The Visual Science Lab : Fall 1978. England, France, Italy, Greece and Switzerland. Mostly camping and living out of backpacks. First foray with a good camera.

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The Original.

Just add Tri-X film...

I wrote a piece yesterday that touched on the camera that really got me started down the path into the labyrinth of photography; the Canon QL 17-GIII. A "point and shoot" camera introduced by Canon in the mid-1970s. The last, I think, of a line of solid, built from all metal parts, fixed lens, prime lens, film cameras. The classic "compact" camera. If you've read the blog for a while you've probably read instances where I have mentioned it in the past. There is a reason for my nostalgia. That camera brought me enough good frames, with Tri-X black and white film, on an extended trip to Europe, to have inflamed and then cemented my sheer love of photography. And also pushed me into learning how to print black and white images in an actual darkroom. Gosh I miss Ilfobrom double weight, fiber photo printing paper. Grade 3, please.

The QL 17-GIII was a film camera that was quick and nearly foolproof to load film into. It wasn't small enough to be considered pocketable, unless you are a giant with absurdly enormous pants pockets, and it was reliable almost to a fault. The 40mm lens was/is sharp. But not too sharp. It was absolutely the perfect camera for a new, untrained, young, flustered, beginner photographer to bring along on one of those 1970's styled trips of a lifetime.

On my last commercial job, back in August 2025, I shot about 1,800 forty-seven megapixel raw files in one long, hot day. Digital, of course. But back in the Fall of 1978, when I was packing for a trip that would last almost a full semester, I thought that maybe 25 rolls of mostly hand-loaded rolls of Tri-X black and white film would suffice for the duration of the trip. About 900 shots, total, for months of travel and photographing. But it seemed, for all intents and purposes, to have worked out just fine...

If we want to discuss camera reliability I would have to say that of all the cameras I've owned that I came to trust the little Canon more than any other. Part of the reason is that I have had and used the camera (as you can see in the photo above) for something like 49 years. Not once has the camera so much as burped. The uncomplicated little leaf shutter keeps clicking away. The rudimentary rangefinder, while fading a bit, is still viewable and accurate. The moving frame lines in the finder do a good good preventing parallax induced compositional errors when the camera is used near the camera's close focusing distance. The camera is also considered by me to be reliable because if the battery for the meter and metering system fail entirely, and I'm in a location where a new battery is hard to find, the camera is still completely shoot-able. I'll have to figure out the approximate correct exposure but, for decades, in the studio, I used external light meters for light measurements so that's one work around. The other is that when shooting outside on a known film stock, between the hours of say, nine a.m. to about five p.m., the light isn't that hard to read. The Sunny Sixteen rule can be used. A memory of Kodak's little paper film exposure guides that came packed, back then, with every roll of film were a great way of getting into the exposure ballpark. And then there is film latitude. So, just think, after the nuclear EMP blasts in the upper atmosphere destroy all electronic circuits, I'll still be able to take images of the ever-mutating, remaining human population with my 50 year old camera. I'll just have to do the metering in my head.

This trip (1978) coincided with the widespread adoption of the Boeing 747 as the long haul airplane of choice for nearly all carriers so I often match the camera and that jet in my memory, of having belonged to my "golden age" of international travel. It was so, so, so easy back then. No phone. No credit cards. Only American Express Traveller's Cheques. And some non-domestic cash drawn from a local bank before leaving town. This far, far pre-dated the Euro currency so one needed to jump between different currencies in Europe as one travelled from country to country. It was fun to go cash traveller's cheques in Paris since the American Express office was right by the famous Opera House. And the Amex office has super good restrooms... and maps. Remember, since there were no cellphones one also needed paper maps to navigate a city or country. Interesting times. And having been a Boy Scout I did have a magnetic compass with us as well.

It was early days for me as a photographer. My majors at the University were anything but "art." I knew enough from quickly reading books and magazines before traveling that some f-stops were better for some things while other f-stops were good for...different other things. I had a photographer friend, a professional, whose main advice was to try not to shoot with a shutter speed under 1/125th of a second. Flash? Please.... I was having enough trouble getting stuff in focus and trying to remember what ASA meant--- and how to use that information.

When I came back to the U.S. with scruffy hair and an outrageous beard I read Ansel Adam's books and the Time/Life photo series of books and, with a little help from an older photographer, I learned how to develop four rolls of black and white film in one go, in a metal developing tank. And just like everyone else back then I initially had troubles loading the film on those metal reels that seemed to have been invented with the intention of making some parts of your film stick to and destroy the images on other parts of your film. But I practiced on less important film until I got the hang of it and then spent the next few months souping film and then painstakingly printing my images from the trip onto 8x10 inch photo paper. The good, pre-resin coated, double-weight fiber stock. The good stuff. Back when it was as cheap as free.

If one is traveling and learning photography at the same time I would advise that it's a good idea to bring along a sweet, cute, photogenic companion for the trip. (choose any two?). Traveling together 24 hours per day and sometimes sharing a small tent in remote mountain pastures or beside rushing river is a good exercise in fostering compatibility or.... completely ruining your long term relationship. But, at least you'll have someone reliable as a subject.

There is something to be said for inexperience and the inability to change cameras at will. You learn what works and what doesn't. You don't distract yourself much with the process and, since in those days there was no image review, no menus, no rear screen, no fine-tuning adjustments in the non-existent menus, there wasn't much on a camera to distract you. Which was nice. You just adjusted the exposure, focused and then put the camera down and soaked in the scenery.

The images below were all done while traveling with CanonQL17 GIII. It was a wonderful traveling companion. A good picture taker and quick to forgive me for my technical errors through something we called "film latitude." Maybe we have not come so far after all.