High level, the T90 is a top of the line manual focus and motorized SLR, with a long eye point viewfinder, multiple auto-exposure and metering modes, on the film flash metering, and a very fast (1/4000 sec) shutter. Besides auto-focus, the only major feature missing is matrix metering.

Launched in 1986 (one year after the Minolta 7000), the T90 did not stay under the spotlights for a long time. A very innovative camera, it was probably expected to stay at the top of Canon’s line of FD mount SLRs for a decade, but the success of the Minolta 7000 (and the failure of their first auto-focus SLR, the T80) forced Canon to change their plans in a hurry. They decided to abandon the FD mount, and somehow derived their first two successful auto-focus SLRs (the EOS 650 and 620) from the T90. Less than 12 months after its introduction, the T90 had been relegated to a niche – a camera for well heeled enthusiasts and conservative pros refusing to throw away their FD lenses  to upgrade to the new auto-focus product line.

Designed for demanding photographers, the T90 had an impressive specifications sheet, and  very few real competitors in its heyday:

• Nikon had nothing approaching its capabilities until the Nikon F4 and N8008/F801 were launched in 1988. But both were autofocus cameras with matrix metering, and sold for much more than the T90.
• the Olympus OM-4Ti had similar capabilities for metering and its flash system was even more elaborate than the T90’s flash, but it was miles behind when it came to shutter performance and its short eye-point viewfinder was rather small for photographers wearing glasses.

Contax and Leica R cameras of the early to mid nineties also had approaching characteristics,  but when they came to the market, most of the photographers already had adopted auto-focus cameras, and the T90 had been retired for some time.

The T90 was also extremely expensive:

At approximately $500.00 body only in 1986, it was priced in the same ballpark as the Olympus OM-4T, which means it was:

• more expensive than any other 35mm manual focus camera, except for modular professional bodies (Canon’s F-1, Nikon’s F-3 or Pentax’s LX), and of course the Leicas.
• more expensive than any autofocus SLR camera, including Canon’s own EOS 650 and 620 – until the launch of the Nikon F4 and the EOS-1 at the end of the eighties.

Buying and using a T90 now

You may prefer a smaller, simpler, lighter and quieter manual focus camera, but if you want a long eye point viewfinder, multiple automatic modes, multiple metering options and support of Canon FD lenses, there is not much choice.

• Probably because of the bad reputation of old electronics cameras, and specifically of potential reliability and maintenance issues (risk of sticky shutter failure, lithium battery soldered on the circuit board), it can be had for relatively little money (less than $100.00 for a very nice one on auction sites)

The user manual is fairly large for a camera of that era (126 pages) but apart from all the metering and exposure compensation options which can be fairly complex, the T90 is very simple to use, and benefits from very good ergonomics:

• All the major settings are visualized on a single top plate LCD – very clear and very informative
• The essential settings (exposure, metering) are accessed through two big buttons  and the control wheel.
• Great viewfinder – very clear and fine focusing screen, just enough information, and for a photographer wearing glasses – like me –  it’s the perfect compromise between a reasonably long eye point and a reasonable enlargement level.

I did not like a few details  – the control wheel is vertical – I’m used to horizontal on Nikon or Fuji bodies –  in some modes, the viewfinder display is only active if the shutter release button is half pressed, and when you lift your finger from the shutter release to turn the control wheel with your index, the viewfinder display turns dark.

Metering

• Generally speaking, the camera is easy to use, but understanding the finesse of the metering options requires to go back to the user manual – and experiment.
• The camera offers 3 metering modes, but on the T90 the center weighted average mode I’ve been using on manual focus SLRs since my formative years is not usable except in the most straightforward lighting situations: the “average” metering mode does not support exposure memorization, and the second best option to control exposure in complex situations on other cameras – switching to semi-automatic exposure  – only works with stopped down metering on the T90.

  

•  As a result I kept the camera set to Partial metering  most of the time. Think of Partial as a form of spot, with a very large metering area at the center of the frame.  Partial metering has been available in Canon  SLRs since the early seventies (on the the FTb, for instance) and is still an option on current EOS digital SLRs. On the T90, this mode supports exposure memorization. By the looks of my pictures, it seems to treat equally the lower and the upper portions of the scene, often resulting in a slight under-exposure of the picture if a portion of the sky is included in the metering area.

  

• I wanted to test the Spot, Multi-spot, and High Key /Low Key modes.
  The scenes I exposed in Spot ended up being exposed correctly.
  I played with Multi-spot and the Hi key/Lo key corrections, but shot very few pictures in those modes: those options leave the photographer totally in charge, but require time, as well as a serious knowledge of the theory of exposure (the 18% gray charts and all those sorts of things). To make the matter worse, the implementation of High Key/Low Key is not novice friendly: even the OM-4t is simpler: on the Olympus, the Hi and Lo buttons provide a constant level of correction +2 EV and -2 2/3 EV respectively. On the T90, it’s up to the photographer to adjust the correction, by steps of 1/2 EV. It’s more flexible than the Olympus, but the photographer will have to remember to push the HI button 4 times when shooting a white dog sitting on white sofa.
• The main constraint, of course, is that film offers no immediate feedback. In order to learn how to take advantage of the advanced exposure modes, you  have to perform systematic tests, take notes, and when you finally receive the processed negatives, go through your notes and try understand what you did right and where you went wrong.  Who has the patience for that?

