Canon Canonet 28 (1968–1972)
Canon took its Canonet, pulled out the rangefinder, locked the exposure on automatic, and built the quietest point-and-shoot of the late '60s.
Overview
Five hundred and forty grams of metal, glass, and one very deliberate decision. That's the Canonet 28 — a camera defined less by what it added than by what Canon stripped away. When it arrived in 1968, Canon already had a hit on its hands with the rangefinder-based QL17 and QL19, cameras that enthusiasts loved for their fast lenses and quick-load film system. The Canonet 28 took that same family name and went the other direction entirely: no rangefinder, no manual exposure, no fast glass. Just a fixed 40mm f/2.8 lens, a programmed autoexposure brain, and a brightline finder. Point it, estimate your distance, press the shutter. That was the whole ritual.
The gamble was that casual shooters didn't want a system - they wanted a result. Canon's own framing at the time put the 28 in the hands of travelers, students, and anyone who "just wanted to point, focus, and fire." For 1968, that was a radical posture from a company whose reputation rested on mechanical precision. The camera still carried that precision, with a metal chassis, a clean layout, and the same solid feel as its siblings. Canon used that build quality to support simplicity rather than control.
What you get in hand is a compact body — roughly 130 × 75 × 45 mm — that feels denser than its dimensions suggest. The lens is the giveaway that this isn't a QL17: a 40mm f/2.8, lighter and slower than the f/1.7–f/1.9 optics on the other Canonets, but still sharp and well-corrected for everyday work. It won't isolate a subject the way a fast prime will, and it won't flatter you in dim rooms, but on a sunny street or a family holiday it does exactly what a normal lens should. The 28 is not flashy, not fast, and quietly ahead of its time — a phrase that fits a camera nobody asked for and, apparently, nobody quite knew what to do with.
Key Features
Programmed Autoexposure with No Overrides
The Canonet 28's exposure system is fully automatic. A programmed AE circuit links shutter speed and aperture based on readings from a built-in CdS (cadmium sulfide) center-weighted meter. There are no manual shutter controls, though manual aperture setting is possible (2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16). Set the film speed, compose, and shoot. The ISO range covers 25 to 400, which is enough for the slow color films of the era and just barely adequate for faster black-and-white stocks. For a shooter who didn't want to think about exposure, that was fine. For anyone who did, it was a locked door.
40mm f/2.8 FL Lens
The lens is a fixed, non-interchangeable 40mm f/2.8 Canon FL, a no-frills normal. It matches the focal length of the brightline frame in the viewfinder, so what you frame is what you get. The trade-off against its siblings is real: f/2.8 gathers roughly a stop and a half less light than the f/1.7 glass on a QL17, which matters at dusk and indoors. The lens is competent, and on a clean example it produces crisp, well-balanced images. Canon didn't cut corners on the optics. It cut them on the spec sheet.
Copal Cloth Shutter, 1/4 to 1/500 Second
A Copal horizontal cloth focal-plane shutter handles the timing, with speeds automatically selected between 1/4 and 1/500 second. That top speed is modest by 1968 standards - a leaf-shutter compact could sync flash at any speed, and a focal-plane shutter like this one generally can't - but it's sufficient for hand-held daylight work with ISO 100 film. The bottom end, 1/4 second, is where these shutters historically get sticky; more on that below. The shutter is mechanical and fires without a battery. The meter is the only thing that dies when the power goes.
Direct Optical Viewfinder with 40mm Brightline
The finder is a direct optical design with a 40mm brightline frame. There is no rangefinder patch, no parallax correction, and no focusing aid of any kind. That's the defining compromise of the Canonet 28. You estimate focus by eye, which is fine at f/8 in daylight and a gamble wide open at close range. The frame tells you what will land on the film; everything else is on you.
Metal Chassis and Canon Build Quality
Despite the simplified spec, the body is built like a late-'60s Canon: solid, precise, and durable with basic care. It has a metal chassis, a clean control layout, and the same mechanical discipline as the rest of the Canonet line. The 28 was budget-minded in function, but not in construction. That's a large part of why working examples still turn up today.
Historical Context
The Canonet 28 was a quiet departure from the Canonet identity. The QL17 and QL19 leaned into rangefinder precision, and the 28 abandoned it - no rangefinder, no manual mode, no fast glass. Canon's competitors went a different route. Minolta's Hi-Matic series and Yashica's Electro 35 paired automation with focusing aids, giving shooters autoexposure without forcing them to guess distance. Canon went all-in on simplicity instead, betting that the entry-level buyer valued ease over control.
It didn't win acclaim. Production ran from 1968 to 1972 and then ended without fanfare, and no successor followed. The likeliest read is that the camera was caught between eras: too basic for rangefinder fans, too mechanical for the wave of electronic compacts already forming on the horizon. It reads today more like a prototype for the 1970s point-and-shoot boom than a true Canonet. The direction it pointed - toward accessibility, electronics, and eventually the AE-1 revolution - turned out to be where the market was going. The 28 just got there a few years early.
Collectibility & Value
The Canonet 28 flies under the radar, and it's rarer than the QL17 - not because it's sought after, but because fewer were made and fewer survived. Rangefinder purists pass it by, which keeps prices reasonable for anyone interested in the camera as a marker of Canon's evolution rather than as a shooter's tool. Expect to pay somewhere in the $75 - $150 range for a working unit, depending on condition and shutter accuracy. Recent eBay listings have run a wide range: a body with the 40mm lens around $55, another around $45, a rougher example near $33, and a cleaner or serviced unit up at $135. The spread says more about condition than about demand.
The single biggest practical hurdle is the meter. The CdS circuit runs on a single 1.35V PX625 mercury battery, long discontinued. The usual workaround is a 675 zinc-air hearing-aid cell at 1.4V, but the voltage difference can skew readings and push you into under- or overexposure. A voltage-regulated adapter is the cleaner fix for anyone who wants accurate metering. The mechanical shutter works without battery power at all, so the meter just goes dark and you're left shooting blind on exposure.
Common issues to check before buying: slow shutter speeds (1/4 and 1/8 second) that drag from dried lubricants or aging shutter curtains; a stiff focus helicoid that needs cleaning and relubrication; and degraded light seals that should be replaced during any service to avoid fogging. Parts are scarce, but some components are interchangeable with other Canonets, which makes repair feasible for the right technician. The tight internal layout makes the work fiddly, but the mechanical core is dependable. Focus is entirely manual and estimation-based. With no rangefinder patch, sharp shots depend on your eyes and a bit of luck.
eBay Listings
As an eBay Partner, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support our independent vintage technology research.