Leica LTM How do you meter a shot?

Leica M39 screw mount bodies/lenses

How do you meter a shot?

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cosmonaut

cosmonaut

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Since the IIIa is the first camera I have ever owned with out a meter I was curious how you meter your shots?
 
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I always use a handheld light meter. I purchased a Gossen Luna Pro F, which I find very accurate, and fairly easy to use. But it's not very compact-- it's nearly as big as a Barnack Leica. I have since acquired a Gossen Pilot, which is much more compact.
 
80% of the time I use Sunny 12 (I live in the UK) The rest of the time I use a Panasonic FX01 as a meter.

I set it to the same ISO as the film in my M2/IIIc/IID. I can set it to "spot", and I can adjust the aperture by zooming. It proves to be surprisingly accurate. A simple half press on the shutter release displays the f-stop and aperture, which I transfer to the body in use. I tend to use it once when I first set out, to help get my eye in, or if I am confronted by a tricky lighting situation.

It's smaller than most meters, and it takes pictures - beat that!

Regards,

Bill
 
sunny f16 for slide film, I close one eye for negative film so it’s a stop overexposed (to preserve the shadow detail)
 
I have a Leningrad 6 hand held that I use with my Fed or when carrying my Zorki. I prefer the Zorki 2c with 50 elmar most of the time because it's compact & fits right in the pocket when the lens is collapsed. I wear the light meter around my neck. It has a nice flip open leather case.
 
I've yet to use a meter with my barnack, but I'm thinking about getting a little Pr-1, or something of equivalent size. I've never really had too much trouble sunny 16-ing outside, but indoors im hopeless at guessing exposures.
 
Do you shoot a lot of low light?

Do you shoot a lot of low light?

1) Selenium cell meters (usually older like the Gossen Pilots) are great if the cell is good. The pilots are usually good if the clamshell case has been close these many years. Selenium cell meters are usually off if they've been exposed to light for 20-30 years plus. That's why you see little doors on the early selenium meters on cameras built in the 50's, 60s'. Also Pilots are small by comparison to Westons and Luna Gossens.
2) CDS require batteries. Some use discontued batteries. I have two Gossens that use regular 9V... One is the Luna Pro f. But its pretty big. As big as a small rangefinder.
3) SBC cells are more sensitive in low light. That's why I asked. I am currently looking for a Super Pilot with the SBC cell.... Silicon Blue Cell or Chip. It's relatively small. The Gossen Super Pilot was made with a CDS cell for quite a while, but later versions of the Super Pilot were SBC.
4) Ive used digital, like the Minolta III, and the Sekonic L-328, but have had bad luck with the solid state circuit boards, making repairs in the $100 to $150 range, which I do not do.

Once I get a Super Pilot SBC, I think I will have a meter for all my shooting.

I most often do reflective metering. My photography is not advanced or of a style that requires more sophisticated metering, like flash metering. Incident metering for studio or portrait work is not required for me, but most of the meters have attachments or are built to meter incident and or spot.
 
With cameras that do not have meters: Sunny 16 & when in doubt open up one f/stop. When I definitely want the shot & have time for second shot open up one f/stop. Even with a metered camera I sometimes open up an f/stop if the majority of the subject that I am interested in is in a shadow or darker than the rest of the image. (Also, on some of the older cameras that used mercury batteries and are being replaced with alkaline the readings may be a half to a full stop off.)
 
BillP said:
80% of the time I use Sunny 12 (I live in the UK) The rest of the time I use a Panasonic FX01 as a meter.

I set it to the same ISO as the film in my M2/IIIc/IID. I can set it to "spot", and I can adjust the aperture by zooming. It proves to be surprisingly accurate. A simple half press on the shutter release displays the f-stop and aperture, which I transfer to the body in use. I tend to use it once when I first set out, to help get my eye in, or if I am confronted by a tricky lighting situation.

It's smaller than most meters, and it takes pictures - beat that!

Regards,

Bill
Click to expand...
I use the same approach for my Leicas with no meters, but my meter is a Panasonic
DMC-FX12 (it's got a Leica Lens:)) Many other small and inexpensive digital cameras would serve the same purpose. Keep in mind that the effective exposure gets halved at each standard f stop progression so it's easy to pick the aperture or shutter speed you prefer from one reading on the digital camera.
 
cosmonaut said:
Since the IIIa is the first camera I have ever owned with out a meter I was curious how you meter your shots?
Click to expand...

