The Roots of 35mm Film Photography
Who Started This?
Oskar Barnack is credited with inventing 35mm film photography in 1913 when he developed the first prototype camera, the “Ur-Leica,” to use standard 35mm cinema film for still photography. This innovation led to the creation of the first commercially successful 35mm camera by Leica, which popularized the format and made photography more accessible and portable.
What are we seeing?
Oscar Barnack’s desk. I don’t even want to think about how much this stuff is worth.
What We’re Working With
The Canon Canonet QL17 G-III, as pictured above, is commonly referred to as a “poor man’s Leica,” for its similar appearance and straight-forward operation to its aforementioned $3k+ German counterparts.
On the first day of class, our professor gave us very clear guidelines on what type of camera we would be needing for the course: an either fully-mechanical or mostly-mechanical 35mm film camera with aperture and shutter speed controls. After a long slide show of many examples I began biting my nails, fearing I would have to certainly dish out a decent amount of money on a working example of one of these cameras, and then suddenly, I see a very familiar, gorgeous piece of kit: this camera. “I love these and these will do just fine,” the professor says. “I have two of them, actually.” I have one! Sitting in my room, possibly broken, but I have one! I went home that day, startled fiddling with the controls, cleaned it, and low and behold, it appeared to be working just fine. As of now–knock on wood–it hasn’t let me down. It’s a lovely little Rangefinder-style camera that always turns heads in a sea of chunky and more-equipped Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras. I have since equipped it with some cool mods.