35mmc is one of the best (analog) photography community.
One of the last entries is this one,
Canon EF Camera review – The F-1’s Little Sibling – By Thomas
and of course I suggest to read it.

I have mixed opinions about a quite unconventional camera, at least if you think at the “classical” ecosystem of the Japanese majors when the philosophy (can we say the canon?) of system cameras was established, let’s say in the Seventies.
So I added a comment that I’m reproducing here with just a couple of corrections.

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EF is such a strange thing. I have had my own for a relatively short time, having started with an AT1 and then focused for a lifetime mainly on FTb and F1’s.

It was not easy to understand, until I had my “Arsenal offside trap” moment and realized that I already knew all of it.
The body is practically the same of an FTb, with the large time selector switch anticipating that of AE1/AT1.
The way you’re using the meter, shutter priority or off, is the same of Canonet QL17 (less easy on a top-level SLR than on a pocketable, fixed optic RF).
So you simply have to forget that it’s neither AT1 nor FTb and use it like a QL17, remembering that the primal weighed-area metering system is a bit rude.

It’s an interesting experiment of three different ideas, the panzer mechanic of F series, the ergonomy of forthcoming, late ’70s automatic cameras, with the anomaly of the Copal vertical shutter that probably had something more to say (cfr. Contax 139 and so on) but also anticipated the hybrid shutter of F1n.

Or, if you prefer, a fascinating dead end branch of an evolutionary tree.

Not the easiest camera to use, but the feeling of a unique living memory of a transition era (for the pedantic philologist) – or simply of a damn beautiful black brick.