April Film Camera – Canon Eos Elan IIe

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This, and four other cameras, were given to me by an old friend (see: Cameras Galore). It’s a Canon EOS Elan IIe, also known as the EOS-55-P in Japan and the EOS 50e everywhere else. Launched in September, 1995 it was a mid-range camera (with the single digit professional cameras above it and the ‘Rebel’ series below). It looks quite different from other Canon cameras and many seem to consider it to be among the best looking of all Canon cameras.

A significant feature of this camera was it’s Eye-controlled Autofocus function: you can select an autofocus point just by looking at it. I tried it out and it worked fine, but I generally use the centre point and then lock and recompose so I have little occasion to use it.

I won’t get into the major features of this camera. There’s a very good overview here for those who are interested.

I liked using the camera. Compared to the EOS 650 I used last month (See: March film camera – Canon EOS 650) it felt less sold, more “plasticky”, but I guess that’s just the way cameras evolved between 1987 and 1995.

I did have one problem though. I took it to a local antiques fair (see pictures below) to try it out. It worked fine until I got towards the end of the roll and then suddenly refused to take pictures. I suspect this was because I had taken the battery from another camera which uses the same batteries. It had been there for some time. Then I spend quite a lot of time playing with the various functions of the camera. It’s possible that all of this wore the battery down. What was annoying was that it didn’t stop working completely. It still metered and focused, but when I pressed the shutter nothing happened. I haven’t tried the camera since then so I don’t know if fresh batteries will solve the problem, or if something more serious is happening. I hope it’s the former because I rather liked the camera.

For more posts related to this camera see:

Chinese Garden – Lasdon Park and Arboretum
The man in the mirror.
Geese.

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Boots on a bucket.

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Old doll.

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Saxophone.

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Picture frame.

Chinese Garden – Lasdon Park and Arboretum

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Top of one of the arch/gateways.

We went with some friends to an antique show held on the grounds of the Lasdon Park and Arboretum. While the ladies when around the antiques show I went for a walk with my friend Ken. I’d heard that there was a Chinese Garden somewhere and I hoped to find it. The Lasdon Park website describes the Chinese Garden as follows:

In 1997 the County became a sister city with Jinzhou in China. A Chinese delegation came to the park and lived here that summer to construct an ornate pavilion and along with the help of the Parks Department, developed a garden surrounding the pond near the western end of the park. While the pavilion is quite aesthetic it is challenged by climate. Every 5 years or so we must restore much of the paint and wood work at the pavilion.

In an earlier post I mentioned that some other friends had given me some old cameras. I had one of them with me: A Canon Eos Elan IIe with 28-80mm Zoom Lens and I was keen to try it. I had a slight problem, but I’ll talk about that in a post on the camera itself. Here are some pictures. Since I didn’t know how well the camera was working I only had low resolution scans done.

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Bamboo.

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Another arch/gateway.

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Distant Pavilion.

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Closer view of the Pavilion.

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Closeup of the Pavilion.

Geese

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One of the very few pictures I’ve taken of wildlife. I just don’t have the patience required to take good wildlife pictures. Wildlife photography also seems to require very fast telephoto lenses, which I don’t have and which are quite expensive to acquire.

This was taken during a walkabout with a friend. The geese were not happy to have us come close to their young and I know from experience that they can be quite aggressive when aroused. So we had to give them a wide berth. Luckily the grassy area to the right was quite wide so we could quite easily get around them. Otherwise it would have been a long walk back the way we came.