Most cameras have some kind of meter these days. Those photographers whose cameras don't, or who choose not to use them, use handheld meters. These can be averaging meters, center-weighted averaging meters, spot meters, matrix meters incident meters or any of several other kinds. Most common in cameras are center-weighted averaging meters (that measure the average value of the reflected light, giving more "weight" to the reading from the center of the composition). The most common handheld meters combine incident metering and averaging meters. One thing they all have in common is that they will all give you an exposure recommendation based on a shade of gray called "18% gray." That is to say that they assume that anything you point the camera at is supposed to be this shade of gray (about the value of slightly tanned caucasian human skin). If it isn't, they will recommend an exposure that will make it so.

For example, for the sake of simplicity, let's take a hypothetical situation in which you are shooting two different nudes, identical blonde twins, each of which has a different colored backdrop behind her. It's simple because the models are about the same color all over. One nude is standing in front of a white backdrop. The other is standing in front of a black backdrop.

So let's start with the nude with the white backdrop. You take the photo, develop the film and make prints. You will find that you have a photo with a gray background and the model is far too dark. Your film has been underexposed and you can't figure out why. You did what the camera said to do and it still came out too dark. What happened?

Well, when you turn on your camera's light meter what the meter sees is the whole composition, not just the model. It's just a machine that measures light. It can't recognize objects or what it is looking at. It doesn't differentiate between model and background, but what it does do --immediately -- is decide that the composition as a whole does NOT average out to 18% gray. Even though Caucasian human skin is roughly the right shade, it also takes the background into account. It will recommend an exposure setting that will make the background and subject darker, in order that the composition as a whole will average out to that 18% gray it wants. This results in underexposure.

Now let's photograph the model with the black background. Again, you aim the camera, adjust the exposure as the meter tells you to do, and take the photo. You develop the film and make prints. You are perplexed when you find that the background is still gray, but this time the model looks snow-white. Your film was badly overexposed. Again you are left scratching your head, and now you're wondering if the camera is broken.

The camera and the meter are both working fine. What happened is that the meter looked at your composition and found that, once again, it didn't average out to 18% gray. This time it was too dark (because of the black background), so it recommended an exposure that would make it average out to the "right" shade of gray. It overexposed your film, to make the composition lighter.

As you have probably figured out by now, the camera will only give you an exposure recommendation that is absolutely correct when the composition really is 18% gray. Unfortunately, in real life, this doesn't happen very often. What you have to do is recognize that this is happening and take it into account. You have to make adjustments for it. This is the method I use for landscapes, and I bracket. As you gain experience you will find that you can do this by eye, but fortunately for the beginners, there are three relatively easy ways to get around this: spot metering, incident metering, and gray cards.

In spot metering the meter only looks at one small area of the composition. There are a few ways to use this, but in the easiest, all you have to do is find an area in the composition that is close to 18% gray and meter the light on that. In our hypothetical nude photography scenario, the model's skin is pretty close to 18% gray, so this won't be a problem (just find a medium shaded part). What do you do if there is nothing in the composition that is the right shade of gray though? What if your model is an albino? What if she's black? Well, that leads us to the next easy method, grey cards.

If you are using a gray card, you put something that's the right shade of gray into the composition, albeit temporarily. A gray card is simply a piece of pasteboard that is colored 18% gray. They're one of the few things in photography that are cheap. A gray card gives you something that you can hold in front of the camera that actually is the right shade of gray. You set your camera on manual, hold up the gray card, set your exposure, then set the card aside, focus, and shoot, relatively confident that you will get a good exposure. In a pinch, if you are light skinned, you can use the palm of your hand as a gray card. It works. Even so, it helps to bracket.

Well, there are two more ways of getting the right exposure, one easy and one a bit more difficult: the easy one is to use a handheld incident meter. Incident meters are very different from any other kind of meter. All other forms of meter work by measuring the light that bounces off of the model. Instead of measuring the light reflected from the model toward the camera, these measure the light that is falling on the model directly. Instead of standing by the camera and metering the model, you stand by the model and point the meter at the light. This way there is no possibility of the meter getting confused by different colored backgrounds -- because it isn't even "looking" at your composition. These work very well for studio photography, but are not very good for outdoor use. Because of clouds and trees and shadows and stuff, the light where you are standing is often very different from the light on your subject and it just isn't practical to run over to a mountain, meter the light, and then run back to your camera. Heck, by the time you did that the light would have changed anyway. It works very well for indoor photography though, and I use incident metering on nudes a lot.

