Canon FT QL

The Quick Loading Mechanical Brick

A very solid (and heavy) late 60s mechanical SLR with quite a few features, including mirror lock up & TTL metering.

This camera was a gift to me from a family member. The original owner (who has passed away) originally bought it while he was stationed in Vietnam.

It’s a fully mechanical FL mount SLR and quite a heavy one at that. Paired with the FL 55mm f1.2, it’s one of the heaviest 35mm cameras I own. That’s what you get when everything is made out of metal though! It’s rock solid to hold, and if properly serviced, will last a very long time.

It does lack a few features, mainly open-aperture metering, (you have to stop down the lens to use the light meter) and a flash hot shoe, but other than that it’s quite usable today. The light meter is powered by a single mercury battery, which can be substituted with a LR44 without much effect on functionality. (I would double-check the meter against a handheld one, though.) Everything else is completely mechanical, including the mirror lock-up and self-timer. The depth of field preview lever is in a very comfortable spot to use, and generally, the camera feels nice to hold (Looking at you, AE-1).

It’s got a built-in shutter lock to prevent accidental exposure, which also functions as a timed exposure if you hold it down and lock it while on bulb mode for easy long exposures without a cable release. The FL lenses are pretty dated, but the 35mm f2.5 and 55m f1.2 that I have are spectacular, and you can always mount the more modern FD and FDn lenses on the FT for more options.

Canon’s QL, or Quick Load, system is nice for swapping rolls out in a hurry and generally has less fiddling than with other cameras. It’s a nice feature to have and works surprisingly well. All you have to do is pull the leader across the back of the shutter & take up the spool and shut the camera. I find it more useful than I originally thought for sure.

These rolls were taken using a variety of lenses and films, including some infrared.