manual shutter speed

[Nicoleica]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

The old 'Sunny 16' rule still works well.

[roydonian]

Several years ago and in another forum an experienced user commented that the way to get well-exposed images with an M6 was to turn the controls until the central circular LED in the viewfinder lit, then take the picture. “Don’t futz with it”, he stated. In his opinion, you had to be a very experienced user to do better than the M6 meter.

 

It’s an approach that always worked for me. But with the M8.2, I’ve found that while this advice still holds when shooting outdoors, when indoors the camera tends to over-expose – not in the sense that the highlights are blown, but in the sense that the ‘atmosphere’ of the scene is destroyed. For example, a romantic church interior ends up looking unnaturally bright and well-lit, the injunction ‘Let there be light” having taken on a whole new meaning.

 

When shooting in the hangers of an aircraft museum a couple of weeks ago, some of my photos showed the sort of effect you’d expect if a friendly giant had peeled away the hanger roof and allowed the daylight to stream in. The resulting images show every detail on the aircraft, but are not a good record of what the visitor actually sees.

 

I’m guessing that this is because the meter is observing an entire white strip of shutter blade rather than a central white spot on the blind, so takes into account more of the overall subject area.

 

Although I’ve used film Leicas and Leicaflexes for many years, I’m a near-beginner in the digital world. I used a Nikon D200 for several years while the design of the M8 was being 'debugged', and rarely had to use an EV correction when shooting indoors.

 

But with the M8 I’m often having to set EV to –1 when indoors, so that the resulting image looks closer to what the eye is seeing. I’m going to experiment with leaving the EV at 0, then adjusting the gamma of the RAW image until I get the effect I want.

 

To date, I’ve run the M8.2 in auto mode, reasoning that this gets the exposure set more quickly that M-6-style manipulation of the aperture or shutter control to get the central spot lit.

 

Is there an advantage to using M mode that I’m not comprehending?

 

Similarly, I use auto-ISO between 160 and 640, set to shift up in sensitivity if a minimum speed of 1/125 cannot be achieved. This is the rule of thumb I’d follow if I was setting the ISO manually, so it seems to make sense to automate the process whenever possible, but to switch to manual setting in dim light.

[Jeff S]

It’s an approach that always worked for me. But with the M8.2, I’ve found that while this advice still holds when shooting outdoors, when indoors the camera tends to over-expose – not in the sense that the highlights are blown, but in the sense that the ‘atmosphere’ of the scene is destroyed. For example, a romantic church interior ends up looking unnaturally bright and well-lit, the injunction ‘Let there be light” having taken on a whole new meaning.

 

When shooting in the hangers of an aircraft museum a couple of weeks ago, some of my photos showed the sort of effect you’d expect if a friendly giant had peeled away the hanger roof and allowed the daylight to stream in. The resulting images show every detail on the aircraft, but are not a good record of what the visitor actually sees.

 

.

 

Seems to me that the additional exposure is a good thing, as long as highlights aren't blown (move histogram as far to right as possible without clipping). That way, detail is preserved for easy adjustment in PP to your intended rendering, without having to introduce noise to bring out any shadow detail.

 

Jeff

[lars_bergquist]

Very good, Rich. I live in the Stockholm area, and "f:5.6 and 1/2000th at ISO 320" is my equivalent of "sunny sixteen". Go calculate ...

 

A quick solution indoors is simply to turn the speed dial with my first finger without removing the camera from my eye, until the round center LED just goes out on the underexposure side. Takes about three seconds. Like this, for instance: First '>', then '>o', then back to '>' again -- but only just. That gives you just about one f-stop less than the meter says. '>o' means around one half stop under, of course. The 'half-stops' of the M8 dial makes this technique possible.

 

The old man from the Age of Hand-Held Selenium Meters--If Any

[roydonian]

Seems to me that the additional exposure is a good thing, as long as highlights aren't blown (move histogram as far to right as possible without clipping). That way, detail is preserved for easy adjustment in PP to your intended rendering, without having to introduce noise to bring out any shadow detail. Jeff

 

That's the reasoning behind my decision to give staying with EV=0 a try. But when the exposure time gets a bit marginal (1/15 or less), setting the EV to -1 will allow a higher shutter speed.

[Jamie Roberts]

Several years ago and in another forum an experienced user commented that the way to get well-exposed images with an M6 was to turn the controls until the central circular LED in the viewfinder lit, then take the picture. “Don’t futz with it”, he stated. In his opinion, you had to be a very experienced user to do better than the M6 meter.

 

It’s an approach that always worked for me. But with the M8.2, I’ve found that while this advice still holds when shooting outdoors, when indoors the camera tends to over-expose – not in the sense that the highlights are blown, but in the sense that the ‘atmosphere’ of the scene is destroyed. For example, a romantic church interior ends up looking unnaturally bright and well-lit, the injunction ‘Let there be light” having taken on a whole new meaning.

