One shutterspeed, one aperture?

I

itf

itchy trigger finger
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Jan 8, 2007
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I was wandering around the streets today and started wondering why I constantly keep my hand on the shutter dial, switching it back and forth whenever the lighting changes. I've used a fixed shutter and aperture p&s and sometimes the photos are interesting because they weren't exposed 'correctly'. Sometimes my SLR and 28/16 hasn't managed with the previous night's 3200.

It can highlight the lighting of the scene; being on the water in Australia in summer, or a dark interior with a lone beam of light. Often I change my exposure deliberately to emphasize these things, but why not just leave the camera set so that it shows one scene to the next (as on the roll of film) as a direct comparison

So I made my bessa R and 25/4 into a disposable with a nice lens; set my shutter to 250 and aperture to 8 (with ISO 400, B&W negative). This will give me 3 stops over exposure in broad sun, correct exposure in open shade, and 1 or so stops under in heavier shade. I think this is roughly what a disposable uses, but I think maybe one stop faster would be better.

I used that setting the rest of my walk, and will finish the roll like that tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

I imagine everyone has done this before, but maybe not consciously. what have been the results?
 
sitemistic said:
Using the exposure latitude of film to cover small errors is fine. Using it instead of adjusting aperture and shutter leads to wildly unpredictable results. Grain and sharpness, along with tonality, are affected to various degrees by exposure differences in b&w film.

I think you would be better off using a p&s on "program." Otherwise you are reducing your Bessa to a Kodak box camera. :)
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Yeah, I know the results will be unpredictable at best and I don't intend on making it my standard practice by any means.

I'm just curious to see a day of different lighting by direct comparison, an experiment.

I'm quite happy keeping one hand on the shutter dial most of the time though.
 
I am old 2 stop lier to myself, but using sofware I can change it back to something very acceptable. And, 1 stop is notning bad to err the film because you can freely say: The camera exposure metering is bad, not me. The result can be very nice, indeed.
In case of dark room with beam of light it is very harsh decision to make. You can expect 5 stops up or down the scale, even more
 
sitemistic said:
This thread is kind of funny, really. :)

Here we are with a bunch of RF film guys talking about the analog equivalent of "shoot it in raw and fix it in photoshop." Both are compromises.
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Hey, why not? Anything PS can do, we can do better, right? :) Well maybe not, but I'm kind of entertained by the idea of a disposable with a good lens (well, maybe not to the leica glow crowd). It could be the new LOMO.

A day of light shot on the same settings; sounds like art! Can anyone recommend a gallery? ;)

The only compromise is in things we perceive as being a compromise.

Geez, maybe I should've put this in the philosophy forum. Ahahaha
 
But more seriously. My original post was just the thoughts I had today. My intention was not to use it as my general practice, by any means. Further, the idea wasn't about taking photos to be fixed up later, but to see what happened with the 'mistakes'.

I was just wondering if anyone has tried doing the same throughout different lighting situations (which, intended or not, people have) and was curious to know about their random successes.
 
itf said:
...whenever the lighting changes. I've used a fixed shutter and aperture p&s and sometimes the photos are interesting because they weren't exposed 'correctly'.
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If I'm taking photos over an hour or two the light is very unlikely to change. So I often set up the exposure and don't touch it again.

Although the light doesn't change I'll see some bright scenes and some dark scenes. In my photos the bright scenes come out bright, and the dark scenes come out dark. And that's correct.

As an aside I set up the exposure as I start by metering off the sidewalk outside my door. It's standard gray card reflectance which is handy.
 
I do something close to the original idea here - shooting hyperfocal and think only about composition.
 
I recently started shooting my M8 with the ISO at 360 as though I had a roll of 400 film in it and not changing it until I had a least 36 shots taken, and not shooting in aperture priority and the camera choosing the shutter speed. Now it is much more like my MP.
 
I do shoot with the MP, I got it after the M8 and love shooting it. I'm experimenting with just paying more attention to taking the shot, keeping it simple and not bothering about "chimping" to see what I got. I'm just doing this as a hobby so I just play games with my shooting experience and in this way I have got some of my best shots.
 
There's no reason to not try something like this. I'd be real interested to see the results. You can use film with tremendous latitude like Ilford XP2 and get away with a lot. I mean when you see HCBs negs/contacts they are really quite bad in exposure terms, and you wonder if he just went out and looked up at the sky and figured on a shutter speed and then just left it there and changed f8 to f5.6 if he needed to. 'Course he had a brilliant printer... ;)
 
sitemistic said:
I find that odd, actually. Buying a sophisticated digital camera and then crippling it to act like a basic film camera. Why not just shoot with the MP?
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There is freedom in limits. IMHO, constantly juggling too many variables leads to poor results. I think you are considering things in the wrong context.

For instance:
Why stick with one film, or one film/developer combination? There are a dizzying variety out there, why limit oneself?
Why stick with one lens for a day? Carry as many as possible, and use every focal length at every possible opportunity.
Etc.

I personally find that one film, developer, lens, cameras, etc. lets me pay attention and learn how to use what I have. I get better results than if I never do the same thing twice.
 
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