What is your Light Metering Routine with Meterless Leicas?

What is your Light Metering Routine with Meterless Leicas?

  • I meter every shot using an incident meter

    Votes: 27 6.0%

  • I meter every shot using a reflective meter

    Votes: 15 3.3%

  • I spot meter an important object in the scene

    Votes: 4 0.9%

  • I spot meter shadows and highlights and place them based on the zone system

    Votes: 9 2.0%

  • I meter only once and keep shooting so long the light has not changed

    Votes: 239 52.9%

  • I meter once and then keep shooting

    Votes: 25 5.5%

  • Sunny 16 is good enough for me

    Votes: 101 22.3%

  • What's a meter?

    Votes: 32 7.1%
  • Total voters
    452
I shoot at the exposure that I think will be right.
If I feel like it, I open a stop and shoot another.
This has always worked for me :)
 
I carry L-208 just in case (I have time take the shot + tricky light + want to nail) but most of time, I just go by my "internal meter." Since I shoot pretty much b/w negative film only, my brain operated light meter is good enough I rarely miss the exposure beyond saving (those are usually me completely forgetting to change settings rather than misreading).
 
I take a reading of the brightest when I get out. Then I estimate the exposure difference in any scene and keep shooting without using the meter again.
 
I don't use a meter with my film cameras. I look at the sky to get a feeling for overall light available, then look at the shadows to see how sharp they are. The softer the shadows, the less light there is. Then it's just a matter of how light or dark the subject is, and exposing accordingly. It may sound complicated but with a little practice it's rather simple, and can give better results than relying on an in-camera meter. The only thing that trips me up sometimes is when light conditions are changing rapidly.


Untitled by Berang Berang, on Flickr
 
Slow meticulous photography using an incident or spot meter is certainly an option
but IMO runs counter to the purpose of a Leica or other fast miniature format cameras.

Chris
 
ChrisPlatt said:
Slow meticulous photography using an incident or spot meter is certainly an option
but IMO runs counter to the purpose of a Leica or other fast miniature format cameras.

Chris
Click to expand...

Andrew Matheson expresses this opinion also in his book The Leica Rangefinder Way.
 
By 2011, my hands didn't work well enough to handle a meter and adjust settings, so I quit using a meter. I have a few autoexposure cameras that I use like P&S, but many of the cameras I use are meterless and I judge exposure based on conditions. I have a meter app on my phone and I will sometimes (rarely) use that if I'm indoors.
 
Check out the ZoneSimple section of my web site www.charlielemay.net. I recently came up with a way to expose sunny and cloudy/shade on the same roll without metering, processed for the same time. It's a breakthrough for me I call Deep Shadow Ultra. There are free downloads for the process.
 
I like no electronics photo cameras. Made in Canada Leicas in particular. :)

If it is 400 pushed at 1600 and I'm using two different filters I'm measure the light which isn't too bright and isn't too low and using this parameters as long as light is not changing. But often I'll pull M4-2 out of the bag and just guess it. As long as I'm not underexposing, it is fine for prints.
 
I've been using mostly incident metering the last few years, with Sekonic meters. Gave away the L-398 but still keep the L-308s.
 
I don't usually use a meter, but I do carry one around occasionally. Oddly, when I'm shooting my M2, I rarely have a meter, yet when I shoot my Rollei which has a working meter, I use a Sekonic 408 every frame :p Don't ask me why.
 
I actually didn't see my choice above. I both take a single incident reading at the subject and don't tend to re-meter or change things unless the light has changed. But this works well with portraits and less so for, say, street photography. As I have gotten older, I have actually taken more care with choosing my light, and that has made more of a difference than the metering method. That that, specular highlight in the backgrounds! Fie on you.
 
I used a spot meter for a while and since I shoot the same film the same way all the time I just remembered what that little reading was and adjust by stops when I go into shade or out of shade or whatever and more or less just guess when I get inside. Seems to be working just fine right now. When I'm actually setting up a portrait or something then I'll meter just as a quick reference but that's it these days.
 
I use Sunny 16 a lot, but also use an old Luna Pro meter in Incident mode from time to time.

Sunny 16 was real handy with slow film but for something fast (like my Ilford XP2 ASA 400) full bright sun is between f11 and f16 at 1/500th which is the fastest speed on my Nicca/Tower. Unfortunately a lot of lenses have really closely-spaced apertures in that range! Its a little tedious sometimes, making certain I have it set exactly how I want it.
 
Sunny 16 for fresh negative film with a wide latitude, lunalite with slide or expired film where exposure guessing is not recommended.
 
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