You can use the following chart and information to determine the date of manufacture of your Canon FD and Canon EOS EF bodies. Although you can apparently get an “idea” of the date of manufacture from the serial numbers, the correct and accurate method is to refer to the alpha-numerical stamp inside the camera in the film cassette compartment.
The FIRST LETTER of the code refers to the year the camera was manufactured. Looking inside this Canon FTbn, we find “Q1206F“. We can determine by using the chart below that this camera was manufactured in 1976.
A=1960 or 1986
B=1961 or 1987
C=1962 or 1988
D=1963 or 1989
E=1964 or 1990
F=1965 or 1991
G=1966 or 1992
H=1967 or 1993
I=1968 or 1994
J=1969 or 1995
K=1970 or 1996
L=1971 or 1997
M=1972 or 1998
N=1973 or 1999
O=1974 or 2000
P=1975
Q=1976
R=1977
S=1978
T=1979
U=1980
V=1981
W=1982
X=1983
Y=1984
Z=1985
The following TWO NUMBERS refer to the month of manufacture:
“1” refers to January; “12” refers to December. For the example above, then, we can determine that the camera was manufactured in December 1976.
The following code was for internal purposes only.
The final LETTER refers to the factory of manufacture. “F” refers to the Fukushima factory. An “O” in this position refers to the Oita factory. Again, looking at the code from the Canon FTbn body above, we can see that it was made in the Fukushima factory in December of 1976.
In 1986 they began the code with “A” again – since they ran out of letters. But at that point the factory code was included before the year code. So if your camera’s date code begins with two letters, it will be from 1986 or later.
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Vintage Camera Digest 