Lenses

• I tend to shoot a lot with wide angle lenses (24mm, 28mm), but I need longer focal lenses from time to time, and don’t like carrying too many lenses at the same time.
• Trans-standard zooms are supremely convenient. But in the mid-eighties, very good trans-standard zooms – lenses that could be at the same time sharp, distortion free, compact and reasonably fast (f2.8-4 for instance), simply did not exist. Nikon introduced their first 35-70 f/2.8 AF zoom with the F4 camera, Canon only launched a 28-70mm F/2.8-4L auto-focus zoom in 1988, and neither of them are light or compact.
• Therefore, the options in the FD mount are limited: no “L” zoom, a few sliding aperture entry level zooms, a huge 35-70 f/2.8-3.5 from the early seventies, and two large and heavy constant aperture zooms, the 35-105 f/3.5 and the 28-85 f/4. I bought the 35-105 f/3.5 a while ago and did not like the pictures it delivered at all (maybe it was a bad copy – on the forums the lens has the reputation of being the best of its class when it’s in top condition).  I’m not inclined to buy the 28-85 f/4, which looks very similar to the 35-105 and is not as highly rated.
• I will have to explore the world of independent lens makers, or bite the bullet and buy a sliding aperture Canon zoom – the 35-105 f/3.5-4.5 may be better than its reputation.
• As mentioned above, the T90 does not offer full aperture metering in semi-auto exposure mode. But its semi-auto mode is very well implemented if you accept to work with the lens stopped down. Interestingly, the T90 not only supports older Canon FL lenses, but, with adapters sold by Canon in the sixties and seventies, it also accepts 42mm screw mount lenses,  Exacta, Leica Visoflex and even Nikon F lenses. I could find one of those screw mount adapters recently, and there are a few very luminous Pentax screw mount lenses that I’d like to try on the T90.

My conclusions:

I’ve never really been into Canon cameras – and I only started using Canon SLRs recently because I was given a few bodies and lenses. Logically, I should have felt little affinity with the T90: it is pure Canon DNA, combining some characteristics originating in the FTb and AE-1 generations with the ergonomics of modern EOS cameras. But the truth is that I love this camera. It’s one of the most satisfying film cameras to use, with no real equivalent:

• The Canon A-1:
  • the A-1 is a good camera, but I like the T90 much better (better viewfinder, better shutter, better ergonomics, better build quality, more metering options for the day I want to think hard about the exposure).
• The Nikon SLRs of the mid eighties
  • Nikon has no equivalent to the T90. The F3 is a heavy, conventional, aperture preferred auto camera, with a viewfinder even larger than the T90, but far less informative; it’s rock solid and will quietly get the job done, but it feels much older than the T90. Another generation.
  • Compared to the T90, the FE2 is a simple, light and compact camera  with a very fast shutter. Like the F3, it only offers aperture priority auto-exposure in conjunction with center weighted average metering, and in most situations, it’s going to be good enough. Its viewfinder is very bright, it offers one of the best implementations of semi-auto exposure I know of, but with its very short eye point, it will force photographers wearing glasses to look left and right to see the entirety of the focusing screen.
• The Olympus SLRs:
  • Even if it has some characteristics in common with the OM-4 (the multi-spot and hi-key/lo key metering modes or the flash control options), the T90 looks like the polar opposite of the OM-4. The design and the ergonomics of the OM-4 are deeply rooted in the early seventies. On the other hand, the T90 introduced a way of interacting with a camera still followed today by Canon, Nikon or Sony for their top of the line dSLRs.
    I’ve not been convinced of the usefulness of the multi-spot and hi-key/lo-key modes of the T90 – too slow, too complex, not better than operating with spot metering on a good semi-auto camera – and I suspect that my opinion would not be very different if I tested those features on the OM-4. But if you don’t use those metering modes, why bother with an OM-4? An OM-2 or an OM-2 Spot Program will do a similar job, and are simpler and cheaper cameras.

If you consider the camera’s characteristics – its specs sheet – it is very telling that the closest Minolta or Nikon cameras – motorized, with a  long eye point viewfinder, multiple auto-exposure options, multiple metering options including Spot –  came a few years after the T90 (with the Maxxum 8000i or the N8008/F801). But with auto-focus and matrix metering, they clearly belonged to another generation and offered a different user experience.

Despite the apparent similarity of their ergonomics, shooting with the T90 is to a large extent the opposite of shooting with a modern auto-focus/matrix metering  SLR or dSLR. The T90 leaves you in charge of the focus and the exposure. Focusing is not very difficult (the viewfinder is large and bright), but getting the exposure right requires some effort – in particular because Canon decided to limit what the photographer could do with Average metering. The T90 is a camera for perfectionists, who believe that with the right set of tools and some effort, they can get better images than what a modern auto-everything camera would give them.

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More about the T90:

Cameraquest: https://cameraquest.com/t90.htm

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