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.