Metered or unmetered?

[Godfrey]

If you don't want to lose the ability to see exposure, with every photo you make using an automatic, digital camera, review the picture and read the exposure settings to yourself out loud. The more you do thst, the more that typical settings will be fixed in your memory. 😉

G

 

[Pioneer]

If you use a meterless camera long and often enough, and I mean often, you will learn to read the light. I used a Nikon F 40 years ago with an external meter and after a few months of shooting daily I could guess the exposure erring on half a stop. When I “upgraded” to fancy matrix metering I forgot how to do it, the same way I have forgotten how to spell when the computer did it for me. I shot mostly TMX at the time. C41 films are even more forgiving. My primary camera these 10 years is a Rolleiflex 3.5F with a small Sekonic 308 incident meter in my back pocket.

I have heard this claimed a number of times on-line. I have not reason to doubt that it is probably true but I have never actually put it to the test for myself. Even my K1000 has a meter and even when I am shooting my Contax II it is rare for me to go our without at least carrying a handheld meter. I keep thinking about putting this to the test but this means I will have to shoot film for several weeks without having a meter around. While I have often carried meterless cameras I can't remember going for long periods of time without even a handheld meter available.

 

[Rayt]

I have heard this claimed a number of times on-line. I have not reason to doubt that it is probably true but I have never actually put it to the test for myself. Even my K1000 has a meter and even when I am shooting my Contax II it is rare for me to go our without at least carrying a handheld meter. I keep thinking about putting this to the test but this means I will have to shoot film for several weeks without having a meter around. While I have often carried meterless cameras I can't remember going for long periods of time without even a handheld meter available.

After a while it becomes natural. I did carry a meter but didn’t use it for every shot. It’s more difficult in low light than say 3 or 4 stops from sunny 16.

 

[Coldkennels]

I keep thinking about putting this to the test but this means I will have to shoot film for several weeks without having a meter around. While I have often carried meterless cameras I can't remember going for long periods of time without even a handheld meter available.

Use your handheld meter to take a baseline reading. Then, when the light seems to change, guess what the reading will be before you even take the meter out of your pocket.

Pretty soon you get good at seeing the changes - plus or minus a stop here, deep shadow is maybe three stops below your baseline, etc. - and you'll need to look at your meter less and less.

I'm genuinely far more consistent working this way than I am trusting my M240's built-in meter in any setting - it's too easily fooled by one thing or another.

 

[The lives of others]

Well, if all these comments are not valuable input, I don’t know what is.
Thanks to anyone who took the time to reply with their view(s). Appreciated.

 

[Ccoppola82]

I like using my M2 more than my M6 most of the time. Like every other member here, once I started using it often I just knew the right exposure. Or close enough to it. One thing I would do to practice was when I would use my digital M I would guess the exposure before bringing the camera to my eye. After about 2 days I was within half a stop during daylight. Indoor can be tricky but with the way artificial light works, in general I just throw it at wide open and 1/60 and let the highlights and shadows do what they are gonna do. That’s if I don’t have a way to meter. You can also use a phone app for metering in a pinch.

Also, for roll film shot in various contrast ranges I would recommend a good 2 bath developer like Barry Thorntons. It evens out the development very well across multiple lighting scenarios. I think especially as a beginner that might help you get good results.

Good luck!

 

[Coldkennels]

Indoor can be tricky but with the way artificial light works, in general I just throw it at wide open and 1/60 and let the highlights and shadows do what they are gonna do.

That's another good point - certain scenarios have fixed light values, and remembering those will take you a long way.

For instance, on the London Underground, older trains are consistently 1/30 and f/2 at 400ISO. Newer ones (the District Line and Circle Line trains that came in in the mid-2010s) are a stop brighter, if I remember right. (Station platforms vary wildly, unfortunately.)

Rainy streets at night work well at 1/30 and f/2 at 400ISO, too. That'll generally capture reflections in puddles well without overexposing anything. Meanwhile, if you just blindly trust a meter in that sort of scenario, you'll usually end up massively overexposing the image and ruining "the mood".

 

[Rob-F]

Using a camera that has no meter is a perfectly valid thing to do! After all, even a $100,000 Panavision movie camera (you can't actually buy them) has no meter. Estimating the exposure is also a valid thing to learn to do. Adding a separate light meter for situations that are unfamiliar or tricky can be a good idea. You can use a meter and challenge yourself by first estimating the exposure, then comparing your estimate to the meter reading. An incident light meter is good for this purpose; that's what the Hollywood cinematographers mainly use. When you feel confident in your estimate, you can skip the meter reading; when you need the meter, use it. You can even try carrying a meter in order to practice estimating exposures, and then taking a reading, even when you are not actually photographing! Practice makes perfect. You can get a metering app for your cell phone and not have to carry a separate meter. Standardizing on just one film will simplify things for a while. Tri-X is good for that.

 

[neal3k]

Indoor can be tricky but with the way artificial light works, in general I just throw it at wide open and 1/60 and let the highlights and shadows do what they are gonna do. That’s if I don’t have a way to meter.

It's really a great way to go. I've been using that method for two or three years now and am very happy with it. I also use it at night.

 

[muser53]

Just a little story I think you all will enjoy.
Years ago (mid '70s I had the pleasure and privilege to study with Lotte Jacobi (look her up if you don't know) who never metered her photographs.
She repeated said that photography was an art form that depended on the rendering of light and her work illustrates that. That said her printer used
to tell me her negatives were some of the most difficult he ever had to work with. Lots of over and under exposures at the extremes.

 

[Pioneer]

...Indoor can be tricky but with the way artificial light works, in general I just throw it at wide open and 1/60 and let the highlights and shadows do what they are gonna do. That’s if I don’t have a way to meter...

I have to make a trip to the grocery store tomorrow so I may have to carry my Contax II and Zeiss-Opton Sonnar 50 and give this a try with some TMX100.