diff --git a/nbconvert/filters/strings.py b/nbconvert/filters/strings.py
index 2673d661..9ae82a13 100755
--- a/nbconvert/filters/strings.py
+++ b/nbconvert/filters/strings.py
@@ -19,8 +19,8 @@ except ImportError:
     from urllib2 import quote  # Py 2
 
 # defusedxml does safe(r) parsing of untrusted XML data
-from defusedxml import cElementTree as ElementTree
-from xml.etree.cElementTree import Element
+from defusedxml import ElementTree
+from xml.etree.ElementTree import Element
 
 from ipython_genutils import py3compat
 
diff --git a/nbconvert/preprocessors/svg2pdf.py b/nbconvert/preprocessors/svg2pdf.py
index aff14d9f..b689b1bc 100644
--- a/nbconvert/preprocessors/svg2pdf.py
+++ b/nbconvert/preprocessors/svg2pdf.py
@@ -105,6 +105,6 @@ class SVG2PDFPreprocessor(ConvertFiguresPreprocessor):
             if os.path.isfile(output_filename):
                 with open(output_filename, 'rb') as f:
                     # PDF is a nb supported binary, data type, so base64 encode.
-                    return base64.encodestring(f.read())
+                    return base64.encodebytes(f.read())
             else:
                 raise TypeError("Inkscape svg to pdf conversion failed")