The Aptly Named, Sam's Blog


Early experience with a rangefinder camera

#

Chess or Mac?I borrowed a rangefinder camera from a friend a couple of weeks ago. The camera is a Canonet QL17 G-III. I've gone through one roll on it and it's been fun to use so far. I had been using SLR cameras until now and the rangefinder is quite different in operation. The major difference being that the image viewed through the viewfinder is not the same as the one that is seen by the lens. In an SLR you see through the lens, so it's more of a WYSIWYG interface. Here are some of my impressions with using this camera.

In the tree's shadowThe hardest thing to do was the focusing. The viewfinder has a very small area to check the focus accurately, and its not something I could manage to do quickly. I found myself pre-focusing most of the time by reading the distance marking on the lens. So, I used the viewfinder only for framing, just before taking the picture. I like the speed of such operation, but have been reluctant to do pre-focusing before now. This camera kinda forced it upon me and I'll try to do it more often. I think it is a good skill to have for street photography, especially when using a manual focus mechanism. There is usually no time to focus.

It's been raining again for the last week, so I haven't had any chance to shoot more with this camera. Hopefully things will clear up next week!