RE: [Leica] Which Ultra-Wide, Heliar 15mm or Heliar 12mm

["Rodgers, David" <david.rodgers@xo.com>]

Isaac

>>I "overrule" my meter every time I use it! I think that it's
unavoidable with a reflective meter. In fact, I think that this is the
problem that the original poster was having, they weren't overruling
their meter and they got incorrectly exposed film...:-) Use the meter as
a guide and you'll be fine, follow it blindly and you're doomed...<<

As the original poster, I think you missed the point. You talk about
overruling a meter every time you use it. I can't always do that. In this
particular instance, I was in the middle of a film set. I shouldn't even
have been there, but that's another story. I'm taking all the photographs I
can in a very short period of time. Two security people, in fact, asked me
what I was doing. I told them I was photographing. They let me proceed.
Meanwhile, I saw three other people with cameras get kicked off the set. The
location photographer even came up to me and made a comment about the
lighting. (And he was shooting F5s with Matrix metering). AT one point I was
down on my stomach about a foot away from a Panavision camera being lowered
down into a manhole. I had less than a second to take the shot.   

To paint a clearer picture, it's early morning on a street corner in the
middle of a downtown filled with high rises; not all of which were 18
percent grey. Some reflected the morning sun. Some were in shadow. Some
areas of pavement were watered down, some of it not. (By the way, the
pavement that appeared darker to the eye actually metered at a higher EV
because it was and therefore more reflective.) The light is changing every
second. Not only is it dawn, but the weather is unstable. Very dark clouds
one moment, white clouds the next, open sky the next. The buildings in the
background. The reflections. The shadows, the white trucks, the black
trucks, the white building, the dark buildings. 

My Heliar is taking all this in. Not just a predominant foreground, but lots
of background stuff too. I assume you have a Heliar, or some type of
superwide, and you know what I mean. How is it, as you suggest, I'm supposed
to overrule my meter? What kind of guide shall it be? One stop, two stops,
three stops? In one instance I bracketed two stops overexposure, and I was
still underexposed. 

Off line I've received several very interesting replies regarding the
Heliar. Including some very technical and interesting points about
vignetting, light fall off and other issues at various apertures. These
might cause metering issues. They also me to understand the lens. Superwides
are attractive little creatures, because they're unusual. But they do have
their foibles. 

Dave