Odd/Old shutter speeds and apertures

[David Hughes]

Hi,

The answer is that there's thousands of old Weston meters out there and they are easily checked and rebalanced; according to the bloke who did my ones. And they have all the shutter speeds and apertures marked on them if you get an early one.

Also they are dirt cheap and often come with the leather case and lanyard and instructions.

Regards, David

 

[Roger Hicks]

In addition to some more conventional shutter speeds, my Leica IIIf has some closely spaced (slower) shutter speeds:
1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/10, 1/15, 1/20, 1/30, 1/40...

Because they could, I think. Also to fill in blank gaps that might have looked a bit embarrassing on the (non-linear) fast speed dial.

Also, there has always been a school of photographers who are dazzled by having as many little numbers as possible on all the controls. And indeed by having more controls: there are STILL dials, buttons and ports I've never used on both my D70 and Df. With Leicas, on the other hand, most of the controls were pretty much intuitive and in the right places until the M typ 240. Which is why they brought out the typ 262...

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

None of it is difficult with negative film in any case. Decide what exposure you want, then choose the nearest numbers on the aperture and shutter speed dials, erring if necessary on the side of overexposure. Unless you're using fine grain film and a tripod you'll normally lose more sharpness to camera shake than to overexposure.

Cheers,

R.