Re: [Leica] metering

[Jim Brick <jim@brick.org>]

A day or two ago, I wrote about the very basics of film sensitivity, and
it's calibration by Kodak (and others) to the 18% gray Rochester sky. These
basics simply told what the film/meter combo will produce under various
situations. This was simply the basics of what film sees and how it sees
it. What you do with this info is, of course, up to you. Read a zone system
book and learn where you want to place the metered 18% gray subject within
the zones. After looking at your scene, YOU have to determine the values of
the different areas in the scene. Since you know the meter reads in terms
of 18% gray, you can learn what to read with the meter, and what to do with
that information. Practice makes perfect.

Or you can do what the rest of us do. Turn the f/stop ring until both leds
light, then push the shutter release. Or when using my 4x5, hold the
incident meter up, point it at the camera, take reading, set the shutter
and f/stop, and push the cable release.

Jim


At 10:56 PM 4/8/98 -0400, you wrote:
>re the last couple of strings:
>
>being fairly new to this, I see how it works now: someone suggests an idea
and
>everyone else beats it to death. 
>
>Metering: By now it's certainly clear to me that there is no ultimate method
>of metering, as if I didn't already know that. I sent that list of gag
methods
>of taking pics (ie--pros shoot lots of polaroids and bracket like hell) to my
>brother the commercial photographer with more light meters and hassy lenses
>than you can shake a stick at and he said that was absolutely accurate. The
>ONLY way to get exact, precise, totally controlled exposures is to be anal
>retentive about exposures to an impossible degree that only a $1,000 a day
fee
>can justify. He shoots 8 by 10 transperencies for some medical company and
was
>showing how he'd had to nudge the contrast up just a tad on one medical
>instrument he had photographed while not changing the others in the same
frame
>-- a lot of work and he STILL ends up fixing things on the computer.
>
>I have attempted the zone system in the past and only ended up with a lot of
>reasonably exposed but over-thought about pictures. They were static,
>lifeless, hugely posed and not at all fun. I'll take a slight loss of shadow
>detail and go for a teriffic picture, a total image, that knocks your socks
>off, any day. 
>
>As to the fellow who is being chastised for criticising someone else's
work on
>a web site -- sorry, no sympathy for the guy who posted the pics. I'm in a
3-D
>folio where we send pics to each other for criticism, and the only way you
get
>better is to listen to critics, even if you are sure they're wrong. Criticism
>has to be a bit blunt or it is worthless.
>
>Should the guy be criticised? He put them on a web for 50-million people
>around the world to look at, didn't he.
>