There is one more way of doing this, and it is called The Zone System; its a good bit more complicated than the simpler forms of metering though. In The Zone System, you use a spot meter to take several readings (the brightest highlight and darkest shadow where you want to show detail) and you work out an exposure that will give you what you want over the entire value scale, pushing or pulling your exposures in order to reduce or increase contrast if necessary. This is the system I use most times, if I have time for it, but it isn't the quickest method in the world. If you want to see how it works I suggest you look for it on google. I really don't want to try to explain it here, because I have already written about as much as I ever want to in a single forum reply just to get to this point.

Oh, and to do all this, I have my in-camera meters, a Gossen Luna Pro Digital F, a Pentax Spotmeter and an old Wesson-style GE selenium cell meter.
 
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gjlynx said:
I use the same approach for my Leicas with no meters, but my meter is a Panasonic
DMC-FX12 (it's got a Leica Lens:)) Many other small and inexpensive digital cameras would serve the same purpose. Keep in mind that the effective exposure gets halved at each standard f stop progression so it's easy to pick the aperture or shutter speed you prefer from one reading on the digital camera.
Click to expand...

Hoorah!

Exactly. Glad to see that I'm not the only one.:D

Regards,

Bill
 
It's funny you should mention this. I recently went to a non metered M3, my first Leica, and while I have been getting good results from hand held metering, it isn't as accurate as my Nikon SLR in camera merering. Between hand metering, and manually focusing the lens, I have missed a fair amount of shots. In a cafe I am reluctant to shoot because of the time required to get it all right. W/ my G1 I can pick the camera up to my eye, take the shot, and put it back on my lap in a second or two. Unfortunately, the G1 meter isn't as accurate as the Nikon either. I just got 3 rolls of B&W 4x6 proofs back from the lab, 2 w/ the G1 and 1 w/ the Nikon, and ALL the Nikons were properly exposed. The G1 tends to over expose in some situations, and under in others so it's hard to compensate.

To get a grasp of just how tricky this can be, take a TTL metered camera to a coffee shop and see how the meter will give many different readings in what is supposedely the same llight. Focusing on the black gal wearing white, you sure better spot meter off her face. Then point the camera at a couple a few tables away and watch the meter change as you focus on one, then the other significent other, then again when you focus past them to the back table. Thank goodness B&W film has a huge exposure latitude, but I am tiring of fixing ithis all up in PS. It is so nice to look at the well exposed pics right out of the camera.

So I don't know what I will do. On the one hand the RF cameras are smaller, lighter, and quieter so I should be able to get better candids but it isn't working out that way. Maybe I will go to a smaller and quieter N80 and a fixed 85 1.8 and see how that works. I prefer my 8008s and 35 70 2.8 zoom, but it is so heavy that I don't want to carry it a lot of the time. And to think that I used to use a brick like F4s w/ an 80 200 2.8 zoom as a walk around kit (outdoors, not in a cafe)! Must have been out of my mind.
 
I determine exposure with my brain. Sometimes it considers input from an in camera reflective reading, sometimes from a hand held incident meter, sometimes by looking at the sun to see how much is falling on my subject.

But it is always a decision I make.
 
Bob Michaels said:
I determine exposure with my brain. Sometimes it considers input from an in camera reflective reading, sometimes from a hand held incident meter, sometimes by looking at the sun to see how much is falling on my subject.

But it is always a decision I make.
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with or without sunglasses?
 
Sunny 11 works just fine here in the Northern US. Indoors, with ASA400 film, use 1/60th at f2.8 for commericial lighting (i.e. Mc Donalds) or 1/30 at f2-2.8 for normal indoor residential lighting.

As it happens, I spent some time in Italy this fall, and there, as confirmed by my recently calibrated meter and to my astonishment, sunny-16 was in effect.

I use a Weston meter (Master IV or V), meter off the back of my hand (I'm a caucasian), and add one additional stop of exposure. People of African descent or other dark skinned folks just meter your hand, you'll be on the money.

In my experience, it is only deep shade outdoors, or severe contra-jour shots, that really need measurement with a meter. With negative films, B&W or color, an informed guess witll be well within the exposure latitude of any film I've used.
 
I always work with a handheld meters, or without a meter. Just acquired the Hexar RF, my first rangefinder with a build-in meter, which still must run its first test roll.

And here is my small collection of handhelds:

lightmeters.JPG
 
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When shooting 35mm handheld:
By eye in difficult lighting at night.
By eye in the day, quickly checked against the camera meter (Bessa T)

When shooting 4x5:
Incident when the lighting is "easy"
Spot meter when it's not
 
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