IN YOUR BAG: 1733 – Neal Gause
For this installment of our ‘In your Bag’ series, we have Neal Gause. Neal Gause has had one in your bag feature and a heartfelt one that he did posthumously for his father. We are happy have him back on the site. Here is his full disclosure:
Full disclosure: I’m a Japan Camera Hunter (JCH) site lurker. I find the articles, especially the “In Your Bag” features interesting. Which is funny because while I have a lot of camera bags I never carry one when I’m out-and-about shooting. Anything I think I’ll need is carried in my pockets. I use the bags to store my cameras at home or when traveling.
I’m amazed that (mostly young) people still wander the earth shooting film. I appreciate that JCH publishes the ‘What is in Your Bag’ articles. I’m retired but my career allowed me to live in Asia and Europe for many years. I have traveled in Africa, the Pacific and South America. I now live in the United States and mostly photograph birds (which, I guess, is still wandering around taking photographs).
The Bag
Photography
Nikons
Canon Canonet QL17
Lastly, the cult classic Canon Canonet QL17 G-III (Taiwan manufactured). My father recommended getting the Canonet—get the black one he said. So I did as told. This became my ‘drunk’ camera. When out on the town I wanted to have a camera handy. I didn’t like taking my FM into, you know, the night. So I needed a camera that could take some abuse, wasn’t too dear, and could be reliably operable in dark places while drunk.
A handy feature of the Canonet is that the Canolite D flash (it came with the camera as a set) is calibrated to the camera focus distance setting. All that is necessary to take properly exposed shots in a very dark place was to estimate the subject distance, set the focus, and shoot. The camera/flash did the rest. I shot black and white Tri-X and color negative film in the Canonet. Also, in the below photograph, is a Canon Canonet QL17 (Japan manufacture) that I inherited. (Well, I say I inherited it but it is probably my sister’s QL17 that somehow found its way into one of my smaller Bellinghams—lets just keep this between ourselves.)
Finally, in the below photo is an Olympus XA fixed 35 mm f/2.8 lens camera with the removable A11 electronic flash. The XA is a nice camera which I purchased to use as a smaller, lighter drunk camera. Never bonded because of the small controls (remember I’m probably drunk while operating it) and my fear it might be broken if I carried it around in my pocket. I keep it in the bag with the Canonets. It is a classic after all.

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Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com
Send me a high resolution image of the bag. Optimum size is 1500px across. Please ensure there is a bag in the shot, unless you don’t use one. The more you can write about yourself the better, make it appealing and tell us a story. Snapshots of your gear with a camera phone and no words will not be featured.
Oh and don’t forget your contact details (Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, Grainery et al). Send the bag shots here. Not all make the cut, so make sure yours is funny/interesting/quirky. And please make sure the shot is of good quality, you are a photographer after all.
Cheers
-JF