Canon Canonet GIII QL17: Great Expectations

Everybody has that "one thing". You know, that "one thing" you've always wanted. That one thing that you daydream about, search for, and want more than anything else.

The Canonet GIII QL17 was that one thing for me.

The camera, the myth, the legend. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

It's This One Thing that Got Me Trippin

Being a poor musician and hobbyist analog photographer, I did, and do not have money to throw at this hobby. Either I choose the right thing or i'm stuck with whatever I get, and I better choose something cheap but still of good quality if I don't always want to be fighting with my equipment. In my early days as a photographer, I wanted a rangefinder, a la Bresson, Brassai, Doisneau, and the rest, so the search was on.

Of course, I had no money for a Leica or a Contax, so I searched for alternatives. I couldn't get anything interchangeable because that meant money, and Voigtlander was too expensive for me. I finally arrived at fixed-lens consumer-grade rangefinders and found that many had the traits I wanted. They were inexpensive, but with lenses that blew many others out of the water. And through all of the fixed-lens rangefinders I sifted through, there was always one that sat right at the very top for damn near everybody: the Canonet GIII QL17.

It was silver, slick, and small. It had clean lines straighter than the edge of a new exacto knife, arranged in a precise and absolutely functional way. It looked like Japan's answer to the Leica M2, a camera I still adore and want.

I looked at all of this and drooled. I read as many reviews as I could to make sure it wasn't just hype, but everybody had praise for this camera. And everybody told me that I could have my very own for peanuts, and that i'd just have to go as far as the flea market to find one.

Unfortunately, lots of other people wanted it too. Prices went up because people were finding out about this camera, and I remember prices being $150 on average for this camera on the internet. I scoured thrift shops and flea markets for a copy, but I continually came up with nothing. This went on for a few years, and eventually I gave up on my search for a cheap Canonet.

I eventually found a craigslist ad for one years later while searching for other cameras. "$45 OBO" it asked, and I emailed the seller and dashed down to his house as soon as I could.

I held it in my hands and felt joy, joy at the fact that I was finally united with that thing I wanted for so long. It felt like I had completed a small part of my young self, and I was ready to take this thing with me everywhere and enjoy a life of photographic perfection.

After I got it, I asked myself, why in God's name did I revere this camera so much? Was it really that great or did I expect the impossible from it?

Now that I have it, i'll tell you what exactly I think of it.

Are You That Somebody?

The Canonet GIII QL17 stands in a long line of compact fixed-lens rangefinders that came out of Japan in the 1970's. This was an era before automated compact do-it-all point and shoots, and these were the cameras people bought en masse to document their family vacations, road trips, etc. Rather homely origins, sure, but ask any photographer and they'll tell you that many of these cameras were sleepers, and actually boasted performance to rival many of the professional models of the time. This one was one of the latest developed, and arguably the best.

Top view of the QL17's controls. Source: butkus.org

One of its primary features is its shutter. It's a Copal leaf shutter that has speeds from 1/4 to 1/500th of a second. What's special about it that it's quiet. Very quiet. In fact, it is the quietest camera I have ever used, and sometimes I cannot believe that I have actually taken a picture. It's also completely mechanical, so even if your beloved PX625 battery dies, you can still take pictures with it. And because it's a leaf shutter, flash sync goes all the way up to 1/500th of a second (still better than most SLR's these days) making it perfect for flash photography in absolutely any condition, but more on that later.

The exposure system is also a strong point of this camera. In auto mode, one gets shutter priority operation, meaning that your selected shutter speed will determine the aperture based on lighting conditions measured by a small metering cell above the lens. In practice, this is actually quite slick and smooth because the chosen aperture is displayed in the viewfinder, not unlike the Canon AE-1.

Camera manual diagram goodness. (source: butkus.org)

Flash exposure on the Canonet is one of the most streamlined of any camera, modern or otherwise, provided one has the Canolite D flash. The camera adjusts the exposure based on what the distance is from the subject to the camera through the rangefinder if a flash is connected, providing accurate flash exposure in any situation. It also has separate guide number based auto exposure settings, so if you have any flashes with guide numbers of 28, 20, or 14, you're in luck. The Canonet also sports a handy PC-sync port for the more bounce and fill flashy among us.

It's also small. Granted, it's not as small as a Rollei 35, but it's small enough to stick in a small bag with other knick-knacks you might carry around with you. It's light and portable, something many traveling photographers will enjoy.

