Picture Perfect

Canon clicks with its cameras

Until only a few years ago, American consumers tended to regard 35-mm cameras as tricky devices loaded with inscrutable dials and knobs. Now they are as much a part of the tourist's gear as a straw hat and Bermuda shorts. The company most responsible for the change is Japan's Canon (1983 revenues: $2.8 billion). In 1976 it brought out a revolutionary model called the AE-1. Containing a built-in microprocessor, the camera made exposure settings a snap. An aggressive ad campaign that used sports stars to tout the AE-l's easy handling helped Canon become a favorite among amateur shutterbugs. More than 8 million of the AE1 series have been sold, helping to make Canon the world's largest producer of 35-mm cameras.

This week at the photo industry's annual trade show in Las Vegas, Canon will promote its two most automatic cameras ever. The T70, priced at $450, features three computer programs that adjust the camera for particular situations ranging from fast movement to long vistas. A liquid-crystal display on top of the T70 can tell the photographer 152 different pieces of information about the camera, including the shutter speed being used and the amount of film left. The shirt pocket-size MC, $280, focuses itself, automatically advances the film and rewinds it at the end of a roll.

Canon took skills learned in its other business fields and used them in cameras. Though the company produced 4.8 million cameras last year, up 9% from 1982, the majority of its revenue comes from office equipment, including copiers, electronic typewriters and word processors. In 1982 the company introduced the ultracompact Personal Cartridge Copiers, priced at $1,000 and designed for homes or small businesses. Says Canon President Ryuzaburo Kaku: "We find ourselves with even a giant like IBM as one of our competitors. We know we must never be tardy in taking advantage of new technologies."

Canon was started in 1937 by Chairman Takeshi Mitarai, a physician, who took the company name from Kannon, the Buddhist figure that represents mercy. The firm made the first advanced 35-mm camera produced in Japan in the 1930s and stayed with these relatively slow-selling models for decades. But after moving into calculators and copiers in the 1960s, Canon applied its electronics know-how to cameras and devised the breakthrough AE-1. The company followed up in 1979 with the Sure Shot, a highly popular $100 pocket camera that automatically focuses itself by using an infra-red beam to measure the distance to the subject. Then in 1982 came the $60 Snappy 20, an easy-to-load 35-mm model designed to compete with Kodak's Instamatics.

The success of Canon has been a blow to Nikon, its chief rival. Canon now produces 31% of Japan's output of single-lens reflex cameras, in contrast to Nikon's 16%. Moreover, Canon draws raves from some professional photographers, particularly for the sharpness of its lenses. Canon also wins high marks for its field service, and its technicians are known for driving all night or hopping aboard airplanes to come to the aid of professional photographers with broken gear. In the prestige race, though, Nikon still has an edge with many professionals. Says Nikon Managing Director Hiroshi Moromisato: "We are not following the popular road."

On the path to developing a wide range of high-tech products, Canon has stumbled on occasion. In 1975 it suffered heavy losses on a line of unsuccessful pocket calculators. Though the firm is now zooming along, officials are worried about possible trade barriers from the U.S. and Europe. That could be crippling, since some 75% of Canon's sales are exports. As a result, the company is gradually moving production overseas to new plants in such places as California and West Germany.

Canon's factories are models of efficiency. Its main camera plant, situated 150 miles north of Tokyo at the base of snow-capped Azuma Mountain, is so automated that certain sections are staffed only by robots. Most of the factory's 2,000 employees, 60% of them women, work in the final assembly stage, where the tasks are more complicated. Canon's philosophy exhorts workers to avoid the "nine wastes," which include such sins as excess inventory or defects of any kind. The results are nearly picture perfect. Factory Boss Toshio Endo boasts that in a batch of 470,000 lens mounts produced at the plant over the past three months, only two were defective.