exposure problem with elan7eqd

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Hello , I bought elan7eqd with bp300 few months ago. I noticed the pictures taken in broad daylight with elan were overexposed. I asked my colleague at work who has elan7 without battery pack, he told me he has the same problem with overexposure. Can anyone tell me if they have similar problem with the camera before I take it back to Canon service centre for repair.?

Thanks peter

-- peter li (pli@hatch.ca), January 29, 2002

Answers

My Elan 7e doesn't appear to have an exposure problem. I usually shoot print film, which is more tolerant of exposure errors, but I have shot slides with it a couple of times, and they looked fine.

-- Steve Dunn (steved@ussinc.com), January 29, 2002.

What settings/film/lens are you using this could be the problem?

-- Jake F (JakeF@nowhere.net), January 29, 2002.

Why do you think the photos are overexposed? Are you using slide film, and find that outdoors your slides are consistently too light?

-- Kenneth Katz (socks@bestweb.net), January 29, 2002.

I was using 28-135mm USM IS with Fuji color negative Superia 400 at that time. I took the pictures at p mode and av mode as well. I wasn't too impressed with pictures taken with 380ex speedlite either even in av mode. The subject was overexposed.

-- peter li (pli@hatch.ca), January 29, 2002.

Peter:

It is practically impossible to dtermine that you have an overexposure problem reviewing results shot on print film, because is practically impossible to overexpose print film. You could shoot 400 speed print film at 100 speed (2 stops overexposed) and get good results. The problem may be in the processing.

I would make the same comment with flash photos on print film. Is it overexposure of the main subject, or did the automatic printing equipment assume you had a middle tone negative, exposed the print to balance the light forground with a very dark backround, and the result is print that should have been printed darker.

Shoot a roll or 2 of slide film (anything Kodak or Fuji would be fine), and see how accurate your exposure system really is. Shoot some middle tone, evenly lit subjects as a basic test of your meter. Also, see how your meter system reacts to difficult lighting, and flash.

Please note that owning good equipment does not guarantee good results.

-- Kenneth Katz (socks@bestweb.net), January 29, 2002.



I use an Elan 7E, BP-300 and EF 28-135 IS USM and have had nothing but wonderful results. However, I have given up on print film because--outside of pro labs--most labs screw up the prints and scratch my negatives. Shoot a sunset, meter off a medium tone section of the sky and they give you a washed out print (the auto printers average the bright sun with the dark silhouettes). Shoot the same way with slide film and I get gorgeous color and vivid detail. Since last March, I've shot about 70 rolls of slides with the Elan 7E and am totally amazed at how accurate the meter is.

The sad truth is it is extremely unlikely your Elan 7 is overexposing. Instead, your lab probably sucks. Years ago when I worked in a minilab, we were instructed to look at each frame and decide weather or not to override the print machine. The manager--a Nikon user!--used to stand behind me and shout, more magenta, +1 on that one, etc. If a customer complained, we had to reprint until they were happy--even crappy images where a point 'n shoot was stuck 10 inches from a baby's face and grossly overexposed because the flash was too close! Thus, even if your negs were a couple stops off, they could have make a good print if they wanted to. In fact, a little overexposure makes print film appear more fine grained and saturated--it just needs manual compensation on the print machine.

I'll echo the above posters. Shoot a roll of slide film and examine the slides on a light box with a loupe. If they look good you know your lab sucks and its time to shop around (if it's overexposed, visit a Canon Service Center). If you want to stay with cheap processing, try a lab with the Fuji Digital Frontier Minilab printer- -its has better printing algorithms and print quality than many of the older machines. Or, you could pay the bucks and get it done right at a good pro lab.

Of course, once I left the exposure comp set to +1 for the whole roll of film...

-- Puppy Face (doggieface@aol.com), January 30, 2002.


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