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M4 shutter timings


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Agreed, 1 stop isn't really going to be noticeable, those look like 2-3 stops under.

 

Something is fundamentally wrong in your chain from capture to image. The lightmeter is unlikely to be faulty, and the camera's shutter is unlikely IMHO to be at fault (faults usually show up as uneven exposure/shutter capping etc).

 

I suspect some issue with the film, or processing or scanning end of things.

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Agreed, 1 stop isn't really going to be noticeable, those look like 2-3 stops under.

 

Something is fundamentally wrong in your chain from capture to image. The lightmeter is unlikely to be faulty, and the camera's shutter is unlikely IMHO to be at fault (faults usually show up as uneven exposure/shutter capping etc).

 

I suspect some issue with the film, or processing or scanning end of things.

ITS THE SCANNER

 

I don't know how but the auto exposure setting was unset. I have rescanned and bingo the exposure is perfect.

 

 
A big thank you to everyone for your help. I have learned much in the process of finding the fault. Next time my exposure and my dev will be better, not just my scan.
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It would be also interesting to see your negatives, as if they are maybe too hard or too soft and if the lettering on the edges is clearly recognizable.

Another recommendation, if you ever want to take prints in the darkroom: A good negative should lead to a technically good picture printable on Gradation 2 or 3

and everything from black to white should be in it.

And also your scanning process should be adjusted to that kind of "perfect" negatives.

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It would be also interesting to see your negatives, as if they are maybe too hard or too soft and if the lettering on the edges is clearly recognizable.

Another recommendation, if you ever want to take prints in the darkroom: A good negative should lead to a technically good picture printable on Gradation 2 or 3

and everything from black to white should be in it.

And also your scanning process should be adjusted to that kind of "perfect" negatives.

I have got some good negatives from the last roll but previously they were a little thin on account of under exposure and under development. I have been making several mistakes that have compounded together. Thankfully my scanner not being set to auto exposure has helped me to identify all of the problems. I am so glad to have gained quite a lot of experience in a short space of time.

 

Thank you

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Paul John,

 

I ve seen your problem was solved, but if you are still curios how exactly your shutter works there is a relatively simple method to test. Somewhere in the net is a manual on how to build a shuttertester from a photodiode, two batteries and a simple headphone plugin. Then you need a strong light source and a pc with audio editing software, Audacity works fine and is for free.

 

And then there is an Excelsheet which shows you how exactly the shutter works in percent compared to the value it should have. Unfortunaly I am not able to upload excel files here. Maybe you can found that Excelsheet somewhere in the internet, I've got it from there too ;)

 

In this pdf you can find on site 54 the permissible shutter speed tolerances given by Leica.

http://www.pentax-manuals.com/manuals/service/leica_m2_service.pdf

 

And here is a setup of my testing environment, very basic ;)

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This is the input the photodiode gives in Audacity

 

If you mark the input you can easily read the seconds, here it was for the time of 1/8s.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The other way to test shutter speeds is to use a dslr, take on shot on b using the shutter in the film camera then another with just the dslr and compare, I'm not explain it very well if you google you will find the technique is quite easy and reliable. In my experience shooting film it's normally the dev/process/scan where things go wrong.

good luck.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Aw, just dedicate one roll to one subject, hopefully a typical scene and bracket the heck out of it. We cannot know if the processing is at fault or you are, but looking at frames can help very much,

.

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There is a very simple procedure to measure the long times, say 1/10th and longer:

post-48220-14286987457028.jpg

 

The well behaved turntables turns at 33 1/3 RPM which is exactly 200°/sec. The picture shows my first test with a newly bought M2. Using a smaller and brighter marker will make the measures a bit more accurate.

 

Here's a shorter time:

 

post-48220-14286987457433.jpg

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