Enough Is Enough Stop Telling People This Lie

[Mark W]

NONE of the Canonets meters will work accurately with anything but a 1.35V (accept the ones with a Selenium meter cell) battery what you guys are doing is relying on your color neg film to make up for the vartiation in exposure you are getting. Try shooting 100 ASA slide film with your Canonets and 1.55V batteries and you will see what I'm talking about.

Alkalines have a steady voltage drop curve from the time you start using them until they are dead. A Mercury has a steady discharge rate until right before it dies and it dies very quickly. The Silver Oxide cells does the same thing but at a much higher voltage. A light meter is actually a voltmeter the more light hitting the cell the more resisitance to current flow the meter records this causes the reading to raise. If you start out at a higher voltage and then drop down through the proper voltage and end up way below the proper voltage how the heck it the meter supposed to read a thing based on the contsant voltage it is calibrated for..


Saying something works because you can get away with does not mean it works properly. I can dump 30wt motor oil in the Automatic transmission in my car and if the fluid level is correct it will go right down the roa :bang: d BUT it ain't working right.

Same with this screwed up idea that a Cds meter will work on a battery of improper voltage and discharge rate is cheating the new camera owner out of the true ability of the camera.

STOP DOING IT YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT

 

[back alley]

maybe a bit more bran in your diet mark...

i hate to disagree and i'm certainly not gonna argue about it but...i had a canont 1.7 and used a silver & alkaline in it with b& w film and it worked just fine.

did not use colour print or transparancy but with c41 ilford it was fine.

joe

 

[Pherdinand]

NONE of the Canonets meters will work accurately with anything but a 1.35V (accept the ones with a Selenium meter cell) battery what you guys are doing is relying on your color neg film to make up for the vartiation in exposure you are getting. Try shooting 100 ASA slide film with your Canonets and 1.55V batteries and you will see what I'm talking about.

Alkalines have a steady voltage drop curve from the time you start using them until they are dead. A Mercury has a steady discharge rate until right before it dies and it dies very quickly. The Silver Oxide cells does the same thing but at a much higher voltage. A light meter is actually a voltmeter the more light hitting the cell the more resisitance to current flow the meter records this causes the reading to raise. If you start out at a higher voltage and then drop down through the proper voltage and end up way below the proper voltage how the heck it the meter supposed to read a thing based on the contsant voltage it is calibrated for..


Saying something works because you can get away with does not mean it works properly. I can dump 30wt motor oil in the Automatic transmission in my car and if the fluid level is correct it will go right down the roa :bang: d BUT it ain't working right.

Same with this screwed up idea that a Cds meter will work on a battery of improper voltage and discharge rate is cheating the new camera owner out of the true ability of the camera.

STOP DOING IT YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT

What you say is similar, in short, to this:

Your grammar is not perfect therefore we cannot trust the content of your post.
STOP TYPING YOU MAKE TYPOES THEREFORE YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT.
How about that.

PS: With the above stupid counterattack, i just wanted to emphasize that you might be right about a little detail of the meter's operation but practically the effect is, for most of us, ignorable. Just as the effect of writing "accept" instead of "except".

 

[Honu-Hugger]

(snip)...
STOP DOING IT YOU DON"T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT

I don't own a Canonet, but I'm scared straight nevertheless. I promise I'll never do it 😉

 

[unsharp]

True

True

I actually agree with you mark. Maybe not so intense 🙂 though. Not that I have read many recomendations for battery on the Canonets, but since I tried both 1,55V and 1,35V batteries in my Canonet 1,9 I know.

Even though I mostly use cameras with built in meters, and not having had to bother much with exposure, I could feel that the reading where strange, and not linear (?) with the 1,55V battery. Switching to a 1,35V Wein cell made all the difference. Also, since the top shutter speed is only approx 1/500s it made a practical difference when shooting.

The wein cell died after some months, but lasted long enough for the photo season up here.


Anders

 

[Pherdinand]

By the way, if you really want to make a point, you are welcome to show us:
-metering results for different light levels compared to a handheld or in-camera meter that surely works perfect
-slides that are screwed up due to the metering error of that voltage difference on the photodiode
-...

As to myself, i did the following both with a minolta hi-matic 9 and a canonet ql17 GIII:
Connected a variable voltage supply to the batt.contacts
Put 1.35V on the meter
Checked the metered sh speed/EV value
Raised the voltage to 1.6V
Compared the new metering result
Compared the whole result to my minolta dynax 5 14-segment honeycomb meter

Believe it or not, the differences were way below 1 stop in the above experiment.

But you are welcome to give us all your useless equipment that would need the mercury batteries, we will clear them up for free 🙂

 

[Honu-Hugger]

It's a shame that Wein cells are the only viable alternative; their "longevity" is anything but...A few years ago I bought every 625 mercury cell I could lay my hands on (thank you, eBay); they're stashed in the refrigerator right alongside the Kodachrome 25 -- I hate change 😀

I hope to never have to buy a Wein cell in my lifetime.

 

[achmannyc]

I just threw every Canon camera that I own and that uses a battery into the trash...scared the s*&# out of me.
lighten up and go shoot some pictures.

