I dislike metering and avoid it at all costs. Lazy?

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Since my return to full-blown photography obsession a year ago, I've made an important discovery about myself. I hate metering. I have a perfectly nice meter (a Sekonic Twinmate) and carry it with me when I'm using a manual camera, but I only pull it out if I'm absolutely flummoxed by the light, or if I'm using Velvia. In general, I use Sunny-16 or AE 99% of the time. Outdoors, I'll happily use Sunny-16; indoors I usually reach for the Bessa or R-D1.

For a while I thought I wanted an M6. After borrowing a friend's M2 the other day, I realize that THAT'S what I ought to go for. The M6 metering would just distract me.

Am I a wimp? Sloppy? Lazy? Or are there others like me?
 
I like a meter in my camera, got an M6 for that reason.
If I use a camera without I dont use a handheld meter. Just use my brain.
 
there are those who would say you have acquired a skill through hard work and observation, rather than say you are lazy. Listen to those folks 🙂

I personally have been using the shutter-priority mode in my Canonet to meter indoor scenes, then remembering for future reference. There really aren't all that many options, but it's like dialing a phone number - I remember numbers better with a phone in my hand than without.
 
After awhile you can get pretty good at judging the light. Cameras with built in meters usually end up in the shop because of metering problems. With a seperate meter you at least still have the camera to use should the meter need repair.
 
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Like many here, I love shooting my M2 or M3. I can get along with Sunny 16, but usually I will take a few incident readings to confirm what I *think* I am perceiving and then shoot away. I do prefer having a meter in the camera if I am shooting Kodachrome 64 for the convenience, even though my Kodachrome usage is rather minimal during these long-wait-for-dwayne days; but I can function quite well on-board or hand-held. I love using a LED-free VF, especially in low-light. It makes a huge difference.
 
40oz said:
there are those who would say you have acquired a skill through hard work and observation, rather than say you are lazy. Listen to those folks 🙂

I personally have been using the shutter-priority mode in my Canonet to meter indoor scenes, then remembering for future reference. There really aren't all that many options, but it's like dialing a phone number - I remember numbers better with a phone in my hand than without.
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Yeah, that's the way I've been coming to see it! I'm definitely not that good at it yet--and since I usually shoot Tri-X in meterless cameras I have plenty of latitude--but I only recent realized that there aren't THAT many possibilities under normal circumstances. When you look at that ultimately exposure computer, it seems impossible to memorize...but of course you can just ignore two thirds of the thing for normal photography.

To be honest, even with a handheld meter, I usually screw up slide film. So if that's what I want to use, I load it into my R4A or SLR.
 
educated, not lazy

educated, not lazy

I recently attended a presentation that a friend did to a local photography group. After they gushed over his prints, they had many questions about how he determined exposure and all that.

He replied that he had no clue about exposure indexes and did not even own a meter. He said after shooting 31,000 rolls of Tri-X in several M-4s he just exposed by "what worked in the past".

The group was disappointed because they wanted some secret insider tip to make their exposures perfect like his. Sadly, most of the participants never realized that his ability to expose perfectly had nothing to do with the six books of his photos that had been published.
 
After getting my first M3, I realized that not caring about the red arrows (or red spot) in the VF gives me more freedom to concentrate on focusing and composition. I just from time to time take a general reading with my little digisix and adjust how I feel like. So far hit rate is quite ok - almost as good as with my M6/MP. Built in metering is a 'nice to have' - but do you really need it, can't you live with out it? I thought so initially but the M3 taught me differently😉.
 
There are just a few exposure settings to memorize. Stick to your most commonly used film speed and adjust from there. Here are some situations that I've committed to memory for HP5+:

1/500 @ f16 obvious
1/500 @ f11 bright hazy
1/500 @ f8 bright overcast
1/500 @ f5.6 open shade

1/60 @ f4 office and institutional lighting (bright fluorescents)
1/60 @ f4 north window light on sunny day

1/30 @ f2.8 bight home interior (kitchen) artificial light
1/30 @ f2 typical home interior, artificial light
1/30 @ f2 stage lighting at my local coffee house

Good enough for neg film with its latitude.
I'm still working on filling in the gaps.
 
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mabelsound said:
.....The M6 metering would just distract me.....
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It certainly distracts me, so I prefer the M2 unless I'm expecting erratic lighting conditions. I take an occasional reading with a handheld to confirm whether my guesswork is in the ballpark. For a built-in meter, it's less distracting to have the readout in a window in the top plate, like the Rollei 35.
 
mabelsound said:
Since my return to full-blown photography obsession a year ago, I've made an important discovery about myself. I hate metering. I have a perfectly nice meter (a Sekonic Twinmate) and carry it with me when I'm using a manual camera, but I only pull it out if I'm absolutely flummoxed by the light, or if I'm using Velvia. In general, I use Sunny-16 or AE 99% of the time. Outdoors, I'll happily use Sunny-16; indoors I usually reach for the Bessa or R-D1.

For a while I thought I wanted an M6. After borrowing a friend's M2 the other day, I realize that THAT'S what I ought to go for. The M6 metering would just distract me.

Am I a wimp? Sloppy? Lazy? Or are there others like me?
Click to expand...

The L-208 (Twinmate) is not a particularly good meter and is a pain to use. If you know how to use a meter, but hate the bother of interpreting the readings (and setting it up like that), try switching to a Gossen Digipro F. It's a quantum leap easier to use than that Twinmate. If you don't need flash metering capability, there is also the Sixtomat digital. If you want to stick with Sekonic, their comparable meters are the L-308S and the L-358.
 
Good, another meter-less camera user.

Lazy? no, Sloppy, maybe, but if all good photographs are exposed precisely, it'd be more boring than watching the media lately 😉

My moment of revelation came when I realized that Sunny-16 is not a memorized numbers, it's a flexible offset-based system that allows us to estimate to some degree of accuracy, the lights required to record the subject.

That means if you use it correctly, it won't be fooled by any other source of lights on the scene.

I use Sunny-16 even with slide films and if the results are not good, it's not often that it's because of the exposure. IMO, slide films tend to be discussed as less sensitive they actually are.
 
FrankS said:
There are just a few exposure settings to memorize. Stick to your most commonly used film speed and adjust from there. Here are some situations that I've committed to memory for HP5+:

1/500 @ f16 obvious
1/500 @ f11 bright hazy
1/500 @ f8 bright overcast
1/500 @ f5.6 open shade

1/60 @ f4 office and institutional lighting (bright fluorescents)
1/60 @ f4 north window light on sunny day

1/30 @ f2.8 bight home interior (kitchen) artificial light
1/30 @ f2 typical home interior, artificial light
1/30 @ f2 stage lighting at my local coffee house

Good enough for neg film with its latitude.
I'm still working on filling in the gaps.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I do. I don't have a meter for my M2 so I've memorized the correct exposure for certain lighting situations. Using B&W or color negatives, this works fine for me.
 
Lazy? Hardly! I'd say you're doing it the hard way, so good for you.

I try to guesstimate when I can, or have to, but a through the lens meter is to me the best way to be sure of exposure (within the limits of the meter, of course -- backlighting, bright or dark backgrounds, etc.), since an incident reading often isn't practical.
 
Sunny 16 works very good for me . That and zone- or hyperfocal focussing, very liberating shooting..., 100% fun.
 
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