Canon EOS Elan II with a Vivitar 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6 Lens

One of my favorite 35mm film SLR's is a Canon EOS Elan II. Very basic, good functions, reliable & somewhat contemporary. It's all plastic goodness. I primarily use it for street photography or when I'm using expired film and I want to make sure I use a camera that works!. Up to now I've always used it with a pancake 40mm f/2.8 lens shown in this picture.

However, I decided to mount it with a fairly inexpensive 3rd party, Vivitar 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6 lens. I RARELY if ever use long lenses on film cameras. I'm more of a 35-50mm street / snapshot shooter. I was given this lens a few years ago, so I figured I would give it a go.

The lens is surprisingly robust. It's not the fastest lens, but for street photography that isn't an issue. It's a pull / push zoom lens so it's extremely intuitive and easy to zoom. It has both AF/M settings to fit your shooting needs and a macro setting (which I didn't use). The AF was surprisingly fast. The only issue is that there is no zoom lock so when you hold the lens down (below horizontal) the lens barrel on my lens went all the way out to 210mm which looked kind of silly. This particular lens can easily be purchased online for under $100. 

I took this combination out the other day loaded with a bulk loaded roll of Ilford XP2 Super 400. Once shot I developed the roll at home with Unicolor C-41 purchased from Roberts Camera. The results. 

A Cool Misfire

I was photographing an editorial fashion shoot last month for a fashion magazine last month.  For giggles, and hey, why not, I shot a roll of 35mm film between look changes for my model.  I was shooting a Canon EOS Elan II with a roll of 100 TMax with a Canon f/2.8 40mm pancake lens.

Because I was shooting in studio I simply used an Elinchrom SkyPort trigger to fire my Elinchrom studio lights.  I metered my lights & set them to get an f/9 aperture with the 100 ASA.  My speed was set at approximately 1/160 of a second in manual mode.  More on this later.

Well on the shot above I actually think is pretty cool.  What's strange is that it looks like a double exposure, but it's actually motion blur before the strobe fired.  Not sure if the strobe fired late, or I bumped the speed way down and the strobe misfired.  Not 100% sure and the rest of the roll came out tack sharp.  

Next time I do a test shoot and the model has maybe 15-30 minutes to kill I might try to replace the effect.  

Anyway I misread the maximum sync speed for the Canon.  It's closer to 1/125 versus 1/160.  As a result on quite a few of the photos I got the dreaded curtain closing black band effect.  I'll SLOW it down next time.

Here's what happens.  

Canon EOS Elan II - Not That Old, But Still Cool

At my professional finance day job, most of the people that work for me know that I'm super into all forms of photography.  They think it's cute, but I just smile and tell them "now get back to work!!" Yep, that's how I roll.

A couple of weeks ago one of my staff came into my office and my heart skipped a beat...he was carrying a camera.  I quickly gave him my 100% attention.  Well, he had a Canon EOS Elan II that he thought he got in college or high school, he couldn't remember but he wanted to know if I wanted it. He had zero use for it anymore, and couldn't remember the last time he had used it.  Being the contemporary boss that thinks only of his staff, I felt obligated to help a guy out and take it off his hands.

Excluding my digital kit and a few film point & shoots, the Elan is one of my newer film cameras. Also, I only have 1 other Canon SLR, a TX.  It's a good addition.  When he gave it to me he included 2 Vivitar lenses, a 70-210mm f/4.5-5.6 & a Vivitar 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 macro.  Hey, they were free.

I gave the camera a good going over, put in a new battery and it was super clean and ready to go.  It's less than 15 years old and has been stored properly, so I had no concerns of the quality.  The only issue was the lens.  I wanted a fast prime, so I ran down to Roberts Camera.  Groovy, I picked up a 40mm pancake f/2.8 for less than $75 and I was ready to go.  Oh yes, while I was at Roberts I bought 2 packs of B&W T-Max

I've shot it several times since.  First was a fashion shoot in studio.   I played with it while shooting for a fashion magazine (in digital).  Photos to come.  Next I took it to Chicago and did some street photography with some C-41 B&W film

So far it's worked great, but I expected that.  I won't bore you with the specs because there are lots of resources online.  Just let you know it's crisp and automatic.  It will be one of my go too film cameras when I don't want to play around experimenting.

A few shots from Chicago

The Chicago Bean

The L

Central Camera is the Bomb

Single Bike

The Streets

Canon EOS Elan II New Lens

I rarely modify or buy anything new for the film cameras I purchase, pick-up from Goodwill or get from friends.  I have so many film cameras I would literally run out of money if anything was added to them. Anyway, most are point & shoots, so all I need to do is point & shoot.  Not a lot of modifications can be done to point & shoots.

An exception was made this past week.  During the week (as mentioned in my earlier post) I picked up a Canon EOS Elan II from a work colleague.  It had a 2nd brand "kit" lens on it.  The lens wasn't particularly fast, and I wanted a prime.  I didn't have any Canon prime lenses that would fit, so I went down to my local camera store, Roberts Camera, and purchased a Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 prime, pancake lens.  It's not much wider than a normal lens cap.  

The plan was to use the camera during this past weekend's fashion shoot in studio for behind the scenes shots.  Therefore, I purchased 2 rolls of Kodak 100 TMAX.  I planned to use the camera with studio strobes.

It will be interesting to see how the photos come out.  I used an Elinchrom EL-Skyport trigger to fire my studio lights, and metered the light to f/9 ASA 100.  It worked out pretty well, once I got the settings cooked in.  It will be interesting to see the quality of the photos.  The film will need to be sent out because right now I don't have chemistry to process pure B&W.

Stay tuned to this channel!

Canon EOS Elan II - A Freebie!

One of my next cameras up will be this SLR beauty, a Canon EOS Elan II.  One of my section heads at my day job know that I like to use film cameras, so he gave it to me.  I told me today that he was cleaning up his house and came upon this film camera that he hadn't used for over 10 years.  He had absolutely no desire to keep it, so I was happy to give it a new home.

There was a 1/2 developed roll in the camera, so I swapped out the battery (he had a spare one in the camera bag) and force rerolled the film.  He had no clue what was on it...fun.  I gave it a very quick dry run and it looks good to go.

I will want to get a 35 or 50mm f/1.8 lens for it, or maybe a 40mm pancake lens.  That's more my style and then take it out this weekend.

Groovy.