Saturday, January 16, 2021

Cannon Pellix

 The Canon Pellix was first produced in 1965.  Like the contemporary Pentax Spotmatic the Pellix provides through-the-lens metering which requires the aperture to be stopped down with a lever to obtain a reading.  Unlike the Pentax and any other single lens reflex 35mm camera of that time, however, the Pellix did not have a swinging mirror which directed the image to the viewfinder before being flipped out of the way to expose the image.  Instead, the Canon has a stationary pellicle mirror which directs one-third of the light coming through the lens to the viewfinder with the remaining two-thirds passing through the semi-transparent mirror to the image plane.  That means that there is no blink when the shutter is activated, but it also means that the image seen in the finder is a bit dimmer than with more conventional slr cameras.  Mine shows that dimness, but the view is still pretty good, due in part to the fast Canon FL 50/1.4 lens.


I loaded a roll of Agfa APX 25 in the camera and took it for a walk in the neighborhood.  The meter needs a 1.3 volt Mercury cell; it works with a 1.5v, though it reads a stop low.  I did not bother with trying to get readings with the meter as the film was fifteen years past its use-by date and it seemed like my best guess on exposure was likely good enough.  I bracketed some shots to get some idea on the best settings for the expired status of the film, and verified after seeing the negatives that a couple extra stops were required for good negative density.



The big Canon 50/1.4 lens proved itself to be a fine performer and the images looked good as long as I gave the well-aged APX enough light.  I got home with about half the roll unused so I decided to finish it up with some closeup shots around the house.  The FL 50/1.4 requires filters that are 58mm in diameter.  I only had a 52mm +4 that I use on my Nikons, so I just taped the accessory closeup lens to the front of the FL.  I missed some shots trying to focus and shoot in the low interior lighting, but I had fun with the Pellix and was pleased with the way it handled the challenges I gave it.






I developed the expired APX 25 in Rodinal 1:50 for ten minutes.  For the properly exposed shots that produced a nice range of tones and almost imperceptible grain.

While I'm at the kitchen sink developing film I generally ask Alexa to play me whatever is on NPR or some music.  On this occasion I asked for what Alexa had of Billie Holiday.  I think Amazon probably determines the song order by which ones are most often requested.  So, I got to hear Strange Fruit and several other familiar tunes during the half hour of film processing.  That was such a nice experience that I continued with Holiday's songs on Youtube while I massaged the images on Photoshop for the rest of the day.  One of the Youtube links had just about every tune that she sang.

6 comments:

Jim Grey said...

Very nice. I've been curious about the Pellix for a long time. I enjoyed reading about your experience and seeing your results.

I, too, went down a Billie Holiday rabbit hole on YouTube not too long ago. It's remarkable how much music is on YouTube now. I listened to the album "All or Nothing At All" a number of times. It was so good.

Mike said...

BH is a nice fit with film photography. That Youtube link I posted has five hours of her songs with no ads.

JR Smith said...

Thank you for sharing the Pellix test drive! And some really nice results from the APX!

Mike said...

I was glad to finally get around to the Pellix; it is a fun camera to shoot. Great lens and a very crisp shutter sound with no mirror kerchunk.

kodachromeguy@bellsouth.net said...

If you use a handheld light meter, I assume that you need to add 1/3 stop to the reading? Nikon or Canon offered one of these in the 1990s as a high speed camera, 10 frames per second.

Mike said...

I assumed that the exposures for the Pellix were adjusted to show regular sunny 16 values taking into account the distribution of the light through the system. So shooting in bright sun with 100-speed film you would select 1/100 at f16. I can't verify that from my experience since I was using very expired film.

I think that high-speed motorized shooting was one of the purported advantages of the Pellix system since there was no need to wait for a mirror to go up an down. I'm not sure how that was managed in the Canon Pellix since it does not have a port for a motor drive on the bottom.