Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>.. I'm getting >better results more consistently than I ever did with my FG, which is >interesting, since the FG presumably has a more sophisticated meter >(although it seems to be considerably off from my other cameras and my >spot meter). It's not surprising that the FG reads rather differently from the F5, M6 or spot meter. The FG, along with the EM, FG-20, FA and F601, use a "centerweighted" pattern with 40% of the meter sensitivity in the central 12mm circle and 60% of the sensitivity in the surrounding field. Kind of an "edge-weighted" pattern, really. I've never quite understood the logic behind this metering pattern, and it's one of the reasons I never bought an FA, FG or FG-20 Nikon. (Perhaps the thinking was that for the casual point-and-shoot customer who never looked at the metering pattern and just pointed the camera with the horizon splitting the image, it would at least tend to average the sky and foreground. But true centerweighting seems to do the same job more consistently as most subjects are in the center of the frame for such snapshooters.) In general, I wouldn't exactly call any 'centerweighted' metering system more sophisticated than the M6 selective area metering. They are almost exactly the same in sophistication, the difference is whether a lens or a limiter on the sensor cell is used. The M6's limiter is the size of the white dot on the shutter curtain. All the instrumentation to evaluate what either of these meter types is telling you is in your head... ;) Godfrey