 

When shooting in the hangers of an aircraft museum a couple of weeks ago, some of my photos showed the sort of effect you’d expect if a friendly giant had peeled away the hanger roof and allowed the daylight to stream in. The resulting images show every detail on the aircraft, but are not a good record of what the visitor actually sees.

 

I’m guessing that this is because the meter is observing an entire white strip of shutter blade rather than a central white spot on the blind, so takes into account more of the overall subject area.

 

{snipped}.

 

The reason your M8 is showing you different things than your M2 isn't the difference in the metering system, it's more like the latitude you have in film and what you're trying to process.

 

If you want to place shadows below a neutral gray (where they are in a lot of churches (and airplane hangars, I'm assuming ), then point the meter at the shadow you want to be at the darkest quartertone and set the meter (on manual) so that the little "under-exposure arrow" is flashing by a stop (you can count the Aperture or Shutter clicks quite easily). Lars explained the meter and the half-stop over / under on the M8 very well in his previous post.

 

Presto--shadows where you want them. Same goes for highlights. In RAW, you can hold easily a stop or two "above the dot" but it's impossible, usually to meter for the absolute. But if you find your brightest object where you want detail (and often outside, that's the sky, BTW) then you can take a meter reading from that, adjust so you have a "half-stop" over exposure, and your detailed subject highlights will be where you need them.

 

So FWIW I use manual on the M8 (and on the M6) except when I'm running from a very dark church or apartment out into broad daylight and back again--where I quickly switch to auto or use auto ISO to hold an aperture / shutter combo.

 

There's not much I've seen street shooting that quite requires that kind of speed of exposure shift, but it can happen when a storm is coming on or late (or early) in the day.

 

IMO, reflective meters in dSLRs / SLRs just compound the comprehension problem, since it seems the meter is always changing (well, it is, but a lot of times, it shouldn't, since the light falling on a subject is much more constant, usually, than the light reflected from a subject).

 

IMO too, it's worth taking an afternoon and comparing your M8's meter to a manual meter.

 

Once you understand how a scene looks compared with neutrals, and where you want to place the exposure, then you're good, and you won't care about exposure compensation so much. If you've never owned a manual meter, and you want to improve your exposures overall, then you owe it to yourself to get a good incidence meter.

 

(Heck, an old trick we used to use, that still works, is to meter your hand compared with gray card Once you know the exposure difference between card and hand, you can just adjust that amount in the camera, and you have a gray card with you wherever you go! )

 

(Sorry for the long quote)

[roydonian]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Good afternoon, Jamie, and thanks for that long and useful response.

 

The reason your M8 is showing you different things than your M2 isn't the difference in the metering system, it's more like the latitude you have in film and what you're trying to process.

 

I’ve been a life-long user of slide film, and assumed from stuff I’d read on the ‘net that a digital sensor had a similarly restricted exposure latitude.

 

What was puzzling me was that the M6 and the D200 usually captured an indoor scene ‘as seen’ while the M8.2 shows the dimmest indoor scene looking like I’d let off a small sack of flash powder.

 

Part of the problem my be that the multi-zone metering system of the D200 was so effective that I’ve become sloppy at recognising tricky lighting conditions. Cameras with automatic functions cause the brain to atrophy - the biggest problem I had when using my newly-acquired M8.2 was remembering that I now had to manually focus the lens.

 

 

If you want to place shadows below a neutral gray (where they are in a lot of churches (and airplane hangars, I'm assuming ), then point the meter at the shadow you want to be at the darkest quartertone and set the meter (on manual) so that the little "under-exposure arrow" is flashing by a stop (you can count the Aperture or Shutter clicks quite easily). Lars explained the meter and the half-stop over / under on the M8 very well in his previous post.

 

Presto--shadows where you want them. Same goes for highlights. In RAW, you can hold easily a stop or two "above the dot" but it's impossible, usually to meter for the absolute. But if you find your brightest object where you want detail (and often outside, that's the sky, BTW) then you can take a meter reading from that, adjust so you have a "half-stop" over exposure, and your detailed subject highlights will be where you need them.

 

That’s what I used to do with my M5 and SL2 when faced with tricky light conditions, but in those cameras the meter is essentially a semi-spot meter. But looking once more at the totally unexplained diagram on page 127 of the M8.2 manual, it looks like the meter of that camera is more centre-weighted than I’d realised. So I’ll such selective metering a try.

 

 

If you've never owned a manual meter, and you want to improve your exposures overall, then you owe it to yourself to get a good incidence meter.

 

Old enough to have used glass plates, let alone a meter! I still have the Lunasix bought for use with my M2. It has an incident mode and was recalibrated a couple of years ago.

 

 

(Heck, an old trick we used to use, that still works, is to meter your hand compared with gray card Once you know the exposure difference between card and hand, you can just adjust that amount in the camera, and you have a gray card with you wherever you go! )

 

A nice trick – I’ll try that.