Canon Scoopic M light meter question

[Film16]

I recently got hold of a Scoopic M in good condition, I recelled the battery and everything seems to work fine, apart from some unusual readings from the internal light meter. As a newbie to 16mm this might be complete ignorance on my part, so please bear with me.

If I am outisde on a sunny day, with the Scoopic set to 50ASA and 24FPS (so 1/51 shutter speed), I have great difficulty getting the light meter within range, at best I might get f22, but mostly it seems to say the shot is overexposed. If I measure with my light meter (Gossen Luna F) it reads at least 1.5 stops under at exactly the same setting. The manual says the T stops of the Scoopic should be treated as F stops when using an external light meter, so I thought the Scoopic's light meter might need adjusting, but when I try the same inside or on a overcast day, the readings are more in line (but still under) with my external meter. Of course the best thing is to run a film test with manual versus auto, but I wondered if anyone has come across this issue before with the Scoopic M?

Thanks.
Tom

[Film16]

Anyone? Vidwerk, you might know this one.
Cheers

[vidwerk]

Anyone? Vidwerk, you might know this one.
Cheers

I read the post yesterday but couldn't think what the problem might be.
Perhaps the ASA dial is broken giving a higher reading than intended.
In auto-exposure mode try turning the ASA dial while looking at the aperture ring for changes. I would also shoot a couple of scenes in auto exposure mode letting the meter do its thing, then shoot the rest of the roll with a handheld meter.
Hope this helps.

vidwerk.

[Film16]

Thanks vidwerk, I'll give that a go. I've since found out that it is possible to adjust the sensitivity of the internal lightmeter by adjusting a potentiometer housed inside the front block on top of the Electronic Eye.
So if it is out at least there are DIY options. I have a page from the repair manual for this adjustment if anyone wants it.

As an aside, do you happen to know if any Scoopics were ever converted to S16? It is such a cool camera, it would be great if it was possible. In any case I think I will do the test using the ultra fine grained Kodak 7201 50D, and ask for an optical 16:9 crop in telecine to see how that stands up.

Tom

[vidwerk]

Hi Tom;
I did not know that the external meter could be adjusted. Interesting.
In regards to S16 conversion, a while back I spoke with someone at The Aranda Group in Australia who said that they can and have converted the Scoopic to super 16. Here is the link.

http://www.arandafilm.com.au/pages/page7.html

Cheers.

[freddiesykes]

Is the lens on the M sharper than the old grey models? Those lenses are kind of soft to me.

[vidwerk]

Is the lens on the M sharper than the old grey models? Those lenses are kind of soft to me.

I find it to be very sharp indeed, but I have no other Scoopic to compare it to. There was an 8 year gap between these models which gives room to a lot of changes. http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/camera/16cine/

vidwerk.

[Film16]

Is the lens on the M sharper than the old grey models? Those lenses are kind of soft to me.

I don't know yet, I hope to do some tests soon and I will try various stops to see where it performs better, I need to do that to check the light meter is working anyway.

Vidwerk, thanks for the info on Aranda, I will check them out. I am hoping the Scoopic + 50D will also produce good results when cropped 16:9 during the TK.

I'll try and upload some grabs when I'm done.

Tom

[Patrick]

Does the Canon Scoopic utilize a beam splitter or a mirror shutter? On the other hand, age may have made the internal light meter less reliable.

[vidwerk]

Does the Canon Scoopic utilize a beam splitter or a mirror shutter? On the other hand, age may have made the internal light meter less reliable.

The Scoopic utilizes a beam splitter.

[Patrick]

"The Scoopic utilizes a beam splitter."

Ah well in that case, I would expect there to be some difference in the readings compared to a seperate hand held meter. Ideally, the Canon's internal light meter would suggest a slightly larger aperture setting to compensate for the light loss.

[vidwerk]

"The Scoopic utilizes a beam splitter."

Ah well in that case, I would expect there to be some difference in the readings compared to a seperate hand held meter. Ideally, the Canon's internal light meter would suggest a slightly larger aperture setting to compensate for the light loss.

The Scoopics meter is not TTL as it is external from the lens.
Compensation is already accounted for in T-stops.

vidwerk.

[Film16]

I borrowed another meter just to be sure, and the internal meter was definitely out by a good stop and a bit. It was fairly straight forward to adjust, so if anyone wants to know this is what I did. I opened the top cover of the Electric Eye (EE) below,



this has 2 screws on each side + one in the accessory shoe, you will need to slide the battery cover and lift the EE cover upwards. Then I adjusted the variable resistor in the middle of the circuit (indicated by the green arrow in the image below), until I got a reading which matched both external meters. The original setting had variable resistor at 3 o'clock and it is now at 1 o'clock. That was it! Now I just got try it with some film, so fingers crossed.



Thank you to everyone for their help.

Tom

[audadvnc]

Thanks for that picture & info. Could you post that up on the Super8 Wiki?

[Film16]

Good idea, I will give that a go, but I don't really know my way around Super8Wiki. Can you PM some instructions to add a new page etc?
Cheers
Tom