count belong to this system and moment; the desire to make different subjects feel photographically reachable remains familiar.