canonet @ a wedding

[kaiyen]

Hi all,
Not sure if this is actually all that interesting - yet another post of photos from a Canonet QL III 17. However, it is RF-related, and I rarely get a good chance to post here so...

I used a QL III 17 for a wedding weekend of my friend's. This was a little test for me - use just this one camera, one film (TXT, rated all over the place), and try to get my technique down for low light focusing, flash technique (with the canolite-d), and exposure technique. Here are the photos.

What I learned:
1 - just because I can handhold down to 1/15 doesn't mean it'll work for moving subjects. Obvious, of course, but it somehow escaped my attention for a while.

2 - the flash works pretty well, though I wish there was an easy way for me to dial in a bit of compensation. I couldn't figure out how to do that.

3 - even with a little bit of black tape on the VF, I had trouble focusing in really low light. Fortunately, all my vintage cameras have taught me zone focusing quite well. Coupled with some shutter-dragging techniques, I got a few images I'm pretty happy with that were basically fired from over my head.

allan

 

[slruser]

Like the photos!

Like the photos!

I have this camera also and can't wait to try it at my next wedding. The pictures you took using the Q17 are very nice. Did you shoot 400 or something different. I didn't notice the speed of the film you used.

 

[Borghesia]

Very nice you share this Canonet story !
I never saw a Canonet wedding serie before, and it turned up really great, especially the flower girl.
I also have a mint GIII in the showcase, but besides the testrolls I've shot I never had touched it again. Sometimes the competition between the camera's becomes to big but after reading your post, the Canonet surely deserves a fresh roll to come into action.

 

[kaiyen]

Thanks for the feedback. I keep forgetting to update the film info. I'll add in the EIs later - I only have a couple of frames there that are 1600 - the rest are 400 or 800.

allan

 

[TPPhotog]

Nice shots, mine goes almost everywhere with me.

Can I ask how you use shutter-dragging with a GIII?

 

[Kin Lau]

Very nice shots, I hope you printed some up as a gift for the b&g. Funny note, I looked at the first few pics in the gallery and thought "this is one casual wedding" 🙂

I shot my GIII at a friends wedding last year with HP5+ @ 400iso. Mine still has a fairly bright patch, so focusing was not a problem, but a lack of light w/ only 400iso was 🙂

Now that I have Diafine & Tri-X, I'm going thru a few rolls with my GIII, GSN & Kiev's to see how they fare in low light.

 

[Wayne R. Scott]

Can I ask how you use shutter-dragging with a GIII?

Set the shutter to a slow speed like 1/15 or 1/8 second in manual mode and fire flash.

Wayne

 

[kaiyen]

Can I ask how you use shutter-dragging with a GIII?

That was a fun part of the experiment.

I think I did it two ways;

1 - I just set the shutter speed to 1/15 (which gives me just a smidge of a chance of holding it steady). I trusted the flash system to take care of the rest. This, of course, only worked if there was enough light for the meter to pick an aperture in the first place, of course.

2 - When I needed more depth of field (or the light was just too low for the meter), I set the shutter to 1/30 and the aperture to, say, 5.6. Again, I trusted the flash system to output the correct amount of light for 5.6, and I figured I'd get what I got with 1/30.

I had no idea at the time if it would work. Considering I fired off the flower toss from over my head, it worked out okay. I could've perhaps used a slightly faster shutter, though 🙂.

allan

 

[kaiyen]

I shot my GIII at a friends wedding last year with HP5+ @ 400iso. Mine still has a fairly bright patch, so focusing was not a problem, but a lack of light w/ only 400iso was 🙂.

Well, my real problem is that I keep forgetting that there is a difference between low light and low contrast. This was a pretty dark wedding, so there just wasn't anything that I could actually line up with the RF patch. Putting the black tape on the viewfinder worked quite well for most situations, but overall low contrast killed me. But, like I said, I have enough experience with zone focusing that I think I did okay.

allan

 

[TPPhotog]

Wayne and Allan, many thanks for clearing that one up 😀

Sounds like something I might have to try just for the fun of it 😉

 

[maxim]

hi alan

could you give a specific link to the wedding done
with canonet ?
I was at your gallery but those were nikon shots

Please elaborate on the black tape over viewfinder thing
How does that work ? I gather it is not entire viewfinder

thanks

 

[Doug]

Maxim he did give a specific link to the photos, near the end of the second paragraph of his original post. It's just buried in the word "here". 🙂

 

[TPPhotog]

For the black tape fix see this thread 😉

 

[kaiyen]

Maxim he did give a specific link to the photos, near the end of the second paragraph of his original post. It's just buried in the word "here". 🙂

Sorry. I forget that it's harder to see links on RFF than on some other forums I frequent.

The link to my canonet wedding gallery is this entire line.

I just realized that my wife threw up some B&W conversions of her digital shots at the end there. Those are where the image names start becoming "friendly" again. So everything before that are canonet pics.

I really gotta enter the film/dev data...

allan

 

[titrisol]

Did you use Diafine?

I wish any of my friends had thought on bringing a cmaera to My wedding....
I did most of theirs with a Zeiss Contessa and Agfapan or HP5

 

[kaiyen]

Pablo,
No, I haven't tried Diafine in general yet. I have combinations for TXT at a number of EI, which works for me for now.

I intend to try Diafine down the road, though. Just need to focus on the developers I have now.

allan

 

[Dave H]

"What I learned:
1 - just because I can handhold down to 1/15 doesn't mean it'll work for moving subjects. Obvious, of course, but it somehow escaped my attention for a while. "

ohhhhh yes, i know exactly what you mean. I endevour for 1/125 or nothing. As such EI 1600 is becoming a Holy Grail for me.

 

[Russ]

I've used the GIII QL-17, for wedding ceremonies that didn't allow flash. The results were fine. 1/60 @ f/4 always seems to be about where I'm working at.

Russ