This wasn’t supposed to be my next film camera. I had hoped to use a recently acquired Minolta Maxxum 7. In fact I was actually rather excited to use it, but unfortunately it was dead on arrival (See: A couple of Ebay experiences for more info).

So I reached for the nearest film camera. It turned out to be a Canon Sureshot Owl, which was one of a number of old point and shoot cameras given to me by a neighbor a while back (See: A bag full of cameras). One of the reasons I selected it was because it already had a film in it.

It’s a very basic, point and shoot camera with little in the way of controls. There’s a review of it here: The Canon Sure Shot Owl / Prima AF-7. I probably would not have paid much attention to if it weren’t for one thing: it has a really huge, clear and bright viewfinder. As the review states:

The first thing that strikes you about this camera is the viewfinder: it is bright and beautiful! It is a really great viewfinder.

I guess this quote also from the review just about sums it up:

Shooting the camera, for a modern DSLR user, takes some getting used to. Firstly, there is nothing to do except point the camera and press the shutter button. There is no feedback from the camera on what is happening. You don’t know what shutter speed was used, you don’t know what f/stop was used, and you don’t know what focal distance was used. Very disconcerting for someone used to controlling every aspect of the process.

So a fairly typical point and shoot camera. Off we go. Results to follow.

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