I prefer shooting waterfalls with larger formats, but sometimes you use what you got. I did a summer canoe trip last summer to Wells Grey Provincial Park, and as space in the boat was tight, all I brought was my Pentax 17 half-frame camera and a few rolls of Kentmere 400.

This is Rainbow Falls, at the back end of Azure Lake. It’s a beautiful set, and as the morning sun cut through the mist, I wished badly I was framing it up with my Pentax 67, or even a 4x5… Despite that, the Pentax 17 did fine. Kind of…

I plan to head back to Rainbow this summer, though, to see if I can repeat with a bigger frame. The biggest downfall of the Pentax 17 is the inability to set a shutter speed (or even know what aperture/shutter the camera has set). Waterfalls benefit greatly from a bit of slow speed blurring.'

The 17 was not capable of giving that, especially with 400 speed film.

The other downside to the small neg and higher speed film is the the biggest I think I would ever try to print this is on an 8x10 sheet of paper, which is what this is here. No 16x20s from these guys …