 

[Kin Lau]

I'm not sure that there's all that many 20 to 30 year old camera's with meters that can be relied upon to expose slide film accurately. The Yashica Electro's are apparently quite reliable in this regard, but I have newer SLR's, built to use alkalines that tend to overexpose.

 

[dll927]

I have a Gossen N-100 light meter that originally took the 1.35 mercury cells. Two of them in fact. When I crossed the matter of new batteries and the originals weren't around any more, I e-mailed Gossen to ask about the problem. The replay I got was that the Wein cells would work but would give about 1/3 stop overexposure. Also, as mentioned above, the replay stated that the readings could change as the battery gradually discharged.

The comment above about trying slide film could well be true. As it happens, most of the cameras I use nowadays have auto-exposure, but I do have an older Minolta X-700 that can take the silver-oxide batteries. Camera manuals often give various models of batteries that can be used.

 

[RubenBlaedel]

I do not know the canon camera but I would like to ask Mark W if the same statement covers the Yashica G, GS and GSN - the were ment to have a 5,6 v mecury battery and I have put 4x 1,5 v cells = 6 v into it and it works just fine - I shoot slides almost all of the time and have had just beautiful results ! the Yashicaguy homepage recomends 4 cells of 1,5 and says it does not matter - is it another meter ?? if it is i guess this post is not to hot after all ??

 

[dll927]

I'm nothing if not consistent. Both of the "replays" above should be replies.

 

[Honu-Hugger]

Long live the King!!!
(handheld meters)

 

[peter_n]

I just threw every Canon camera that I own and that uses a battery into the trash...scared the s*&# out of me.

I am a brand new Canonet owner and and I am now extremely relieved that when the camera came back from Essex the first thing I did was remove the battery. It had a weird little battery in some kind of a container in it plus another different sized battery in a plastic bag attached to it and the whole deal just sort of unnerved me.

Now I want to thank Mark because I would undoubtedly have done the same thing achmannyc just did so I have saved my new camera! 😀

 

[kiev4a]

It's a shame that Wein cells are the only viable alternative; their "longevity" is anything but...A few years ago I bought every 625 mercury cell I could lay my hands on (thank you, eBay); they're stashed in the refrigerator right alongside the Kodachrome 25 -- I hate change 😀

I hope to never have to buy a Wein cell in my lifetime.

Wein cells are crap--overpriced and short-lived. There are adapters for the silver batteries for about 20 bucks. Well worth the investment.

 

[Rob]

I have never used the Wein cells, I just get an 8 pack of zinc air hearing aid batteries for about $5 on sale. I have them last quite a few months. BTW the yashicas are wired a bit
different and they compensate for the higher voltage. They are accurate enough to use
slide film in also..

 

[Biber]

Woha, someone should consider a slightly more diplomatic approach when posting on the forum. 😛

 

[Pherdinand]

Ruben - the yashica circuit uses a diode that regulates the voltage to the value that's needed to charge the timing capacitor. The canonet and some other cameras don't have this feature.
This is the base of the "battery adaptor" - it has a diode in-line with the battery contacts so that the exiting voltage is only 1.35V instead of 1.5(5).

Really...i really checked the canonet meter.
I just looked up the numbers i got. As an example, when the metered aperture is f/5.6 for 1.350 V, that becomes just a bit less, approx. f/6.3, for 1.550 V. I used a fairly accurate voltage supply and a voltmeter measuring down to a few millivolts. The canonet thus UNDERexposes with less than half a stop when using a 1.55V battery instead of the mercury.

 

[taffer]

Well, all the pics on this page http://taffer.eresmas.net/paw/main_canonetgal.htm (it may need to reload a couple times, lousy isp...) are taken with an unadjusted G-III 17 using a PX625 1.5 V battery. The color ones are all Ektachrome 100 VS slide film.

I don't know if doesn't work properly without the 1.35 V battery, but even with slide film and on those conditions it worked nice enough for me (the last shot was overexposed by mistake, leaving the aperture ring on 1.7 instead of A).

And... that's all I have to say about this 🙄

 

[Mark W]

OK never mind

I'll just go back where I belong and leave you to play with your toys as you see fit.

Glad I didn't get into the retarted idea of squirting lighter fuild into the shutter and diaphram of a camera in an attempt to avoid the actual service required to fix the real problem. One of my best friends is a camera repairman (a 32 year friendship) who has boxes of cameras collected over the years from home repairs like washing all the lube out of a camera into places it doesn't belong. I guess next time he starts bending my ear about the latest POS ruined by some fool trying their own repairs I'll just tell him he doesn't know what he's talking about everyone on the net knows things like any old battery and lighter fuild can fix any old camera just like new.


To those of you who commented on my typos and poor grammer. OH boy I'm sorry I guess I should have known that personal attacks would have made me seem so much more knowledgable about the cameras in question. Unlike relying the 15 years I have owned a dozen different Canonets along with the current 40+ other camera's I currently play with.

I now know the base level of this group I'll just read the posts for the humor and for go sharing any of my worthless knowledge and valuable time.