In the (at time of writing) latest english chapter of the romance manga Hima-Ten, the main character Tenichi Iemori goes on a walking-around date with his childhood crush Honoka Kanai. Honoka brings along her parents' DSLR and Tenichi uses that as a lens (heh) to think about how he views Honoka as a romantic partner, because recently he's realized feelings for another heroine, Himari Yoshino.
Anyways the plot is not what we're here to talk about today I want to know what model of camera they used!!!!!
pg04
From this first close-up, we can immediately tell it's a Canon, despite the lack of an explicit branding mark. The giveaways are the shape of the boot above the lens & the hand grip, both of which are fairly unique to Canon.
Upon seeing this camera, Tenichi says "An SLR?!". Given this information, we might be tempted to starting looking at just Canon Film SLRs. However, I think that's just what normal people call non-pocket-sized cameras, so for now we must include DSLRs and mirrorless in our search going forward.
However, even looking at every camera Canon's ever made, none match this body profile exactly. The combination of boot shape, distance from boot to lens mount, and position of the top dial are all things that can be found in isolation, but never perfectly together. Still, going thru everything gives us a few more hints:
- It is not a film camera, because those generally have wildly different (blockier) body shapes until the first EOS models, and no EOS film has that same top dial (presumably a mode-switch dial if it's digital).
- It is not a mirrorless camera, because those never have that area between the lens and the boot (because they don't need to do anything w/ optics for their digital viewfinders).
Therefore, despite the inexact dimensions, hitting all the key details means we can be relatively confident it is a Canon DSLR. Just from this one image!! Hopefully further closeups & better references will let us narrow it down further:
| pg09 | pg10 |
|---|---|
| pg16 | |
Fortunately, for the rest of the chapter, the mangaka realizes trying to draw a camera by hand is really hard/overly time-consuming, so they photobash it instead. This gives us a few more good clues into what the camera actually is.
The last image 100% confirms it's a DSLR; the image preview rules out it being film (lol) and the viewfinder focus correction dial rules out it being a mirrorless. Also, the button layout + the clearer body shape/badge location in the former images are a strong indicator this is a camera in the Rebel T-series, which I because I own very similar-looking T5i. Comparing the button layout to what I have, however, we see there's an extra "DISP" button in the main cluster on Honoka's camera, as well as it missing the "MENU" & "INFO" buttons on the top left bridge (photo from https://mpb.com):
Looking at all the other T-series, those ending in "i" are also missing this button, probably because it turns on/off the screen, which you can do on those "i" cameras by just flipping the screen around. Looking at the standard T5, T6, and T7, we see that the rubber patch is different compared to the T5, and exactly the same on the T6 & T7, so we can be fairly sure it's one of those (photos from https://mpb.com).
| T5 | T6 | T7 |
|---|---|---|
Just for good measure, I did in fact look at a bunch of other Canon DSLRs with similar body shapes, and indeed the T6/T7 are the only ones that match the back exactly. Unfortunately, this is where the trail runs cold. There are really are no external differences remaining between the T6 & T7; the only possible thing is the color of the zoom button labels, but we can't tell that from the manga, and everything else is better image sensor/software differences. So, without further evidence we cannot decide which one they used.
Fortunately, I do have some evidence to show, so bear with me :) On Canon's official website, we only see them (re-?)selling the EOS Rebel T7, not the T6. I think this is because it's the last entry-level DSLR in their lineup, their last one before their move to mirrorless with the EOS R100 for that market segment. There was a 5-year gap between the T7's 2017 release and the R100's 2023 release, and the T7 is still being sold officially today. Meanwhile, there was only a 2-year gap between the T6's release in 2016 and the T7's release, and the T6 was discontinued immediately after the T7 started being sold. So, just speaking statistically, this camera is much more likely to be a T7, based on when the manga is set (effectively modern-day).
Some final notes:
- The pictures on Canon's official website don't exactly match the photobashed ones, but I don't take that as an issue, the photobashing looks pretty thoro anyways.
- The lens also matches the 18-55mm EF-S zoom lens that comes with the kit, with it appearing "longer" in the pg10 picture perhaps due to it being in a zoom configuration.
- While I have been using the American market names this entire time, the Japanese name for this camera is EOS Kiss x90.
With all that out of the way, I think I can pretty confidently say: Tenichi & Honoka use a Canon EOS Kiss x90. Very appropriate for a romance manga lol!