The Canon Canonet QL17 GIII Rangefinder
Prologue
Forgive me, WordPress, for I have sinned. It has been months since my last post (which was about setting up a blog so I could write more.) It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write. There have been plenty of nights where I’ve wanted to write – like when I lost two of my four patients within a couple of days on my pediatrics heme-onc rotation, or my first day of my ophtho rotation when I geeked out so hard that I almost had a panic attack, or during my family medicine rotation when I felt, for the first time ever, competent as a student. I wanted to write about all of those things, but every time I sat down to do it, I got tangled up in what I felt and what I wanted to say.
I think I was just too ambitious. Maybe the trick is easing into writing. Maybe I need to write a lot of little things before I can write bigger pieces. Maybe I also need to diversify my posts and get into the habit of sharing photos and links, etc.
So in that spirit, I’ll keep this post short and focus it on a new hobby – film photography.
The Canon Canonet QL17 GIII Rangefinder
I’m trying to get into estate auctions. I’m bidding on things I know, just to get a feel for the process. I recently won a “lot” of antique film cameras for $20, but I knew from the pictures that 3 of the 4 cameras would be shit. When I went to pick them up, lo and behold, they were shit. The one rangefinder in the picture was missing from the lot, so the auctioneer just let me pick another rangefinder from his stock of other sales. I pointed to the first Canon I saw and grabbed it.
The Canon Canonet QL17 GIII Rangefinder was a hugely popular mid-1970’s high-end 35 mm rangefinder that is still widely available on the secondary market. It’s built like a tank and shoots sharp and true. It’s a great camera to get back to the basics of photography.
I’m limited by the number of exposures. A standard roll of color 35 mm film has 24 exposures. This limitation forces me to consider each shot, each location, and each event. It forces me plan and compose and really shoot methodically.
I’m also limited by the settings on the camera. When they were first produced, Canon had an ingenious built-in light-metering system to detect ambient light and adjust aperture accordingly – you just picked the shutter speed. Over time, the battery and the circuits for the light meter has worn out, so I have to meter each shot manually (with a handy-dandy iOS app) and then choose the nearest shutter speed and aperture accordingly. Again, this requires more analytical insight.
Finally, a rangefinder’s focusing system is entirely different from a DSLR lens’ focusing ring. The rangefinder has a short-throw focusing ring mated to a prism/mirror system that displays two small overlapping rectangles in the center of the viewfinder window. Focus is achieved when the subject in the center of both rectangles becomes a singular, overlapped image. This is really tricky in low-light and fast-moving situations.
The only other limitation worth mentioning is the financial limitation. Each roll costs ~$3-4 and developing costs ~$10. This might become an expensive hobby if I get better at it. I may even consider home-developing in black-and-white just to cut down on costs.
Stay tuned for the results…
Hersh Varma 