What happened here?

bmattock said:
Yeah, that's gotta work.
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It can work because of the exposure latitude of neg film. Say your guess is 3 stops under. Adding two stops will make it one stop under. It will be usable. Say your guess is 3 stops over. Adding two will make it 5 stops over. The result will still be usable. So adding stops will work because overexposure is not as detrimental as underexposure.

bmattock said:
Tell me how many carpenters measure boards without a measuring device.
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Tell me how many carpentry projects have a latitude of 4 stops! (That's a factor of 16, BTW.)

bmattock said:
And tools are available. So why not use them?

I never understand this. Silly people.
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I assume you've never gone fishing, or gone hunting, or drew a picture, or painted a painting...
 
In Venice the electronic functions of my Nikon FG closed down. I only had 1/90. No lightmeter no photos for me it was then. I wish I had known about the sunny 16 or guesstimation as I was using BW films then. It's good to keep in touch with the basics. Swordsmith used this mixture of experience and intuition for centuries. It's good to know how to use your high precision camera and lens when the cheap little battery in your Lightmeter stops working. A lightmeter can also be a good tool for learning "guesstimation".
 
bmattock said:
With 'reasonable accuracy'. Which is not necessarily to say 'acceptable', eh?

Of course they 'work'. And they were abandoned in favor of meters as soon as meters became accurate, small, and affordable. Exposure tables were fine for the happy snapper, which is why they were printed on boxes of film. Meters were used by those who wanted precise control.

And with meters still available everywhere, cheap, and accurate, it seems odd that anyone would intentionally eschew their use in favor of 'reasonable accuracy'. Especially aficionados who constantly seek the very best of everything in their quest for photographic perfection.
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Dear Bill,

You ae over-reacting yet again, and bending the facts to suit your apparently quasi-religious beliefs on this topic. I'm not talking about the kind of highly abbreviated exposure guides which appeared inside film boxes, but rather, the staggeringly complicated ones which took account of numerous variables (latitude, month, time of day, weather, shade, indoor/outdoor, canyons, how near the window...) and which were, if you had the time to use them, very accurate. Of course meters are better, not least because they are a lot quicker.

'Photographic perfection' deals with pictures, not the minutiae of exposure. Do you know about the First Excellent Print test, the origin of all modern film speeds? Read it up. And reflect that it was done with 5x7 inch contact prints..

The simple truth is that once you have enough exposure with a negative film, extra exposure does very little harm for two or three stops: slightly reduced sharpness (important if you're shooting test targets on 35mm or smaller), and slightly bigger grain with conventional mono films (again, irrelevant above 35mm in most cases) -- though chromogenic and colour films will give you finer grain with extra exposure.

All accuracy is 'reasonable', in the sense that there is a level of precision beyond which you cannot go, and another, lesser level of precision beyond which it is not worth going. You, on the other hand, are not 'reasonable' when it comes to this topic.

I'm not pretending that I know more about exposure technique than you do, because I don't know how much you know about exposure technique, but if you read my book Perfect Exposure (David & Charles in the UK, Amphoto in the USA, also translated into Spanish as La Esposition Perfecta, Omega) you will see that I am not a complete ignoramus on the subject.

Cheers,

R.
 
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bmattock said:
How do you know if you are a 'wild guesser' or a 'guestimator'?
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Why not use statistical estimation? In Post #1 we have 3 out of 5 that are poorly exposed. Perhaps we can consider that to be "wild guessing". A guestimator would have been if 2 out of 5 were poorly exposed; a "educated estimator" (or whatever Rog called it) would be only 1 bad exposure out of 5.
 
Roger Hicks said:
... but if you read my book Perfect Exposure (David & Charles in the UK, Amphoto in the USA, also translated into Spanish as La Esposition Perfecta, Omega) you will see that I am not a complete ignoramus on the subject.
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Dear Bill,

I found a copy of that book online for a dollar and can vouch for that... Roger is not a complete ignoramus. The book is rather comprehesive on the topic of photographic exposure issues. I have yet to find, however, the section on exposure estimation... but maybe I just haven't read that chapter yet.

Cheers,
e.
 
pevelg said:
I was out of 120mm film, so I took my dads FED5 with Kodak BW400 c41 film with me.... Am I just very bad at setting exposure?
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I am not sure this is just "underexposure". When did you last use that FED5? Are you sure the shutter is working as it should?

What ISO did you try to expose for? BW400 has a very wide exposure latitude, so even when guessing exposure it is hard to be so very wrong, especially as many of your pictures came out fine. What time/aperture combinations did you use?

And please have a good look at the negatives and tell us how they look!
 
MRohlfing said:
I am not sure this is just "underexposure". When did you last use that FED5? Are you sure the shutter is working as it should?
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Well, isn't that interesting?

When we have problems of this nature, we could turn to the shutter in question and suggest that it might be inaccurate.

But if we failed to use a meter, then it could be the shutter or it could be the inaccurate guess about exposure.

Perhaps a meter might help matters somewhat, eh? Imagine that.
 
Roger Hicks said:
You ae over-reacting yet again, and bending the facts to suit your apparently quasi-religious beliefs on this topic.
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Speaking of religion, is this not the forum where the uber-sharp lens is cherished above all, where minutia of lens performance is discussed until everyone is as well-versed as an optical engineer with regard to Nokton and Noctilux lenses? Where we discuss accutance and graininess and contrast until the cows come home?

And into this (cough cough) religion, it is forbidden to speak of accurate exposure using meters. They're so, what, bourgeoisie?

