How Do You Get Perfect Exposures?

[Frank Black]

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It starts of in my head - with experience comes the ability to know (within a stop or two and in normal conditions) what a reasonable exposure will be.

 

Then, with my M7, I use the built in meter to set the exposure. If it's way off what my head was telling me, I consider carefully. Normally the M7 meter is spot on, in Auto mode.

 

For my M2, I use a Leicameter and I use an electronic hand-held meter with my Hasselblad.

 

 

Andy,could you advice an amateur,which hand held digital meter for a low price i should buy ?

 

 

Thank you

[too old to care]

Andy,could you advice an amateur,which hand held digital meter for a low price i should buy ?

 

 

Thank you

 

I certainly do not want to jump in and answer for Andy, but I think this question is similar to the question, "What is the best car to buy,etc?" That is, there will be many options and opinions, none of them wrong.

 

For my uses I do not like digital meters. I want a meter that shows info at an easy to understand relationship between f-stop and shutter speed that best matches the shutter speed and f-stop capabilities of my M6. My meter that I have had and used for years is a simple analog meter. The closest thing made like it today is the Sekonic L-208 Twin Mate for just over $100.

 

But, I am always interested in other opinions and maybe I need to replace my 40 plus year old meter with something newer.

[andybarton]

Andy,could you advice an amateur,which hand held digital meter for a low price i should buy ?

 

 

Thank you

 

I can't advise you, as your needs might be completely different from mine. I can tell you which one I bought. I am an amateur too, don't forget.

 

I bought a Sekonic L-358. It's not a spot meter, but it IS a very accurate reflective and incident meter. Most of my Hasselblad shots on my website have been metered with this. The advantage of the Sekonic is that it gives a reading in a proper EV, rather than some daft reading that the Weston gives. This makes it much easier to use on the Hasselblad, which has a locked shutter speed / aperture system, set via an EV number. Brilliant.

 

For years I have used a Weston Euromaster with an invacone. To be honest, a decent one of those is just as good as a modern electronic meter, and 1/4 of the price.

[waileong]

I'm curious to know how others create exacting exposures? How do you meter? What decisions do you make?

 

Ain't no such thing as perfect exposures.

 

However, if you know how to meter, you know your film and you can rely on your eqpt, then you can get what you want.

 

Of course, using negs helps too, as it gives latitude.

[NZDavid]

I agree with all who say there is no such thing as perfect exposure, only parts of the image that are acceptably exposed or not (to you). Much like focus, where there is only one truly sharp spot and all the rest is variable amounts of acceptable or unacceptable sharpness.

 

Some scenes just are never going to yield acceptable exposures because of too much contrast. You can wait till the lighting is better, try to compensate for it, or, if you can't wait, shoot anyway and put up with a less than perfectly exposed image.

 

I don't agree expose for shadow -- for print film and B+W, yes, but for slide film, expose for the highlights.

 

Understanding the sunny f/16 rule helps. Actually, it's often more like sunny f/11.

 

An incident meter can help. Sekonic 308b is compact, quick, easy to use, and accurate.

[Knomad]

Most of the time with my M6 I just use the in-camera meter and as long as the reading isn't setting off any alarm bells about tricky lighting situations, that gets me very close. It's a very good meter as in-camera meters go.

 

When there's something in the scene that requires a little more care, or I want to emphasize something unusual, or with an older non-metered body, I use an incident meter and take highlight and shadow readings, and then decide where I want to place the exposure. The old "expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights" thing comes into play here, and as someone said above, a basic intuitive understanding of the zone system is really helpful even if it would be a bit absurd to meticulously apply it to every shot when using a spontaneous street camera like a Leica.

 

For a long time I carried a Minolta IV F incident meter, more recently I've picked up a much more compact Sekonic L-308S to take up less space in the camera bag. Either doubles as a flash meter since I do some occasional studio work. The smaller incident dome of the L-308 does take a bit more care when metering to get an accurate reading though.

[JSU]

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I use three films, Efke KB 25, Ilford Pan F+ and Kodak Tri-X. I expose the KB-25 @ ISO 25, the Pan F+ @ ISO 64 and Tri-X @ ISO 200, 400 and 1600. I process typically in either D-76 1:1 or D-23 1:1, the D-23 offers greater compensation and I use it typically in higher contrast situations. Likewise, I expose Tri-X @ 200 in high contrast scenes. Otherwise I shoot what I feel is the slowest film I can use to minimize grain. Outdoors, in sunlight, I always use a Y-48 filter, indoors and at night I use UV filters.

 

All the above is derived from trial and error as to what produces negatives that suit me.

 

I typically use the meters in my M6's, even with my M4 which is used for my 21/3.4 Super Angulon. I usually carry two or three cameras with a few extra rolls of film in my pockets. If I find myself carrying a bag I will often add my Minolta Auto Meter 4-F which I like to use in extremes of light.

 

I only shoot B&W film, for color I use digital. I find I have sufficient latitude with my chosen films and developments that I seldom lose an image due to exposure.