Should I Need A Compact Meter On The Camera Shoe Mount ?

Hi Pickett,

Unlike Ansel Adams my subjects are not still standing, and as you or me metioned it previously circumstances dictate very much how much time can you dedicate to metering light.

But along the years I have made the mistake to mis-educate my exposure skills by adopting the quickest method as the single one for all opportunities, untill one day, one of the last month I picked up the Weston manual, which although I agree with you, is not specially targeted for the street photographer, and said myself I have made a long way backwards.

Btw, my incident metering betrayed me loudly, a short while ago when using it outdoors with Tmax 100 film. The dark tones went into black undetailed patches. The Weston manual: the incident metering is specially suitable for color and reversal film.

So I cannot provide elaborated technical answers today for myself, as I am the one who process and exposes and selects his meters. But I think it is time for me to start again. To start again not like the unexperienced young folk I was twenty years ago, but with the awarenes of the issues that you Pickett has mentioned and those I know from my own local experience.

The target for me is clear: to start re-educating myself again (practicing and testing) in the search of better results vis a vis my range of subjects, which include both still and mooving. Certainly I am aware that different situations will require different methods, and different instruments, instead of the single instant office soup for all.

I need to upgrade.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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ruben said:
Dear Mr Gumby,

On behalf of RFF, and to avoid myself having to deal with your personalized posts against me since long ago, after my last post I have you in my ignore list.
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Thank you. I appreciate it. That is likely in our mutual best-interest.

I'm just trying to help you, but if I can't understand your question/concern and if yuo won't let go of the past...

p.s. No need for the faux-politeness. I've told you before, my name is not "Gumby" or "Mr. Gumby"... it is ED.
 
Pickett Wilson said:
And then I learned the dirty little secret that Adam's prints were wonderful because he was a great printer, not because of any magical zone system. The tonal range in his final prints rarely looked anything like the tonal range of his negatives. A straight print of "Moonrise," in fact, shows the moon against an almost white sky, for example.
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Adams claimed that the Zone system helped make negatives that were 'easier" to print... but I agree that the real magic was his Master Printer(s). Several decades ago I saw an interesting exhibit at the FoP where Adams photos printed over the years were shown side-by-side. The interpretation was quite immense: older ones were often printed very dark; emphasis via burning/dodging changed slightly in others, etc. The straight-prints were all rather bland looking.
 
FrankS said:
.....Ruben, I think you would like to use an Olympus OM4 slr with its multi-spot reading meter.
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Auch !

Lately, after a long process, I made my mind to start selling some stuff - a thing I almost never did - but at a speedy timing I am gathering again reasons why not to sell this or that.

You are certainly right about this camera, making the process of TTL range exposure very fast, and even faster that doing it with my Sekonic spot meter.

Thanks Frank for the remainder,
Ruben
 
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FrankS said:
... with its multi-spot reading meter.
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The multi-spot and matrix metering is a modern marvel that automatically does the scene evaluation that once was possible only with a spot meter. It ensures that "point-and-click" photography is more successful in terms of best possible exposure for the conditions... without burdening the photographer with having to think about non-average lighting conditions. Quite an improvement over in-camera averaging meters, and even slightly better than the in-camera 60/40 weighted meters.
 
Gumby said:
The multi-spot and matrix metering is a modern marvel that automatically does the scene evaluation that once was possible only with a spot meter. It ensures that "point-and-click" photography is more successful in terms of best possible exposure for the conditions... without burdening the photographer with having to think about non-average lighting conditions. Quite an improvement over in-camera averaging meters, and even slightly better than the in-camera 60/40 weighted meters.
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I bought a Nikon F100 a little while ago and I agree, matrix metering almost always does a better job of figuring out exposure than I do. That's probably due to a lack of skill and knowledge on my part and the cleverness of the folks who designed the camera.

If you want an easy-to-use and hard-to-fool metering system, good modern SLRs are an option. I think there's an F100 in the classifieds now for $260, including a 50mm f/1.8 lens.
 
Ruben, since you are an OM4 user, what metering methods do you use in what situations with your Zuikos ?

The whole subject is so situation, scene, film and process dependent, maybe you can extrapolate from your OM4 habits what you need ?

For example, with my OM4 I use multi-spot when doing very controlled landscapes only, possibly with slide film. > 90% of all cases I use center-weighted average, pointing the meter on a representative scene segment first. Sometimes but rarely I use high/low compensation.

I do similarly with my RFs. With CV II meter, often. When I do RF landscapes, I more carefully measure, often thinking about zones.

Cheers,

Roland.
 
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Hi Roland,

My OM slr stuff is resting more or less since I became a member of RFF:).

Latter I entered the street stuff, which I will continue and which like Pickett said before, you do not have many options for metering, at least you cannot first use a spot meter and then adjust and shoot.

Right now I am trying to develope a middle ground field between street shooting and scenics with medium format cameras. I mean going to great sites of Old Jerusalem and shoot pictures in which both the background and the humans will tell something.

In these type of situations it seems to me I will be able to dedicate time for exposure and in any case if I do not, the cost of film and processing will put enough fire in my butt to do a good technical job.

So this is how I started to re-think about exposure in general, this is how I went back to considering my spot meter and my Westons. As a by-product of all these at some moment I started this thread.

As for the OM metering I guess I behaved like you, most of the chances with some less success. Unlike you I have never had a kind of selective judgment between the 90% and 10%. No such an instinct. This is to be developed.

I believe that if I start to train myself in zone thinking, which is very easy for the Weston owner, like with anything else it will start extremely slow but with time it will become second nature and done instinctively fast.

I must say to my defense that street shooting with a Kiev or any meterless camera, obliges you to constantly preset exposure, and I do it constantly, but I never did it using the zone thinking. I did it just averaging.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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