Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/02/08
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi Alistair, Some twenty plus years ago, I purchased a Pentax spotmeter, to supplement the readings from my original Weston. Wherever I intend/ed to take photographs, I meter/ed the environment ........... measured the skin tones (sometimes on myself), plus the highs and the lows in the environs. I then fix the setting in function of which area of the image I wish to be best exposed in relation to the others. And thereafter, just watch (naked eye, mine) the changes in the light. I find it easiest in the tropics ............... and worst in this land, where the clouds are constantly changing the light-- fall ............. ugh! B. On 8-feb-2006, at 22:24, Alastair Firkin wrote: > G'day, > I have spent a long time trying to "learn" to estimate exposure, so > that I could set the M's without bringing them up to my eye. Same > goes for focus and those neat little tabs on the early Leica lenes > (I love that). Its not too hard and as you say is aided by film > latitude. Now I am going the opposite direction, and will soon be > doing mainly spot metering and quick "zone" estimations. This is > not good for a street grab, but great for other forms of > photography. Hasselblad got all excited about it with the release > of the 205TCC, and it has made sense to me. Now that I've been > using it, I love it. > > Trick is AFAICS, to grab a reading from the highlights set it to a > zone your film/sensor can tolerate by prior experience and in > "general" let the image follow suit. If you need to be really > fancy, check the lowlight as well and establish a range, adjusting > contrast to suit, but I suppose that is what the histogram does for > you in a graphical way. Checking histograms and re-exposing is slow > however and is not going to suit the needs of the M user. > > On 08/02/2006, at 19:19, Scott McLoughlin wrote: > >> Probably like many others, I have my D70's little LCD screen more >> or less permanently set to the "display histogram" mode :-) >> >> I can't directly translate in my head a histogram into the visual >> appearance >> of a photo, but I imagine I'll get there soon enough. For now, I >> generally >> just shoot raw and try to "expose to the right" while avoiding blown >> highlights. From there, should I have the motivation and energy, >> alot can >> be tweaked during RAW conversion. >> >> Maybe if I were more careful, I'd use the D70's spot meter on the >> highlights >> and adjust exposure from there, but I haven't spent the time to >> master >> that technique yet. >> >> But you got to hand it to film where some crappy exposures can often >> be molded into nice photos in the darkroom. On this very list, I >> believe, I've >> read that HCB himself - patron saint of we Leica users - >> guestimated exposure >> often and relied on a tight relationship with a master printer. >> >> Now, that's not me. I use a nice metered M6TTL and have 2 Sekonic >> meters I'll sometimes use in incident mode "just in case" :-) >> >> Scott > > > Alastair > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information