Meterless

dave lackey

dave lackey

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Okay, I admit it...I have been spoiled (ruined?0\) by the many cameras I have used in the past 35 years or so, what with meters and all.:eek:

So, if I am going to buy a meterless camera...I need to work on shooting without carrying my second body around. Seems like a thread went around a few months back that had really good rules of thumb for varying situations. Anybody know where those charts are?

Would hate to add an expensive meter on top of the S3 ...
 
Spend a day walking around with a meter and no camera. Check certain areas for meter readings. Then test yourself without the meter and then check with meter. After a day, you'll be 90% or better close.
 
Hey, now that is an idea....only meter I have is a sekonic 358 for studio...just took it outside and measured against my camera meters and all checks out great.

So....now to experiment!
 
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dave lackey said:
Hey, now that is an idea....only meter I have is a sekonic 358 for studio...will that work?
Click to expand...

I learned on a sekonic 398 studio meter. My favorite meter. That's what I used to learn meterless on the street.

I kid you not, after a day or 2 testing yourself, you'll get so close to the actual reading.
 
sitemistic said:
If you print your own negatives, use the incident meter. It will make your life much simpler because the density of your negatives will be consistent. If you like adventure in printing, guess the exposure. :)
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Sitemistic,

Quick question...sunny conditions are easy enough.

With a 1.4 lens using available light, say in street shooting, what is the best way to use the 358...incident would mean holding the meter pointing back to the camera, which would be hard to do....could I not use reflective light or is that too general/variable?
 
I would add that you learn to think in EVs. In bright light I think in "stops from sunny 16" i.e. EV 15. In low light I think in "stops from normal room light" i.e. EV 5

-A
 
Stick with one favourite film,-on a regular basis,-and it's amazing how accurate your guesses become!-especially with neg. material.

Dave.
 
Anupam Basu said:
I would add that you learn to think in EVs. In bright light I think in "stops from sunny 16" i.e. EV 15. In low light I think in "stops from normal room light" i.e. EV 5

-A
Click to expand...

Now you're talking my language!
 
Being a devoted Nikon Rf and M2 user, I mostly shoot meterless. With my standard film (Tri X) it is easy. Over the years you learn to pick the light and settings. I do carry a meter, a small Gossen, but I rarely take it out of the pocket. Occasionally in extreme light (very high contrast or low, really low light). I do check my guesses sometimes as you wander about. "Hmm, wonder what the reading would be here?" and file away the information. The trick is to standardize on a film and process. It is not only a matter of getting the right exposure, your result is also affected by how you process your film.
The best way is to get at least one 100 ft spool of what you will be using the camera with. Load this and go forth and shoot it without a meter. Process quickly so you remember the settings you used and look at them.
Most likely you will find that you are getting it right 70-80% of time for outdoor shooting. Put that information in the best meter of them all, your brain. Look at the misses and figure out where you went wrong and reshoot, using the information from the misses. Once you have shot the 17-18 rolls, you will never (well, almost never) miss a shot due to exposures.
The S3 is a very good machine for this and if you got the Millenium lens with it, that is about as good as it gets!
Enjoy the ride and the speed with which you now can shoot. I find that a metered camera does slow me down as the eye is conditioned to look at small glowing diodes when they come on and that breaks the concentration. So, you will miss stuff occasionally, but obviously your S3 is a camera for your own pleasure so that is not critical.
 
Tom A is of course right and I tend to use the same method based on experience but an alternative is to attach a Voigtländer VC meeter to the S3 body... they are actually pretty good and you can out it in the flash hotshoe.... /jon

 
I'll chime in with a strong plug for using an incident meter as a stepping stone to learning to go meterless. Don't point the incident meter at the camera. Just ensure that the incident meter is held in such as way that the light is striking it from the same diretion the light is striking the subject. In practice, that just means to hold the incident meter backwards ... it's unintuitive at first until you get the hang of it. If the subject is in shade and you are in open light, shade the incident meter with your hand or body.

Compare the incident results to the meter tables you've downloaded. You'll start to see some patterns emerging.

And as others said above, stick with one film, preferably a wide latitude 400.
 
For what it's worth, I've been shooting meterless for a lot of years and seldom miss shots for exposure reasons. Plenty of other reasons, but not flubbed exposures.
 
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Tom A said:
I find that a metered camera does slow me down as the eye is conditioned to look at small glowing diodes when they come on and that breaks the concentration.
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Indeed...I found this when using an M6. The diodes were distracting and I found myself constantly adjusting to make the diodes match. I much prefer incident metering and guess-metering.
 
I hate chasing needles and diodes. It's distracting and inaccurate. The light in the scene isn't changing (in most cases) so you wouldn't change the exposure.

If the light is changing -- the sunlight going in and out of clouds, say -- there probably are only two exposures to keep track of: the behind-cloud exposre and the open sunlight exposure.
 
Dave Wilkinson said:
Stick with one favourite film,-on a regular basis,-and it's amazing how accurate your guesses become!-especially with neg. material.

Dave.
Click to expand...

Exactly. That's what I do. Kodak 400CN. Works for me.

Regards,

Bill
 
Kodak 400CN (and its Ilford equivalent) has great latitude -- good exposures from ISO 100 to 800, with 200 being the ideal target speed.
 
Let me second what Vince said about an incident meter being the way to go. I've been using an old sekonic 318 for years and been very happy with it. I just make sure the lighting hitting the head is close to the same as the subject and adjust a bit from there as needed. I'm trying to get brave enough to go meterless, but inside I'm not there, yet.

I will try to find some other links on PDF versions of guidelines.

Stop readying this silly stuff and do you PT! Or better yet, do you PT while you read!

B2 (;->
 
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