XA's meter

[Juan Valdenebro]

Hi,


Internet funny photostar Ken Rockwell writes XA's metering pattern is not center weighted as XA2's meter, but of a weird shape going beyond the image...


I've checked most of what's available on the web but haven't found any others' comments on that subject...


Could some users please give me a clue?


Thanks!

 

[Disaster_Area]

ummm... I know my meter works, and works well at that... I don't really think about it much more than that. It's not a precision tool... it's a small fiddly camera with an short baselength rangefinder and a damn sharp lens that's small enough to always have in my pocket. I don't think there's any way to lock exposure anyways, so where my XA's meter is getting its data is irrelevant 🙂

 

[rjbuzzclick]

Doesn't it have to meter through the lens to be called "center weighted"?

 

[Disaster_Area]

center weighted isn't really an exact term and varies in it's usage from camera to camera... there's no real standard... it just refers to any meter that puts more importance to light values in the center of the lens's field of view than those on the edges.

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

I think that camera can be a precise tool for slide film as long as it's well known by the photographer... Again, with b&w and color negatives, there's no much care needed, and almost no photographer needed... But after designing the Pen during the 60's and the OMs during the seventies, I think Mr. Maitani thought of designing a compact precision tool, and not a fiddly camera, but YMMV.

Its AE can be compensated in thirds...

Cheers,

Juan

 

[Disaster_Area]

oh don't get me wrong.. I love my XA to death... but it is what it is... a partially automatic camera, if you want exact, it's not the right tool for the job. You can only do AE compensation by manually changing the iso, which is hard to do on the fly.. the rangefinder isn't very accurate but it doesn't really have to be with a 35mm lens.

However, if you want an automatic camera that does a damn good job metering a scene on it's own it's perfect. I've shot slide, neg and B&W with mine and I've never had a problem with the way it exposes... at least I don't notice a significantly larger percent of images poorly exposed as compared to how many I get when I let my DSLR choose exposure with matrix metering.

And as for it being fiddly... ok maybe not for smaller hands than mine, but I'm 6'2" with large German sausage fingers... The XA is shorter than the length of my palm by almost an inch 🙂

 

[Juan Valdenebro]

Ah, great! I really want to find mine soon in the mailbox and quickly fire a roll of sensia at 125 to see what I got... Well, waiting is not my domain!

Cheers,

Juan

 

[piumach]

Having shot my previous roll with the XA just few days ago (negative color film, 200 iso) what I can say is that the meter of the camera is pretty damn good.
The negative shows a very good exposure and the scans made by the lab are properly exposed.
Do not judge the exposure choosen by the camera looking at the indication in the viewfinder, quite often this is off but the camera still choose the right exposure; this belongs to the fact that the XA has got 2 lightmeter, one for the VF and one for the camera 🙂
I do not know which kind of exposure method the XA uses, but I've tried my XA side by side with my yashica mat 124G and the two meters always gives same values 🙂