Complicated and Overbuilt, This Camera is a Prize

/ Richard R. Barron
Managing shutter speeds with the Canon IIf is complex, but interesting. The sound of the shutter firing is quiet but positive, with a reassuring "thud" when you press the shutter release.

Last week I discussed my Uncle Wes’ Canon FTb, a gift to me from his daughter, my Cousin Lori. In the same box she gave me was a much older, odder camera, the Canon II.

This camera came out of the post-war period of the twentieth century when camera names were pretty straightforward, unlike today’s alphabet soup of marketing names. One result is that the Canon II, a popular rangefinder camera first released in 1949. is a whole series of cameras that don’t seem to be chasing new, exotic names to generate sales.

This is the Canon IIf as I received it from my Cousin Lori recently.
This is the Canon IIf as I received it from my Cousin Lori recently.

This camera appears to be a Canon IIf from 1953, in an era when you could buy something that would last a long time, maybe even a lifetime, and this camera seems to be working perfectly 73 years later.

Despite the build quality, the camera is not easy to use. The rangefinder is tiny and dark. The controls are small and require a lot of small adjustments, as well as moving your eye away from the viewfinder to see what you are adjusting.

There were at least four Canon-made lenses for this camera, and each came with its own viewfinder, which clipped into the shoe on top. Each used a small ring with distance markings, which tilts the viewfinder forward and back to compensate for parallax differences between the lens and the viewfinder.

It has a couple of innovative features like a three-position switch for using the rangefinder with different lenses, and a two-dial shutter speed adjustment. I’d never seen either of these features anywhere else. The shutter dials are probably put together like this to extend the shutter speed options, from 1/500th of a second down to 1/2 second, plus the B for “Bulb,” which allows keeping the shutter open for as long as the shutter release stays pressed.

Managing shutter speeds with the Canon IIf is complex, but interesting. The sound of the shutter firing is quiet but positive, with a reassuring "thud" when you press the shutter release.
Managing shutter speeds with the Canon IIf is complex, but interesting. The sound of the shutter firing is quiet but positive, with a reassuring “thud” when you press the shutter release.

The most difficult thing about this camera is loading it. It requires removing the bottom plate of the camera, then removing the take-up spool. I tried it, and was sufficiently vexed that I needed to watch a YouTube video on how to do it. Fortunately, I don’t have any plans to shoot film with this camera (or any other), but it’s worth knowing how to do it.

This camera is often compared to this Leica rangefinders of that era, and sometimes thought of as one of Canon’s best rangefinder film cameras.

I don’t know if there are any photographs in existence that Uncle Wes made with this camera, but just having this beautiful piece of mid-century hardware is a pleasure and an honor.

The biggest drawback to a camera like this is how hard it is to load, requiring removal of the bottom plate of the camera and take-up spool. In my career, I've never used a camera that loaded this obtusely, yet I never mis-loaded a roll of film.
The biggest drawback to a camera like this is how hard it is to load, requiring removal of the bottom plate of the camera and take-up spool. In my career, I’ve never used a camera that loaded this obtusely, yet I never mis-loaded a roll of film.