It’s possibly pushing it a bit to call the Canon Canonet a point and shoot film camera – in the classic sense of the word. But, as an all-in-one camera of its time, I’d say it qualifies.
This particular model is, I believe, the second variation of the original Canon Canonet. It has the film wind lever on the bottom of the case, a 45mm ƒ1.9 built-in lens, a shutter speed up to 1/500 and a film ASA rating ranging from 10 to 400 (the earlier models apparently only went up to 200 ASA/ISO).
It’s relatively heavy (700g), as these old cameras tend to be, made predominantly of metal and uses classic rangefinder technology to focus with. My camera had quite a faded rangefinder, but still usable. It also came with a lens shade and plastic lens cap.
However, that’s as far as usability went. Despite the rest of the camera appearing to be in quite good shape, the aperture shutters appeared to be jammed shut. They didn’t move at all, either in auto or manual modes and so I have been unable to test this camera in ‘the field’. I found a couple of online tutorials about unsticking the aperture blades, but I didn’t have the time – and probably not the patience or competence either.
But it was cheap, at a market stall, and so perhaps someone else will have the time to make use of it.
