Why meterless cameras are important to photography

[cboy]

When I began photography many moons ago I started with film slr and those meters sucked and couldn't be relied upon. So it was out of necessity to get an external meter and get familiar with the exposure times throughout the day. Or use the film exposure guide from the film box and work from there

Now it's even more easy and just put the camera to highlighted weighted metering and your done.

 

[CMur12]

When I began photography many moons ago I started with film slr and those meters sucked and couldn't be relied upon. So it was out of necessity to get an external meter and get familiar with the exposure times throughout the day. Or use the film exposure guide from the film box and work from there

Now it's even more easy and just put the camera to highlighted weighted metering and your done.

I'm surprised to see a couple of references in this thread to film SLR meters being unreliable. I have had a number of film SLRs and compact fixed-lens RFs, whose meters had the older CdS cells and the later silicon blue cells. Both types in all my older film cameras, of varied brands, worked very reliably for me.

I used these cameras to shoot slides, and I was able to get precisely exposed slides from every camera.

I thought at one time that I needed a spot meter to get accurate exposures, but I had learned to use the normal center-weighted averaging meters effectively and I never needed the external meter.

I would like to know what the specific problems were with the internal meters of film SLRs.

- Murray