INTRODUCTION

The Canon Canonet QL17 G-III is a 35mm film rangefinder camera made in Japan in 1972.

BEST SUITED FOR:

Street

PERSONAL NOTES

Canonet cameras are cute, quite compact, and fun to use.

They are usable un manual or shutter priority, which is great for sports or action, but sometimes, you get stuck with a red dot appearing in the finder, telling you that the camera can't take the photo. Very frustrating.

This happens because there are simply less aperture values than speed values. If your camera uses shutter priority, it lets you decide which speed you want, then the camera chooses the needed aperture for a good exposure, so you are limited to something like f2, f2.8, f4, f5.6, f8, f11 and f16, 7 values. The boundaries are quite close... If on the other side, your camera uses aperture priority, the camera have many speeds to choose from.

I like old rangefinders like the canonet for street photography, they are compact, silent and do not attract attention. When I do street photography, I operate in 2 different ways, depending the camera I use. If I use a manual camera, like a Leica M3 for example, I determine my exposure by looking at the light, the sun and shadows. Since many years, I did so much manual photography that I am able to quantify light, I know by heart how to shoot to get a good exposure. But still, I have to think about it, letting a bit less space in my mind to concentrate on the subject or on what's happening on the street.

Because of that, I usually opt for my second way of operating, I use semi-automatic cameras. I really enjoy using cameras that offers aperture priority mode. I choose the aperture I want, wether I need a shallow or large depth of field, then the camera shooses the speed. The camera have much more values of speeds to chosse from, it will never let me down by not wanting to take the photo. On rare occasions, the speeds gets too slow, just by the sound of the shutter I can tell if its too slow, then I ajust my shooting to let the camera choose a faster speed. but I prefer a slightly slow speed than no shot at all.

I have been using a lot of aperture priority cameras, they let me focus more on the action, forgetting about light, and even forgetting about focus when using large depth of field, so I can see what's happening in front of me, so I can anticipate what will happen and be there at the decisive moment.

So when I use a Canonet and that a red dot appear in the finder, it's very frustrating.

Only because of this reason, the Canonet series of cameras is a no go for me.

CONCLUSION

Canonet cameras a all nice, but they use shutter priroty and block you from taking pictures if you are out of the boundaries, it can be very frustrating sometimes.

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