101/365: A retirement of sorts

Yesterday's posting of the pillbug photo completes my final project for Advanced Traditional Photography. It's quite a nice series overall, and there are way more negatives that I simply didn't have time to develop. A big reason for my success in that class rests with the Canon Elan 7ne camera I used. It is a very nice camera body, well-designed, light, comfortable to hold with a host of nice features built into it that compares well to modern DSLRs. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it is the predecessor to the hugely popular xxD line of semi-pro camera bodies from Canon. In fact, it does the 40D/50D two better--it is compatible with Canon infrared remote triggers, which came in very handy for my macro work--and boasts a late incarnation of Eye Control Focus. I played with ECF when I first got the Elan and liked its potential. When ECF is on, the photographer simply looks at what he or she wants to focus on through the eyepiece, and the camera tracks this movement and correlates that with the nearest focal point. Sadly, this wasn't useful for my macro project, as I had to contort myself at odd angles to focus (which confounded the eye-tracking sensors) and then usually relied on manual focus anyway. But it's a fun option I'd rather have available than not.

But, like it or not, the Elan is going into semi-retirement. I've got nothing against film, but I seriously doubt I'll ever set foot in a darkroom again. Digital offers a host of advantages over analog film, and as I didn't originally learn photography using film, the tactile romantic nostalgia of film doesn't have much of a grip on me. That's not to say I won't ever shoot film again--we've got a large-format Crown Graphic I hope to get in working order sooner or later, and the Elan itself is just fun to shoot. But I won't be developing my own film, so I'll need a high-quality negative scanner, etc. So the Elan is going up on the shelf for now, a well-deserved semi-retirement. It has served me well.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
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