If I'm religious on the subject, I'm just a Methodist to RFF's Lutheran beliefs. We're both using hymnbooks, brother; we just say the words a little differently.

Can I get an 'Amen'?
 
Gumby said:
Why not use statistical estimation? In Post #1 we have 3 out of 5 that are poorly exposed. Perhaps we can consider that to be "wild guessing". A guestimator would have been if 2 out of 5 were poorly exposed; a "educated estimator" (or whatever Rog called it) would be only 1 bad exposure out of 5.
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Of course, we have the small problem that when establishing our parameters, we ruin a number of photographs. If they were photos of the local trees and squirrels, perhaps no big deal. If they were photos of some newsworthy or memorable event, perhaps a bit more risky.

And when a meter can solve the riddle so simply and inexpensively...what sort of madness leads people to eschew them in favor of wild guesses?
 
....it was intended as a punchline

....it was intended as a punchline

bmattock said:
Is a ruler a good tool for learning how long 12 inches is so you can cut boards without measuring them?
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of bringing guesstimation and lightmeters together....but no you have to behave like a Terrier pulling at other peoples pants.
a ruler is a good tool for learning how long 12 inches are for me as I use metric standards....

For crying out loud do you have to provoke me into proving that both of us, balding men, with glasses, beards and single have nothing else to do :bang: wit5h our time
 
bmattock said:
Speaking of religion, is this not the forum where the uber-sharp lens is cherished above all, where minutia of lens performance is discussed until everyone is as well-versed as an optical engineer with regard to Nokton and Noctilux lenses? Where we discuss accutance and graininess and contrast until the cows come home?
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Dear Bill,

No, I don't think so. I dislike Holgas almost as much as you dislike the idea of not using a meter, but I accept that there are plenty of people on the forum who love the beastly things, and that their priorities are different from mine. You might find it interesting to look at a recent post in The Great Light meter debate about why people use manual, unmetered cameras.

Likewise there are plenty of devotees of ancient lenses I personally would no longer touch with a barge-pole, but equally, my favourite 5cm lens is the C-Sonnar even though it's objectively much inferior in resolution and contrast to Frances's Summarit.

In other words, we all have our comfort zones, and our reasons for taking pictures (The Great Light Meter debate post again) and a sledgehammer insistence that lightmeters are the only way to go, ever, at all times, is pretty pointless. Very nearly as pointless, in fact, as refusing ever to use a light meter on the grounds of alleged purity.

Cheers,

R.
 
bmattock said:
How do you know if you are a 'wild guesser' or a 'guestimator'?

And of course, the ultimate - how do you calibrate your eyeballs to 'observe' the EV of the light? Funny, when I walk out of a theater in the daytime, the sun always seems so bright, but if I stand there for 10 minutes, it's not so bright anymore. Would a meter be fooled the way my eyes are? I wonder how it is that you 'guestimators' can tell the difference?
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When I started using cameras 27 years ago, I would say I was a "wild guesser". I did not know any better. I did have any notion where to begin, what settings will do what, and no 'feel' nor inkling was ASA/ISO was. My first roll, shot in a camera without a meter (couldn't afford one nor did I know where to get them) had lots of dense frames, nearly clear ones, and some good ones.

There is a learning curve. One gets to feel the works. Perhaps you've seen cooks who don't use thermometers or measuring cups or spoons- pinching salt and dabbing flour, pouring liquids and oils- and yet get their recipes right. How could these cooks or chefs do that? In all the time they spent cooking, they eventually develop a feel which allows them to eyeball the needed amounts, without going over or under. That is a keen analogy to what happens with guesstimators.

I don't use meters all the time. Sometimes, I go without meters. I use BW or colour negative, and I can remember only of 1 shot which I regret losing from incorrect exposure. Everything else is, to paraphrase, within the ballpark.

And tools are available. So why not use them?

I never understand this. Silly people.
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You need to open your mind more. You need to accept that there are more ways, and as valid, or maybe more, than what you know. THen you can understand.

Tools are available, but sometimes they get in the way. The meter is useful, but not indispensable. Using it everytime can cause one to lose shots- I know, it's happened to me. By the time the reading was done, the moment was also gone.

People like me silly? But a lot of us guesstimators have a high batting average. My negatives look OK. They scan properly.

Just because you can't doesn't mean no one else can.

Well, isn't that interesting?

When we have problems of this nature, we could turn to the shutter in question and suggest that it might be inaccurate.

But if we failed to use a meter, then it could be the shutter or it could be the inaccurate guess about exposure.

Perhaps a meter might help matters somewhat, eh? Imagine that.
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That's not turning to blame to something else. It's just opening to the possibilities that there may be other variables contributing to the problem.
A comment like yours is indicative of a totally closed, inflexible mindset.

And if it was indeed the shutter which was responsible for the problem, no amount of skillful metering will help. And the best calibrated meter will not be better than the calibrated eyeball of a guesstimator.

😡
 
ZorkiKat said:
Perhaps you've seen cooks who don't use thermometers or measuring cups or spoons- pinching salt and dabbing flour, pouring liquids and oils- and yet get their recipes right. How could these cooks or chefs do that? In all the time they spent cooking, they eventually develop a feel which allows them to eyeball the needed amounts, without going over or under. That is a keen analogy to what happens with guesstimators.
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An excellent analogy, though I'm less happy with the 'calibrated eyeball' at the end of the post.

Cheers,

R.
 
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