Shooting Film In A High Tech Way, My New Canon EOS Elan 7ne

It’s no secret that I love photography.  Whether it is with a cellphone, point and shoot, (D)SLR, instant, film, whatever. No matter what it is, if it captures an image chances are I like it.  I have many film cameras in my collection and I enjoy shooting with them.

I love the physicality of film and I also love the look of film.  I appreciate the sharpness and detail a modern digital SLR with a great lens can provide but when you see film you instantly know it is film and it has a certain magical quality about it.

Thats where my love of using film cameras end however. I don’t like manually focusing, I can, it’s not hard, but we have had the technology for decades and dammit I want to use it. I don’t like  figuring out the exposure with an old camera either. It generally means using another device a light meter or light meter app on my phone.  The built in light meters on many of these old cameras can be out of spec if they even had one to begin with and many times they were designed to use now outlawed mercury batteries. Sure you can pop in an equivalent sized zinc-air hearing aid battery but it will only last a few weeks and still you have a piece of electronics that are 40 or 50 years old running off a battery it wasn’t meant to run on.

Enter my new Canon EOS Elan 7ne, a 35mm film camera from the year 2004.  Yes, it is barely older than 10 years old and it features all the bells and whistles a geeky photo enthusiast like myself could ever want.

Since the 7ne is such a recent camera is uses modern batteries, has fast, modern multi point autofocus, an accurate light meter, and it rips through film at 4 frames per second, about as fast as my Canon T4i (650D) DSLR.

The most interesting feature of the Canon Elan 7ne is the eye control feature.  The camera tracks your eye movement and will focus on whichever focus point you are looking at.  This is no gimmick either, it woks amazingly well!  No more fumbling through a menu to set up which focus point you want to use every time you change what you are shooting, with the 7ne just look where you want the focus and the camera obeys your command and does it, amazing!

7ne Closeup, With Eye Control!

The shutter speeds are from Bulb to 1/4000 of a second. And the camera takes all Canon EF mount lenses of which I already have several that I use with my Canon T4i.  Even the image stabilization in the lenses that have it wok perfectly with this camera!

Canon EOS Elan 7ne – Top Down

There are tons more features like Ai Focus and Ai Servo focus, aperture priority, shutter priority, exposure compensation, bracketing, auto film wind and rewind of course.  A nice big bright viewfinder, a backlit top LCD readout.

Canon EOS Elan 7ne – Top LCD

I chose to also add the BG-300 Canon Battery grip.  This allows the 7ne to use standard AA batteries as opposed to the more expensive CR2 batteries.  It also adds a grip for portrait shooting and a second shutter button and exposure lock button for portrait shooting as well.

I purchased the camera used from KEH out of Atlanta Georgia, in what they call “Bargain” condition for $99. I have ordered from them before and have always had great service, the items are always as good or better than you expect.

EOS Elan 7ne – Rear

So to wrap this post up, I am excited about my new film camera.  I want to shoot more film than I have in the past and now I have the tool to do it! Film, with no boundaries!  Thanks for reading and checking this post out.  If you are a Canon DSLR owner yourself and would like to shoot film I highly recommend the 7ne, it will take any Canon EF lens you already have (does not work with EF-S lenses) and can be picked up on E-Bay or other places for under $100.