It's also... inoffensive. There's something about the form factor and the design of a small rangefinder that makes people loosen up a bit. You're not pointing a huge SLR at them, threatening to expose every imperfection both physical and otherwise. With this camera, you're just taking a nice little photo to remember them by. And when it comes to street photography, this can be a very, very valuable asset.

Thanks, quick load system! (source: me)

The rangefinder also sports various advantages over many others. It's of a lower magnification, meaning that you can see quite a bit of the frame without sticking the camera in your eye (great for glasses wearers), and it has that blue tint (Leica M3 anybody?) with a slightly yellow rangefinder patch. The patch itself isn't the brightest thing in the world, but it does its job, and the rangefinder in this camera is very accurate. The focusing throw is famously short, which makes for extremely fast focusing for the more skilled among us.

And if all this weren't enough, even the film loading is better than most cameras. The "QL" in QL17 stands for "Quick Loading", which means one just drops the film in, lines up the sprocket holes, closes the back, gives the advance lever two quick strokes, and goes. It's so easy and intuitive that I ran out of film while climbing some rocks one day, and I changed out film in about 10 seconds with a precarious grip provided by the rubber on my shoes and gave myself the chance to grab the shot you see to the right. 

But, all that said, these things aren't the reason why people fawn over this camera, and it's not the reason I did either.

It was the lens that got me.

Because of You

This 40mm f/1.7 lens is one of the legendary lenses in my opinion. Why? It's fast, with its 1.7 aperture. It's wide, but not too wide. It's standard, but not too standard.

And it's sharp. Dear god is it sharp.

A thing of beauty. (source: digitaloutlet.co.uk)

It resolves the tiniest details, but it also renders them beautifully and artfully. On black and white film, the contrast and detail is striking and blows me away every time. On color film, this effect is compounded by the way the colors are rendered, and they are rendered vividly, just how I'd like to imagine my photos. The only thing I wish Canon did was offer the lens in a 50mm f/1.4 version since I prefer that focal length.

All of this combined in one tiny package makes for a photographic experience that's well suited to stealth, speed, and low-light. It's stable in low-light conditions, and I can handhold all the way down to 1/8th of a second owing to its smooth, quiet shutter. It's unobtrusive and unassuming, and people won't get freaked out by it like they do with SLR's. And if you're very much into street photography, this is the camera for you owing to its focal length and knock-out-good lens.

So then, why haven't I sold everything else and just kept this? It seems like it has everything I want from a camera and it's proven to give me results I absolutely love.

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

To tell you the truth, there's something about it that prevents me from forming as strong of connection with it like I do with other cameras. It's yielded many of my greatest photographs so far and I appreciate my workflow with it, but there's something about it that throws me off. The build quality is good and solid, but it's not absolutely amazing either. The focal length is nice, but I always wish it were a little longer. I wish it had metering in manual mode as well as in auto mode, and i've missed a few shots because of it. And there's something about the quietness of the shutter that isn't very assuring to me, and I don't feel as much satisfaction taking a picture as I thought I would. It's a matter of taste, of course, and it's actually an advantage rather than a drawback, but I do miss that clack of an SLR compared to the "psst" of the leaf shutter. It's a personal thing.

Can't argue with these results sometimes. (source: me)

Perhaps I've grown up with SLR's so much that I'm used to their tactile feel, their features, and their limitations. I prefer the qualities of this lens to so many other lenses, but I pick up my Nikon with my favorite fast 50mm lens more often than I pick up the Canonet, not because it's better, but because it speaks to me more. The Canonet's an absolutely wonderful camera, but I feel like it's for somebody else. I still have my copy, and don't get me wrong, I love it, and I probably take better care of it than I do my other cameras. But I take it out because I know I should be using it and that it'll produce amazing results somehow, some way, but not because it speaks to me on a personal level. It's a tool, after everything.

And maybe that's the lesson to be learned here. All these things are just tools at the end of the day. They capture light, albeit in slightly different ways, and they form an image on film. What really matters is your connection to the art form and your love for it, not the gear you bought. And I realize now that I may have obsessed over this camera more than I should have, and I should have focused more on taking better pictures.

On the flip-side, certain tools are good for certain applications. Some are more well-suited to certain styles of photography than others. The Canonet is a perfect street photography camera, and if you're into a very quick-fire style of street shooting, please, please get one for yourself. But through using it myself, i've found that i'm not exactly a street photographer. And sometimes certain tools inspire you in ways others don't, and I'm not ashamed to say that i'm not particularly inspired by this camera, even after all the hype.

Perhaps my expectations were too great and that I hyped it up too much for myself. But hey, it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, right?