The Canon AE-1 came out in 1976 and outsold every SLR before it. That matters when you are buying one now, because it means there are plenty of them, prices are sane, and nobody has to pretend a common camera is a find.
What it is
A 35mm single-lens reflex with shutter-priority automatic exposure. You pick the shutter speed, the camera picks the aperture, and a needle in the viewfinder tells you what it chose. It takes Canon FD lenses, of which there are a great many, most of them inexpensive.
The AE-1 Program arrived in 1981 and added a full program mode, so the camera can choose both. Everything below applies to both.
The battery
It needs a 6-volt cell, a 4LR44 or PX28. Without it the camera does nothing at all — the shutter is electronically timed, so a dead battery is a dead camera, not a camera without a meter. That surprises people who expect an old SLR to work regardless.
The cell is cheap and still made. Take it out if the camera is going in a cupboard for a year, because a leaking cell in the battery compartment is the most common way a working AE-1 becomes a broken one.
The noise
This is the one thing to listen for. Fire the shutter. If you hear a squeal or a chirp just before the click, the lubricant in the mirror mechanism has dried out. Photographers call it the Canon cough.
It does not stop the camera working, and a great many AE-1s in daily use have it. But it gets worse, and left long enough the mirror slows down enough to affect the exposure. It is a fixable fault — a technician re-lubricates one bearing — and it is a reason to pay less, not a reason to walk away.
We say so on the page when an AE-1 here has it. If nothing is said, it does not have it.
What else to check
Light seals. The foam around the film door turns to tar after forty years and fogs the edges of your film. Replacing it costs a few euros and half an hour. Assume it needs doing unless somebody says it has been done.
The meter. With a fresh battery, point it at something bright and something dark and watch the needle move. A needle that sits still is a meter that is gone.
The aperture blades on the lens. They should be dry and snap shut instantly. Oil on the blades makes them sluggish, and a sluggish aperture overexposes everything.
What it is good at
Being used. It is heavy enough to hold steady, simple enough to hand to somebody who has never shot film, and common enough that you will not be precious about taking it out in the rain. The 50mm f/1.8 that usually comes with it is a genuinely good lens.
What it is not good at: being quiet, being small, and being clever. If you want a camera that decides everything for you, this is the wrong decade.
What it should cost
Prices move, so we will not print a number that goes stale. What is worth saying is that the AE-1 is not rare, and anything priced as though it were is priced wrong. A body with a working meter, a clean lens and new seals is worth more than a body that needs all three — and the difference is usually bigger than the price gap between them.
Every AE-1 that passes through Unseend is tested before it is listed: shutter at every speed, meter against a known reading, aperture blades, seals, and the noise. What we found is written on the page, including what we could not test.