Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/02/15

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Subject: Re: A question for M6 users
From: "Charles E. Albertson" <chucko@ricochet.net>
Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 20:56:15 -0800

At 11:38 AM 2/14/97 +0000, you wrote:
>
>But with an M6, there is nothing in the viewfinder to indicate the 
>meter's area of sensitivity. Also, from the Leica M6 catalog, there 
>doesn't seem to be any way of knowing how far over or under exposed 
>you are, and so it would be difficult to quickly determine zones. At 
>least that's my understanding.

Peter---
	Figure the meter sensitivity area to be 2/3 the height of the vertical
frame lines of whatever lens you're shooting with. It works out to about 27
percent of the total image area. Another method is to use the frame line
selector lever to bring up the frame lines of the next longest focal
length, and use those frame lines to represent the area you're metering.
For example, if you're shooting with a 35mm lens, flick the frame line
selector to the middle and bring up the frame lines for the 50mm lens; the
short (i.e., vertical) frame lines for the 50 will give you an idea of the
height of the metering spot.
	For determining under- or over-exposure: if both LEDs are lit, but are of
different brightness, you're still within a half-stop of the correct
exposure. If they're equally lit, you're spot on. As for it's overall
usefulness, I rely on the M6's meter the same as I would any other TTL
reflectance meter. Once I got a good working knowledge of what it meters
(through the first year of shooting with it), I now trust it completely.
You still have to take into consideration that it thinks it's metering an
18 percent gray card, and make appropriate adjustments for the scene that's
in front of you. For color slide shooting (rare) and some of the T-Max B&W
films, I like to back it up with an incident meter reading when I have the
time.

Chuck Albertson
Seattle, Wash.