Mamiya 6 metering recommendations

[hausen]

Hello all,

I have recently purchased Mamiya 6 with 75mm and am awaiting delivery of 50/150 lens early nexy week. Love everything about it so far except everything seems to be under exposed. Have shot 2 rolls of Fuji Acros 100 and 1 Ilford XP2 to try it out. Am getting back into film again after being on the dark side for 7 years or so.
Have looked extensively through web and owners are either 100% satisfied with the meter or like me think their body underexposes by about up to 1 stop. Have seen a number of recommedations, +1 ev permanantly, cover meter with your hand, wear a cap so the meter is covered from the sun or use an external spot meter. We are in winter here in NZ so there is not a lot of direct sun. Only issue I have with using external meter is portability but will if I have too. What do other owners think? Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Dave

 

[Pablito]

I had two Mamiya 6 bodies, did a big commission with this camera back in the mid 90s, sold one body around a year ago since I use the system much less now.

Best I can figure the meter is biased for transparency film and negative film will always seem underexposed. I think everyone has to find their own solution. You can, for instance, get close and meter the shadows, then step back and take the picture. I never use "A", only manual exposure.

I don't know what ISO you shot the XP2 at, but it's a film that needs a lot of exposure and is easy to underexpose it. I don't like it much but I have had beter luck rating it at 200 or even 100.

 

[Matt Sampson]

I have owned two 6MF cameras and have never had much of a problem with the meter. I think it is true that it can be easily thrown out by an area of particularly bright light in the image, but when this occurs, for example with a washed out sky, I simply tilt the camera down and exclude all or some of it depending on how much I think it is affecting things. Admittedly I have only ever shot neg with my M6MF's, HP5 in the past which I rated at 200ASA and currently XP2 which I use at 200ASA when there is enough light going to 400 when things get a bit iffy. I realise that this sort of slap dash approach to exposure will make people wince but it works for me with neg.

I would strongly recommend finding a way of getting the built in meter to work for you. I just sold a Fuji 6x9, with which I was using a hotshoe mounted Voigtlander meter, to get my second 6MF. Going back to built in metering is a joy, more time with my eye against the viewfinder and less time faffing about.

 

[Pablito]

I think it is true that it can be easily thrown out by an area of particularly bright light in the image, but when this occurs, for example with a washed out sky, I simply tilt the camera down and exclude all or some of it depending on how much I think it is affecting things. .

Yeah, that works.

 

[Richard Ross]

I routinely shade the meter with my left hand as it is very prone to underexposing if there's a bright sky. This can often make a one stop difference to the reading. Otherwise I find the meter pretty accurate.

 

[Calzone]

I'm new to MF and have owned a Mamiya 6MF for almost three months. I followed some of the suggestions posted on the forum and found the Mamiya 6 (M6) to be well suited to be utilized like a Leica M7 using AEL mode.

I keep my M6 permanantly set in AEL mode where the shutter is stepless like on my Nikon F3's. I tend to meter off my arm or back of my hand because my skin tone is the same as a grey card. The only time I messed up was when I shot indoors, and I was quick to be lazy. There was not enough light, and I suffered bad exposures due to operator error.

If you are fair skinned, white just happens to be two stops off a grey card so you can use the exposure compensation to read your skin tone as a grey card. You will find that you will have very consistent negs.

Overall the M6 is a very fast shooter. Also know with the 50/4.0 that the metering has a center weighting where the 75/3.5 just averages.

The only bad thing about my M6 is that it consumes a lot of film. For me, with the 50/4.0 it is the perfect MF street shooter and that can rapidly get very expensive. I just wish I had an unlimited supply of Tri-X 320 in 220.

Cal

 

[Calzone]

I routinely shade the meter with my left hand as it is very prone to underexposing if there's a bright sky. This can often make a one stop difference to the reading. Otherwise I find the meter pretty accurate.

+1.

I forgot to mention this. I believe ambient light enters the VF adding to the measured exposure, especially from above. Manual settings seem to be coarser. AEL is the way to go.

Cal

 

[hausen]

Thanks for all the responses. Have tried the cap and the hand trick over the weekend and processed film last night. A definite improvement. Very much anything with a light source in front of the camera causes problems. Note to self. Thanks again.

 

[brian steinberger]

I always just set the ISO to one stop lower than what I normally rate a film at. So for instance, I set the dial for FP4 to 50, or Tri-x to 200. I find the meter does tend to underexpose by 1 stop. I find that changing the ISO dial a better solution than permanently setting +1 on the compensation dial because I like to use the compensation dial for filters.

 

[Matus]

Well, no personal experience (yet, ,my Mamiya 6 should arrive in about 2 weeks), but especially on overcast day it may make sense to point the camera for a reference. I used to do it this way with my Digisix lightmeter which apart from incident metering offers also reflective metering within a cone of some 30 degrees.