A long time ago I bought a Canonet QL19 (non-G3) and I liked it a lot. This must have been around 2003-2004. It was however very heavy for such a small camera, used non-standard batteries, and it quickly got forgotten.
Fast-forward to 2019, I realized I like smaller cameras, that I can have in my jacket pocket. I started having an itch again for a rangefinder.
I was thinking about all sorts of rangefinders, mainly Medium format, but then I came across a mint Canonet QL19 G3. I bought it thinking that this might be a great complement to my favourite travel camera, the Lomo LC-A. The LC-A is great, but it’s not very sharp or.. great in any way when it comes to image quality.
So I loaded it up with some film (Lucky SHD100, more about that in a later post) and went out to shoot with it for a while. My first impressions were.. not great. The rangefinder patch is not very bright and not very large. Focusing was actually kind of hard. Sometimes I was so way off so it looked like I was right in focus so I shot several frames that were extremely out of focus.
The light meter was equally a bit finnicky. It is only on in shutter priority mode, and if you move it out of automatic mode, the light meter shuts off. This is also the on/off switch for the light meter, if you leave it on auto mode and forget to put the lens cap on, it will drain the batteries.
Yeah, and the batteries.. they are that ancient mercury kind that are impossible to get hold of these days. Or well, I have a few in my fridge, so I could load up a fresh one, but still. How will modern batteries work? Will the difference in voltage change the light meter reading? Maybe, I don’t know, but dealing with stuff like that sucks. Since I also shoot slide film, I have to be able to rely on good meter readings. Sure, I have an external meter, but if I have to carry that around together with the Canonet it loses it’s entire point, which was to have a sharp travel camera.
My kit came with the Canonet flash that has some sort of TTL functionality when paired with the camera. It worked pretty well, which is impressive enough, but it has no tilt or swivel, just a small flash straight forward and that is not something I ever use really. Very harsh looking pictures.
I also shot a roll of TMax 400 with the camera, and I have to say that the lens sure is nice. Very sharp and contrasty. The coatings seem to be pretty modern since it could deal with backlight well enough too. But in the end, I am going to part ways with this camera. It just wasn’t what I was looking after, and the Canonets are over-hyped for some reason. Don’t get me wrong, they are great little pocket cameras, but they are just not worth the money they are costing right now.
Here are some sample photos. First 3 are TMax 400, second 3 are Lucky SHD100.
That’s it for this time. I have loads of blog posts in the works for the upcoming months, I have just been too busy to finish them and not enough photography opportunities now during the year of the corona. Stay safe everybody and see you again soon.