A Meterless Canon 7: Rude, Crude, and In The Mood March 2009 A Canon 7, de-metered and crudely painted black. But a nice shooter. So, even though I was in a gear-purging mode, I couldn't resist picking up this customized Canon 7 from a guy on the internet. The 7 was the penultimate Canon rangefinder, introduced in 1961 and discontinued a few years later. It was the most popular rangefinder Canon ever made, with nearly 140,000 of them manufactured, and was one of only two cameras (along with its successor, the 7s) on which the gigantic bayonet-mount 50mm f/0.95 "Dream Lens" could be affixed. The dream in question being, presumably, your pathetic fantasy of wanting to have a third of the viewfinder obscured while shooting, by a piece of glass with the approximate depth-of-field of a slice of deli ham. Okay, I'm not knocking the 0.95--by all accounts it's an interesting optic, one of the fastest ever made for still photography, an honor shared by the smaller but way, way more expensive current-production Leica Noctilux. Personally, I'm content with the more manageable 50/1.2, which screws in normally and can be mounted on a Leica without professional and permanent modification. That's the lens you see here, attached to the camera it was made for, and the two make a very nice pair. The 1.2 looks and feels a little unbalanced on the M2. Originally, the 7 incorporated a built-in selenium meter, which by all accounts is quite accurate when working. (The 7s improved matters with a CdS meter, but it required a battery.) Dead selenium meter is one major complaint about the 7 these days, the others being the incredible ugliness of the meter's light-gathering panel, and the lack of an accessory shoe. This 7 provides an answer to all three complaints: the meter has been removed, the resulting gaps filled in, and an aftermarket shoe fitted to the top plate. The modifications were made by a friend of the seller, who evidently cut pieces of brass plate to fit the holes where the meter window once was, then welded it all together, filed, sanded, and painted. It's all very fine work except for the paint job, which is dreadful. But the camera still looks really cool, and it makes you kind of wish Canon had put out a meterless 7 to begin with. Taller than the Leica M2, but about the same thickness. If you're used to shooting with a Leica, the 7 will feel a little large and inelegant. It's heavier than the M2, for instance, and taller and wider. But the M2 feels more solid--almost as though the whole thing were one giant piece of metal. The 7 feels sturdy, but it's sturdy in the way that a very expensive lawn mower is sturdy. The film advance is extremely smooth, smoother than the Leica's, but the shutter release mades something of a thud. (It's the same metal shutter material as in the Canon P, but feels and sounds more damped than that otherwise svelter, sexier camera.) There are a few things the 7 has all over the Leicas of the era: a hinged back, which results in a bit of ugliness on the sides, but makes actually loading film much simpler; tons of framelines (35, 50, 85, 100 and 135mm) which are manually selected; the little Canon rotating eyeball that lets you know when your film is successfully rewinding, and stops when the leader has popped out of the takeup spool (a great boon if you do your own developing). The M2's finder is nicer, but I have no complaints about the 7's bright clear view and nice contrasty rangefinder patch. The 7 has a handy shutter release lock, which the M2 lacks; but I do prefer the location of the M2's shutter release, which is right in the fulcrum of the advance lever. I find it a little annoying to reach over the advance lever of the 7, and will probably get one of Tom Abrahamsson's soft releases to make the trip a little shorter. In an otherwise excellent piece on the 7, Dante Stella makes the claim that, although the 7 is larger than the M2, it actually feels smaller, because it's thinner front-to-back. Frankly I don't see it. The 7 just feels bigger to me, and it appears to be exactly the same thickness. This is not, I should add, a problem, unless you have small hands. That's a Canon lens on the Leica, by the way: the 35mm f/1.8. For some reason, perhaps the 7's general largeness and semi-clumsiness, I find myself grabbing a meter when I go out to shoot with it, instead of relying, as I usually do with the M2, on educated guesswork. It's a good thing, too, because I keep guessing wrong. I get a funny feeling I'm overexposing, even with the meter, but I'm not. Go figure. Anyway, here are a couple of sample photos, taken with the 50/1.2. Mail truck, Canon 7, Canon 50mm f/1.2, expired AGFA Ultra 100. Arcade, Canon 7, Canon 50mm f/1.2, Fuji ProZ 800. c2009 by J. Robert Lennon.