A Historical Perspective: Canon Digital Cameras

Quite like the Sony Corporation, Canon has been an industry leader when it comes to the development, manufacture and sales of digital cameras worldwide. Both companies can trace the origins of their digital camera lines to the television and computer technological breakthroughs of the 1940s and 1950s. Thus, it can appropriately be said that the development of the digital camera was not a flash in the pan endeavor or something that occurred literally over night. The digital camera revolution at Canon and elsewhere was the result of years of steady and plodding, intricate and purposeful research and development.

For Canon, one of the major breakthroughs on the road to the development of the digital camera line was the creation of the CR-45NM. The CR-45NM was the world’s first nonmydriatic retinal camera, delivered to the public in 1976. Some of the technology utilized in the creation of this camera provided the foundation upon which 21st century digital cameras are fashioned.

In 1983, Canon released the T50 SLR, another step on the road to the digitalization of photography. In point of fact, this product was so well received that it won Japan’s Good Design Grand Prize.

Developments in the arena of video cameras also played a role in Canon’s creation of its own line of digital cameras. In 1988, the RC-760 represented a video camera with the world’s highest resolution at 600,000 pixels. The development of high resolution products was important in the ultimate creation of digital cameras.

These types of incremental developments occurred at Canon over the course of the next fifteen years, leading to the introduction of the PowerShot? S10 digital camera with a 2.1 million pixel resolution.

Canon has made a stern and fast commitment to remaining on the frontlines in the development of digital camera technology. (Nikon has made a similar commitment to the future AHistoricalPerspectiveNikonDigitalCameras.)