Hexar AF - Faulty...

[muf]

Got my first two rolls back today. What can I say? Not impressed at all. A lot of the landscape pictures have come out practically black. The sky is perfect but the foreground of a medieval Abbey is silhouetted virtually black. I composed by half pressing the shutter pointing at the building and then re-framing bringing the sky back into it. A few shots taken of nice bright lit views are much too dark, as though it is dusk. More shots have turned out fine, but I can't get my head around the ones that are dark. These are two brand new Fuji color ISO200 films.

I'm really confused. Is the camera faulty? Are the films faulty. Did the processing shop mess up the processing? The shop that processed them gave me only 5 prints back from one of my 24 exposure films and I asked them where the others were. So they rooted in the bin(say what!) and found the film which still had most of the roll left in it. The machine had cut it off early. They tried developing it and it kept jamming up the machine and they said it was getting caught inside the canister. Took 3 attempts to salvage another 12 negs.

I had a skylight filter on the lens with another one(without glass) inbetween to work as a spacer. The depth of the two filters together were the equal of the built in lens shade. Could that have caused a problem? I'm just really unhappy as I expected great things from this camera.

I'm in real need to get another film through it quickly. The soonest will be this weekend. I feel in pain guys.

Paul

 

[goffer]

Compare its meter results with a nearby camera/light meter.

 

[nimcod]

"metering cell is on front near traditional self timer location" from, cameraquest, finger over the meter maybe?

or maybe exposure compensation is turned off from 0? done the latter a couple of times with other cameras.

 

[ferider]

.) check the metering by comparing to another meter.
.) check the iso setting.
.) make sure you don't obstruct the meter with your fingers; sounds silly but can happen easily.

 

[muf]

Hi. Thanks for the suggestions. I checked it against my light meter and also my Spotmatic and another compact camera. It appears pretty much spot on. Certainly no big difference. i.e hexar = 1/40 compared with 1/30 at F8. My Contax T2 showed between 30 and 125 and the Hexar said 1/80. It's more or less one stop out with the Gossen I use. So I don't think that would affect the pictures as dramatically as it had. I also don't think I was putting my finger over the sensor. If I had then it would had indicated underexposure in the viewfinder. I'm going to have to get another film through it, concious of my finger over the sensor(just in case). I'll take out the T2 with it as that has a very accurate exposure meter and maybe drag the Gossen along. The exposure compensation is at zero and it registered the correct ISO as 200 as the film was loaded as it flashed up on the LCD.

All very odd...

Paul

 

[alejj]

Hi, I seem to recall that the Hexar AF has focus lock but no AE lock.
Greetings.

 

[FrankHarries]

alejj is right!

 

[Arjay]

Hi, I seem to recall that the Hexar AF has focus lock but no AE lock.

That's right, but there's a workaround: (a) Do the Hexar AF firmware upgrade for one-touch exposure setting in M mode, and (b) set your camera to M and spot-measure a specific part of your subject using one-touch mode.

Voilà, now you have locked your auto exposure.

 

[pvdhaar]

Hi, I seem to recall that the Hexar AF has focus lock but no AE lock.
Greetings.

It's been a long time since I've worked with the Hexar-AF, but I do recall that AE lock is achieved by keeping the shutter button half pressed together with AF lock..

However, there was also something in the manual about how to go about locking AF and AE independently. You could first half press the shutter while pointing to the subject to autofocus, then press the focus button to store the distance, let go of the shutter button, point to a grey object, half press the shutter button again, recompose and press the shutter all the way..

Pretty long winded procedure, and I never used it. The one-touch method of the updated Hexar in M-mode is better of course, although not entirely equivalent.

The caveat is that the metering pattern is different between M versus A or P mode. Metering in M mode is on a circular 4 degree spot, while in A and P mode it's a 15 degree wide rectangle..

and the one-touch mode of the updated Hexar was loads better.

 

[alejj]

In any case, with the hexarAF is easy exposure compensation.
Above all: what a beautiful camera, and what it brings great results!
I am sure that very soon you will love it.
Greetings again.
(The photo is, of course, made with a Hexar)

 

[sanmich]

I use the Hexar in its (smartest in the world) P mode, and holding the shutter release hlf press do lock both the AF and AE as far as I know.

 

[sanmich]

question:
Is the problem in the prints?
I am asking because the negs might be perfect but the printing machine could average the light measure over the neg, and in case the sky take lots of the neg real estate, the print exposure could be a mess.
check the negs...

 

[muf]

The negs are the same. Its odd that the same pictures taken with my contax t and oly xa were also dark but not as severe as the hexar. The hexar foreground is jet black where the other cameras are just very dark. I understand a backlit subject is hard but the hexar seems to have handled it very poorly compared to the xa and T.

Paul