The EOS 650
In 1987 a legend entered the chat in the form of the Canon EOS 650. The EOS 650 was the first in Canon’s new EOS system of autofocus cameras complete with a new lens mount, the soon to be ubiquitous EF mount which would be Canon’s main (only?) mount until the release of the Canon RF mount in 2018. So, it was a game changing camera that set the stage for a lot of what would become of the modern camera landscape for the decades that followed, for better and for worse.
I’ve had this little EOS camera kicking around for the last several years. I used to shoot it a lot more frequently back when I lived in Washington but moving to Montana it ended up collecting dust in a drawer in between periods of lending it out to friends who had expressed interest in shooting film. It’s a fantastic first time film camera. Aside from being able to be scooped up online dirt cheap it’s just a super straightforward, bordering on modern shooting experience. It has autofocus, a really great metering system, it autoloads and rewinds the film for you, it can read the DX code so it knows how many shots are on the roll and what the film speed is. It takes a lot of the cumbersome aspects of film out of the equation so you can just shoot. It’s a really great tool in terms of just getting out of the way of letting you shoot freely.
SLRs are cool. I’m not just a Leica snob
While we were in Arizona I shot a lot on my wife’s Fuji X-T10 and I remembered how cool it can be to use an SLR style camera. I like rangefinders, obviously. I’ve talked a little bit about the difference between rangefinders and SLRs before in the past so I ‘m not gonna rehash it here.
And after saying that I am gonna get in what I did find enjoyable about shooting an SLR. I did like the “what you see is what you get” factor and the sense that the SLR kind of experientially sucks you in to the frame in an interesting way vs a rangefinder. A rangefinder tends to feel like you’re just looking at the world the same way you might with your eyes but there are little frame lines in your view, and you just put those frame lines over the thing you want to photograph. The rangefinder feels more “open” for lack of a better term.
Because the SLR has a kind of tunnel-vision effect as you look through the lens it really forces you to focus on the image that you’re assembling in the viewfinder, forces you to pay more attention to details of composition, etc etc.. It’s cool, especially when paired with a 50 like Canon’s wonderful 50/1.8. Which, speaking of that little lens, another gem. Priced at around $125 brand new or even less on the used market it’s an optical wonder. Focus is fast and quiet, it’s more than sharp enough on film and digital alike, it’s nice and compact, there’s a lot to love out of that little 50mm powerhouse. You could do a lot worse than putting together a kit of a used older EOS film camera and a second (or third or fourth) hand 50/1.8.
I’ve also got another ancient piece of Canon tech, a 28-70 f3.5-4.5 zoom lens. I know zoom lenses have the reputation of being a dentist’s tool among more refined photographic circles but it can be nice to use sometimes. I’ve made some great images with that zoom lens and the versatility is hard to knock even if I do lean toward prime purity. Either way, I’ve enjoyed the switch up and look forward to shooting this setup quite a bit more this year.
Film specs, for the nerds
I grabbed a roll of Arista 400 to run through the Canon. I’ve been enjoying the results out of these cheaper stocks like Arista and Kentmere. There is some hit to the quality and consistency of results when compared to the usual suspects like HP5 or Tri-X but it’s a smaller gap than you might imagine. And cheaper film means you can shoot more film, and that’s always a bonus. The Ilfotec HC bath helps a lot too. Such a wonderful developer. Negatives are scanned with a Plustek 8100 and Silverfast and given final tweaks in Lightroom.
