Five years ago I wrote a camera review for this mag, on the tenuous premise that the camera in question (the original Canon IXUS) bore a striking resemblance to the Canon Dial, made famous by its use by Number 6 in the episode “Many Happy Returns”. In that piece I urged “wannabes” not to bother with a search for a Dial and instead, equip themselves with an IXUS for the next convention! Well, although the esteemed Editor did just that (I’m still waiting for my commission from Canon UK), I clung to a distant dream of actually owning a Dial. With the passage of time, the IXUS itself has gone through several revisions which take the current models further away from the Dial-like styling that drew me to the original in the first place. What I did not foresee in my original piece, was the emergence of the “world’s online marketplace” eBay, which for the few of you who are still not net-savvy, is a web site where you can buy or sell a wide variety of goods in a virtual auction, and the highest bidder “wins” the item.

I thought I’d try searching for a Canon Dial on eBay last summer. As the camera is now quite rare I did not think I’d see too many on offer, but as with so many things on the Web, you never know what happens from day to day. Persistence paid off when a Dial came up for offer in July of 2002, and I duly placed my bid. The seller lived in Germany and I knew that if my bid won out, I’d have to give my GCSE standard German a try! On eBay the seller can give a description and/or a picture to accompany the item on offer, with the description being in German I could work out the gist of it, and the picture appeared to show a pretty good example of the model (no obvious dents/scratches). After a week of bidding and counter bidding, I won out with what I thought was a reasonable price for a fairly rare camera (not telling how much I paid for it though!) After a few e-mails between Grossbritannien and Deutschland I made the arrangements through my bank to transfer the required amount of Euros and I then waited for my prize to arrive…

The Non-con came and went, but when I returned home the package had not arrived! Nor the week after, or the week after that either! Panic set in; after all I’d never bought from abroad before! I did enquire as to the progress to my seller, and he assured me he’d sent it with an accompanying picture of the receipt! After several weeks of wondering if I’d poured my cash away, my parcel finally arrived, not via the Royal Mail as I expected but by Securicor! My long wait was over and I eagerly demolished the packing! There it was, the Canon Dial I had previously seen only in pictures or in Pat’s hands, staring at me! The camera did indeed appear in good condition, and had not had a tough life judging by the casing. There was no pouch, strap or battery but this did not matter to me – I had my Dial! After sending a quick e-mail to my seller to let him know the camera arrived safely, I could dream of posing in the Village with my Dial! Sod’s law did prevail however, the next week I looked again on eBay and found another Dial on offer, WITH the pouch and strap, available in the UK! Typical - nothing for weeks then they all come at once!

My next task was to find a battery for the camera, I remember the piece in “Number Six” magazine saying that they were difficult to obtain (that was a decade ago!) so they were going to be doubly difficult now! It turns out that the battery it takes is no longer made, as they contained mercury which now contravenes an EU directive. At the time of writing I still have not got a battery, although I have seen some wonderful Heath Robinson solutions involving coins, metal nuts, and a smaller battery! After having gone to so much trouble to get a Dial though, I was a little wary of damaging the thing so at the moment it’s still at home ready for its Portmeirion outing!

A little info about the camera for those interested in the technical details: The film format is 35mm half-frame, which essentially doubles the amount of shots you get from your roll but at the cost of halving your negative size (18mm x 24mm as opposed to the full frame 24mm x 36mm); so enlargements would not ‘blow up’ as big as on a full frame negative. It is now unusual to find a photo finisher who will develop and print half frame film, as high street minilabs are not geared up for it. They do still exist, but you need to look in specialist camera magazines or online. The design of the camera means that the film runs ‘top to bottom’ not ‘left to right’, so that in normal operation you would still get a ‘landscape’ format photo. Most half-frames of the 1960s produced portrait format pictures as they were still designed to have the film run left to right. The film is wound using an ingenious ‘clockwork’ automatic winder, which is what the handle sticking out of the bottom is for. Anyone who has seen “Many Happy Returns” knows, of course that Number 6 winds the film himself… but he really did not need to! The lens is a five element f/2.8 28mm, surrounded by the telephone-like ‘Dial’ from which the camera derives its name. This dial is used to set the film speed for the camera’s internal light meter, and it is capable of handling film speeds from 8 to 400 ASA/ISO. Focus is done with a lever at the top of the lens housing, and the viewfinder helps you with symbols for ‘head/shoulders’, ‘family’ and ‘mountain’ with a bright line indicator as you turn the focus lever. Exposure is ‘shutter speed priority’ auto, i.e. you set the shutter speed (range 1/30 to 1/250 of a second) and the camera will set the correct aperture to match. Of course for that to work, you need the battery to power its meter! There is a manual mode for aperture settings should it be needed.

Having finally obtained a genuine Prisoner prop, I cannot wait to get back to the Village and pose with it! The ironic thing is of course, I would need someone else to take a picture while I pretend to be Pat with his Dial! Maybe I will actually use it for its intended purpose, but then again I haven’t mastered any of my existing cameras yet so why should this one be any different!!

Footnote by Webmaster: Camera collector Ken Butterfield has sent us his original article on this camera; the article was the basis for a feature on the Dial used by 'Number Six' magazine in 1993. To read it click here.