Help and advice for Canonet QL17 GIII

[Califfoto]

I've already posted the following thread in the "Rangefinder General Discussion" category but was told that I might have broader feedback here. So here I go:

I have been using a 300D so far, but have recently acquired a Canonet QL17 GIII. Now I have a couple of questions:

- I was also told that since "the negative film can handle highlights but loses all details in the shadows if underexposed ... it is better to take a reading from the shadows." which is almost impossible with the builtin meter, unless you get "disturbingly" close to the subject. Does everyone agree with this?


- If yes, I guess an external Light Meter is necessary and even indispensable?!!!What do you think

Finally, any advice as to how to get the best out of the Canonet is greatly appreicated.

Thanks in advance

Alex K. from http://www.califfoto.com

PS. Here are a couple of shots I took with it. Let me know your thoughts

 

[Flyfisher Tom]

One solution is to use a handheld meter like a Gossen Luna Pro or Sekonic L-308s for your readings. Both are compact and use AA batteries. Auto shutoff. Far more precise for the situation you described.

That way you never have to deal with the meter in the Canonet unless it is a relatively simple exposure.

 

[fredus]

Waiting myself for my Sekonic L-308 ... Can't wait ! 🙂

Fred

 

[kaiyen]

You can get around this in a number of ways.

One common suggestion is to meter the ground. That's usuallly a pretty good shadow tone. Meter that, and either manually set your exposure or hold the shutter halfway to keep that reading (I actually didn't know that was a feature until I just read it the other day).

Another is to set your meter to "overexpose" the film. Set a 400 speed film at 320 or 250. That'll help give you the exposure in the shadows that you'll want in all but really, really contrasty scenes.

Finally, if you're developing b&w yourself, use a speed enhancing developer. Shooting Tri-X at 250 coupled with, say, DDX will get you pretty safe in regards to shadow detail.

allan

 

[Califfoto]

That's a great and cost-effective advice. I'll definitely try this.
Alex K.

 

[celluloidprop]

If you're not keen on developing your own film, check out Ilford XP2 Super - it's a black & white film that can be processed in any one-hour lab and works from 100 to 800 without any adjustments to developing. Put in your camera, expose at 800 when you're worried about shadow detail and open up to 100 if you go out into the sun.

 

[kaiyen]

Wait - why would you shoot at 800 when you're worried about shadow detail? You need to _increase_ exposure to get more shadow detail, and rating xp2 at 800 will decrease shadow detail.

One thing to note - many people rate xp2 all the way down to 200 or so to make sure they get enough shadow detail. While it is true that you can rate it from 200 to 800 and still get usable prints, xp2 isn't known for its speed.

allan

 

[dmr]

I was also told that since "the negative film can handle highlights but loses all details in the shadows if underexposed

Couldn't you then just conversely say that the negative film can handle shadows but will lose highlight detail if overexposed?

Here's one that the autoexposure missed on ... by what looks like more than a couple stops to me ...

 

[gerryk]

Missed? How do you figure? Seems that there's detail in the higgs and lows... a stop either way would have ended up with either 'none more black' shadow rendition or blown out highlights. IMO, a colour matrix F100 couldn't have done better.

 

[oftheherd]

One solution is to use a handheld meter like a Gossen Luna Pro or Sekonic L-308s for your readings. Both are compact and use AA batteries. Auto shutoff. Far more precise for the situation you described.

That way you never have to deal with the meter in the Canonet unless it is a relatively simple exposure.

I don't know about the Sekonic L-308, but the Gossen Luna Pro doesn't use AA batteries. It uses button batteries as replacements for the mercury batteries it was designed for.

 

[Pherdinand]

the meter of the canonet is in fact, in my experience, pretty accurate. In very high contrast scenes such as the example of DMR where full sunlight on bright white subject is mixed with dart treetrunks in the shadow, it's impossible to get detail in both highlight and shadow. The sky is correctly exposed, the meter did its best i would say.

As said above, either lock the exposure on metering the ground, or downrate the film by even a full stop. Negative film handles overexposure much better than under. Don't downrate slide film; the highlights in that case are the ones that are more sensitive to wrong exposure.

 

[dmr]

Missed? How do you figure? Seems that there's detail in the higgs and lows... a stop either way would have ended up with either 'none more black' shadow rendition or blown out highlights. IMO, a colour matrix F100 couldn't have done better.

The details of the fountain, particularly of the column of the fountain, are washed out or highly compressed. 🙁 It's not the nasty blow-out that you would get with a slide film (or worse, with digital) but it doesn't look right to me. I should have realized that my subject was in the very bright afternoon sun and stopped down on manual from what the meter suggested.

I'll be there again in a few weeks, and I may experiment and shoot a few frames of this at different exposures. It's one of the few times I've ever had daylight overexposure.

I also agree that the meter did its job. It averaged. I need to always remember that the meter is only making a suggestion, one it has made with minimal knowledge about what's really being seen.

 

[CJP6008]

The meter on my GIII QL17 is really pretty accurate - I have shot slide film, colour neg and B&W with good results. Meter as you would using any centre weighted camera meter and you will not go too far wrong. You can hold exposures by half depressing the shutter button. If you fear the sky influencing the reading too much compose excluding the sky, hold the reading and recompose. Ditto if the desire to include the sun suddenly overcomes you.

Colour neg film will hold about 9 stops tops, B&W a bit less, colour slide and digital, 5 or 6. The old adage expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights is broadly true esp. with B&W where you can give N-1 development or whatever to try to hold those highlights. Colour neg - probably not worth bothering to pull the processing (only poss on a dip and dunk anyway) unles you have esposed a whoel roll in the same conditions which is unlikely.

At the end of the day, it is a great snap camera, snap and enjoy!