Manual metering only in whole stops (R3a)

[galaxenspreside]

I guess it's not a big deal for B/W negative film but when shooting slide film:
When photographing manually with the Bessa R3a one can only read recomended shutterspeeds in whole stops. How do you do it when you shoot chromes?

Do you:
* Use aperture priority and use exposure lock and/or exposure adjustment?

* don't care about the problem, one stop accuracy is enough for you?

* use fractional stop positions of the lens to get higher accuracy by taking notice when the lit speed indicator changes?

* Use separate lightmeter?

* Other trick?

Since I also shoot large format I am used to being picky about exposure and development.

 

[danielnorton]

F-Stop

F-Stop

You could adjust your f stop in tiny increments, that might be easier and more accurate, I generally use an incident meter when shooting chromes though.

Daniel

 

[jlw]

I just did a little experiment with my R3a to see what happens.

Actually, if yours is adjusted the same as mine, I think you'll see that there's only a 1/2 stop "tolerance band" at which the meter shows correct exposure. To see this, start with the aperture ring at full aperture, then carefully stop it down until the adjacent shutter speed just stops blinking; now start with the aperture ring at minimum aperture, and carefully open up until the adjacent speed just stops blinking.

On my camera I found that there's only a 1/2-stop spread between these two positions -- not really too broad a range. (If the tolerances were much tighter, it would drive you crazy by blinking ALL the time. Remember some of the early LED-readout SLRs in which the LEDs would constantly cycle when you were photographing under fluorescent light, because of the fluorescent lamps' flicker?)

If you need more repeatibility in your manual exposure settings -- which I concede you might when using slide film -- you're going to have to standardize your procedure so that you always reach this "strike" position in the same way. For example, you might make it a practice to always start with the aperture ring at minimum aperture, then open it up until the blinking speed just goes out. This will assure that you're always metering to the same point within the meter's 1/2 stop tolerance band.

Then, if you need to compensate exposures precisely (e.g. for bracketing) you can do it by using the film speed dial, which will let you vary the "strike" position in 1/3 stop increments. That should allow accurate enough fine-tuning even for slide films.

No, this technique of noting the point when the speed just stops flashing isn't as convenient for manual metering as an old-fashioned center-point-nulling type of meter readout, or a modern segmented-bar-graph display, but it's the price you pay for an uncluttered finder readout that works for either auto or manual exposure.