Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom – Mini Review – By Gavin Bain

It’s hard this day and age to get away from plastic point & shoot cameras. One I’ve come to enjoy is the Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom.

The “popular” film photographers pedal point & shoots all the time as the greatest cameras money can buy, and there is an abundance of online auctions for plastic point and shoots. Add to this the endless videos on YouTube titled “My First Time Using Film” with a point and shoot in the thumbnail, which still boggles my mind. I’m only 27 but the thought that a lot of photographers now are only using film for the first time in 2020 makes me feel extremely old.

On top of this, they’re just phenomenally practical! Auto exposure, autofocus, auto film winding and rewinding, DX code reading so you can leave the house and literally just point, and shoot. It’s great to switch off the brain sometimes, click away and burn through a roll. I personally use point and shoot cameras for exactly that ethos.

I’ve been through a fair few point & shoot cameras, some of them even reviewed here on 35mmc but the one that I kept and used the was my Konica Z-Up 60. This is because it was small, used modern batteries and cost me $4. Unfortunately though it jammed with a fresh roll of Kentmere Pan 100 inside never to turn on again.

If you are familiar with my previous submissions, I’m part of a collective of other photographers who enjoy film photography and talk very regularly. One of my good friends from our group Greg, told me that he had a point & shoot laying around – the Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom. He said I was welcome to have for the price of a cup of coffee. So that’s how this camera ended up in my hands.

I popped in a new battery and headed to our local camera shop to buy a roll of film to test. It was a rainy day, and I let the shop worker pick a film for me to test. He chose Ilford Delta 3200. A quick Google search showed us that the Canon read DX codes up to 3200. Perfect.

The Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom has a 38mm to 105mm Lens. There are no indications of f/stops, but I would assume 3.5 to something fairly small? As a street photographer, I rarely ever shoot wider than f/8 so that doesn’t bother me. It takes a CR123A battery which is expensive but still available in stores. Now I must admit I don’t know a lot of the functions of the Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom.

The switch on top of the camera holds an off function, a green auto mode, forced flash, flash off, I’m guessing a red-eye reduction auto, a timer and something called RT. Feel free to fill in the blanks if you know, but all I wanted to know was the ability to turn the flash off as my Konica didn’t have that.

I was exposing frames for my Instagram but also had 35mmc in mind. I made a lot of images that I wouldn’t post on my own channels, but I feel are worth including here to demonstrate what the Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom can do. This roll was developed in Rodinal R09 1+100 for 60 minutes, no agitation and then scanned with an Epson 370.

I actually really enjoy the Canon Sure Shot 105 Zoom. It fits in the hand well, slightly big but not horrible. The lens seems to be of good quality, which is to be expected of Canon. But I think what I was most impressed by was the Ilford Delta 3200! I have never used this film before, often pushing FP4+ and HP5+, but it doesn’t rain enough around here to warrant shooting a 3200-speed film regularly. I might buy some to keep in the fridge for a rainy day, literally.

Instagram: @gavinbain
www.gavinwbain.darkroom.tech

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